TOM PRICE

27^th July, 2012

We’re off exploring today.  We are still camped in Karijini National Park for one more night but the mining town of Tom Price is ninety kms away and we have booked onto a tour of Rio Tinto’s open cut iron ore mine.  So we are on the road early as we want to go to the town’s lookout before meeting up with the tour bus at the Tom Price Information Centre.  The landscape is quite surprising.  Rocky escarpments and pyramid shaped hills roll into view.

Unusual shapes hills on road to Tom Price

Up until now we haven’t commented on the massive road trains that we continually pass.  We thought that the semis pulling three trailers were pretty big but obviously three isn’t big enough for the mining companies in the Pilbara so they just added another trailer to make it next to impossible to overtake one of these guys on the road.

Move over - I'm coming through ....

Needless to say – Wok does his very best to keep Mitzi and the van out of harms way as they pass by.  Sitting at the base of Mount Nameless (and we couldn’t find anyone who could tell us why the mountain has no name) Tom Price is the highest town in West Australia.  At least the aborigines gave the mountain a name – Jarndrunmunhna (place of rock wallabies).  Mount Nameless is 1128 metres high and is accessible by 4

Wheel Drive

so after about 20 minutes of climbing up a rocky track we found ourselves on top of the mountain with a panoramic view of the town

View of Tom Price from Mount Nameless

and the Tom Price mine site.

View of Tom Price Mine from Mount Nameless

After taking in the spectacular view we headed back down and joined the tour bus to see the Tom Price mine.  Our bus driver ‘Baz’ tried to cram our poor little brains with more facts and figures as we joggled our way into the mine site.  We pass by those 2.2km long ore trains that we had seen at Dampier dumping their precious cargo ready for loading onto the waiting ships.  And precious is the word!  Baz happily informed us that each train load of ore is worth three million dollars and five to six trains a day are despatched from the Tom Price mine alone.  There are approx. twenty smaller mines in the area all gouging away at hills and mountains and loading iron ore onto the trains.  And you thought we were joking when we said ‘There’s gold in them thar hills!’   We stop at the viewing platform to allow everyone a look down in the massive open cut pit.

Tom Price open cut

Once this had been a mountain as high as the surrounding landscape and there are more untouched areas of iron ore yet to be mined.  We watch as one of the humongous dump trucks rumbles past.

My that is one big dump truck!

This double cab work truck is dwarfed by the dump truck.

You call that a truck!!!  Now this is a TRUCK ...

Baz then takes us on a drive around the ore processing facility where the ore is crushed before being loaded onto the trains.

Iron ore processing facility - everything coated in a nice shade of red dust

Then suitably filled with mindless statistics Baz whisks us back to the information centre.  We have now followed the iron ore journey from its origin in the Pilbara to the waiting ships at Dampier and Cape Lambert.  We have been blown away by the size of the mines, trains and loading facilities let alone the towns built by the mining companies for their workforce.  On our way back to camp some more wildflowers beside the road caught our eye.

Red wildflowers in the Pilbara

Again we have no idea what they are but they sure are pretty.  Mount Bruce is pretty hard to miss as we pass by.

Mount Bruce

At 1235 metres it is the second highest mountain in West Australia.  In the morning a glorious sunrise greets us as we pack up and continue our journey.  

Sunrise at Karijini

We’ve enjoyed our stay out here in the Pilbara but it is time to move on.  Now all we need to do is find some way of getting rid of all this red dust that has accumulated over everything.