Headed early out of Karajini to make the Tom Price mine tour this morning. Amazing drive with the sun coming up, it looks unlike anything I’ve seen in Australia, I’d more expect Arizona to look like this. Definitely some of the best scenery of the trip. We didn’t actually stop to take any pics, partly because it wouldn’t do it justice but mostly because we were on a deadline to get to Tom Price.
Glad we organised to do the mine tour! Tom Price (owned by Rio Tinto) is a massive iron ore mine and the tour bus takes you all around with huge dump trucks and other machinery all around you. I can’t remember the exact numbers but it’s a mind boggling amount of material that they move, again really quite something to see the resource sector in full effect. I think the most staggering thing is that the mine runs non-stop, 24 hours a day. They just can’t get the stuff out of the ground fast enough. Everything is tuned to move massive amounts of iron ore as efficiently as possible. Each train takes something like $3M worth of ore out, 200 cars with 100 tonnes each!
Very barren after leaving Tom Price and heading towards Exmouth. We stopped at Giralia Station before the sun went down too far and it was a great spot. Great vibe and a little kitchen / dining room that we had to ourselves, such a pleasure to cook inside what felt like a house, almost like real life! You take for granted simple things like sinks and running water but quickly come to appreciate the odd home comfort when you’re long-term touring through the bush.
