Karratha and Point Sampson

The next day we drove into Karratha where we saw more of the trains. This is where the trains all come to unload the ore. We drove along the peninsula and got a view of the loading bays and stock piles of iron ore.

Here we decided to stay at Point Samson which was just far enough away from the noisey processing of the iron ore – unloading and loading iron ore which occurs 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Karratha iron ore loading

iron ore stock piles

Train lines into the port

Huge mining infrastructure

On the Burrup Peninsula apart form Rio Tinto and the Iron Ore industry Karratha is the home to the major North West Shelf Project. We had viewed some large gas processing platforms off the coast these are drilling and drawing up natural gas from under the sea via a 135km submarine pipeline. We visited the Woodside Gas Plant visitor centre in Karratha and had an interesting couple of hours learning all about natural gas and how it is extracted and piped to Karratha via under the sea and then processed into liquid for transport overseas and to Perth. To change the gas into liquid form it is cooled down to minus 161’C to remove the other gasses. When changed the gas is 600 times smaller and therefore if they transported the gas whilst a gas they would need 600 more boats. The children all filled in a quiz and were more than pleased to receive chocolates, hats and water bottles for their efforts.

Woodside tour

The gas pipes

In the little town of Dampier not far from Karratha there is a monument to the Red Dog the Pilbara wanderer which was made famous by the movie recently. The dog lived and wandered around this part of the Pilbara and the children were all excited to visit the statue and read about the dog. We have down loaded the movie to watch on the ipad and they watched their second movie since leaving Perth. Don’t seem to be missing the TV at all – suggested we sell the tv when we get home but they don’t think that is a good idea.