Port Headland to Dampier

So it began, a month to show mum how amazing our own backyard is, Australia.

We left Broome and drove not far to a station stay called Barn Hill. This has been raved about by many people and once again, Toni and G also recommended it so that was it, we were going. Our camp site was not far from the beach, the station had a green for bowling, a knitting club, pizza night and under the sky showers, looked quite impressive and we were expecting something special as it was not cheap.

Anyway, bowling, we don’t really know how to play, the knitting club….well we did approach the table but the women there seemed quite intimidating, skillfully manoeuvring their knitting needles and the pizza, they did not do vegetarian, so not such a great start. The beach was beautiful, clean, some waves for the kids to play in but what stood out the most was the rocks, never have I seen such colourful, smooth rocks, I wanted to keep them all, of course to add to the thousand shells, souvenirs, snake skin, sticks, coins and everything else we have been collecting so far in our trip, it was a big ask.

Morning started with a walk, some yoga and meditation. This was followed by fishing, now mum has never, ever touched a fishing rod, so this was an interesting experience, for mum and for me watching her. I felt very proud and excited as there have been many things that mum has never got to do in her life and she is now is doing, although we did not catch anything we had fun.

We only stayed two nights at Barn Hill and we moved on, next another station stay was called Pardoo. This was very different to the previous, although it was not close to the beach, meaning walking distance, it was so green, nice grass, also had a bowling green and this station had a restaurant. We had a good start again by meeting a happy go lucky bloke named Jeff, our neighbour. It was not long before Carlos got talking to him about fishing and Jeff and Carlos spent hours discussing rods and bait and everything else under the sun. Unfortunately, the mood changed quickly as Carlos' grandma fell ill and died not long after. Carlos flew to Melbourne from Port Headland and I stayed with mum and the kids in Pardoo for a week. “Avo” will always be remembered as the Morin matriarch, at 92 she lived a full life and her biggest pride, her family.

While at Pardoo we quickly got into an exercise regimen, first thing in the morning we would walk to the entry of the station to do running followed by sit ups. We got the attention of some of the workers, one in a particular a 65 year old lady call Dawn, she looked amazing for her age and she too did running in the morning and yoga. While Carlos was away we did some day trips, I took everyone to the beach and the most memorable experience was possibly learning how to play green bowls, we spent hours playing, I actually had to watch my posture as it was hurting my back, maybe it was the intensity of the game or the vicious competition.

It was no long before Carlos came back, we decided to go to the restaurant, in total we went three times during our stay, we had not had, till then, food so delicious, exquisite and exotic not only for meat eaters but also vegetarians. As a bonus we didn't get charged as much because of most of us were vegetarians, 5 in total and one meat eater, although I am sure Carlos made up for all of us, he ate a hell of a lot of meat.

We left Pardoo with a smile on our face and a full tummy (or tummies), we had an amazing time and definitely will come back again.

We made it to Port Hedland, a town which we were told to skip, "not to waste our time" ...a mining town. The first thing that got our attention was the flags on the cars, all the cars looked the same with a red flag on top, like dodgem cars at a fair and secondly a huge mountain of salt! People that know me would have thought that was my dream come true but even for me that was too much salt.

We stayed at the golf club, very affordable as we paid only for the site not per person plus it had great grounds for “ejercicio” (exercise) as the kids learnt to call our exercise routine. Although a mining town, Port Headland proved to be full of surprises, a fun fact about Port Headland is that it's one of the world’s largest port in tonnage terms with over 300 million tonnes of product worth billions shipped each year.

We had a picnic at a park overlooking the port and we could not believe the size of the ships coming in and out and the small but powerful barges doing their job. We went in to the RIO TINTO salt plant and saw how it was transported and moved and yes we saw trains over 2 km long, you would not wish to be at a crossing waiting for a train this long to pass, you just might run out of fuel. We were so intrigued about the ships that we decided to go on a tour, a seafarer boat that picks up and drops off passengers from ship to ship.

The tour started with a talk about the mission, they have a minister who visits the ships that come to the port, we actually had a chance to speak to the minister and it was such an eye opener to learn what some of the seaman go through and the hardship of their work. Some of them are at sea for 9 months, without seeing their family but they do so because even though the pay is not great at least is better than what they would earn at home. The seafarers provide them with home like facilities, wifi and phone cards for them to contact their loved ones, a lounge where they can rest, fresh food and most importantly counselling. I was very touched by what the Port Headland seafarers do and even more to learn that they are all volunteers. So we went on a small boat, we felt tiny in a sea full of gigantic beasts, we saw ships that were empty and so there is a line outside that measures up to 18 metres and you could see the line and then you saw the ones that were already loaded and that same line was no longer visible because it was under water.

It is really hard to try and understand the quantities of minerals and metals leaving this country, many of them to China, Carlos joked that in the future if we wanted to go to China we will just have jump into a whole on the ground and you’ll end up there! We had a lot of fun on the tour and the kids learnt a great deal about the seaman, ships and export. From planning to stay one day we ended up staying three and actually really enjoyed our time in Port Headland and would not mind visiting it again.

We left Port Headland and headed to Karratha, another mining town but on the way there we found that it was cheaper to stay in Dampier which was only 20 minutes further west. For those who don’t know, Dampier is Red Dog country and I was excited as I have seen the movie (yes I cried) and visiting the red dog statue was on my bucket list. The caravan park was not bad at all, opposite the bay, clean amenities and affordable, we don’t need anything more, the owner actually lent us the red dog dvd, yes we watched it again and yes I cried again. We paid our tributes to red dog by visiting the statue, got a photo of red dog, white dog and black dog and tried some fishing and went back to the caravan.

Of course, Dampier being also a mining town we visited the information centre overlooking the North West Shelf Project. That there was a very educational experience, they had interactive Ipads so you could superimpose them over the actual building and it would tell us about that section of the mine, had a small theatre were we learnt about the history of the mine and we had a good chat with the lady there and learnt about the life of a miner as herself and partner worked in one. We left Dampier and Karratha "mined out" but in a good way. There is actually a lot happening in these remote mining towns, although in the middle of nowhere they seem to provide a stable infrastructure to the families of the miners and visitors of course.

Our final destination before heading to Tom Price was a very affordable camp by the beach about 20 minutes from Karratha. When we arrived it was just stunning, we had so much space and we were literally off the beach, what was even better was the fishing, for the first time ever we were catching fish!

Sunsets were beautiful, we were loving it until....second night the wind had dropped, we woke up in the middle of the night being attacked...chewed? by midges, they were everywhere, our biggest nightmare. The following morning, after a blood transfusion, we packed and never looked back, although we paid for 3 nights we could not think of staying another night under such harsh war like conditions. Well, another lesson learnt.