Day 166, Friday, 11 September, 2009

Distance travelled – 94.1 km
Avg speed – 17.9 kph
Max speed – 26.7 kph

Port Hedland to Bush Camp

Today was one of those unremarkable days with nothing in particular standing out to report. We left Port Hedland at about 8.30 in heavy traffic, something we have not dealt with since Darwin. Near South Hedland there were some road works to navigate and a long ore train to wait for before we could get out on the open road again. We read somewhere that the ore trains here are some of, if not, the longest scheduled trains in the world. We waited between 10 and 15 minutes for it to all pass in front of us. Most of the trains we saw have two locomotives at the front and two in the middle to keep everything moving.

We had to contend with head and side winds again today and at 90km we were ready to call it a day. Most of the country is very open and there are limited trees but we managed to find a nice spot amongst the spinifex not far from the highway just past the West Peawah River.

Perhaps the one thing of note today was how dirty we got, you could feel the dust on our faces and on our legs, so it was real challenge to wash all the dirt off with our 1 litre allocation of washing water each. Although you cannot see any dust blowing in the air the winds are clearly blowing something around for us to get this filthy. Our high visibility yellow shirts will certainly be a challenge to get clean when we reach Karratha.

Zoom into the map and use the 'Satellite' layer to see our new location.

 

Waiting for the ore train to pass.

Boodarie Iron. This is the first man made structure you can see 40km from Port Hedland

Lunch at Herbert Parker Rest Area

The dry Yule River

Bush Camp 090911

Bush Camp 090911

 

 

 

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