Driving to Karratha

We had an over 800 klm drive ahead of us today, from Broome to Karratha along highway 1 in WA's ancient and sparsely populated Pilbara region. We started out at 5.30am and got to see a magnificent sunrise an hour or so along the road.

Rob did the first 3 hours on the road to our first stop at Sandfire Roadhouse near the settlement of 80 Mile Beach. It was pretty easy driving, at a steady 110klm speed and not much traffic in this first section of the trip. It was monotonous driving though with long straight roads and little variation in the flat coastal scrub landscape.

I drove for the next three hours from Sandfire Roadhouse to Port Hedland - with no coffee or "conveniences" along the way - this really is remote Australia.

The further south we got the more obvious it became that we were in mass scale mining country. 

Port Hedland was an industrial scale port with endless lines of iron ore laden trains waiting to be hauled onto container ships.

There were lots of long "road trains" to contend with too but this particular load caused significantly more disruption  than most (its load was the width of the whole road!) ........

We got to Karratha at about 2.30pm - a nine hour trip - and a very l-o-n-g drive for us. Karratha is a company town - servicing miners and the big mining companies that are extracting minerals and huge profits out of the Pilbara and the adjacent NW Shelf Venture (natural gas).

It's definitely not a tourist town - this is Karratha's beach - not very inviting for an afternoon walk we thought. 

Luckily we found Blanche Bar on Short Ave and its Taco Bar to end off the day on a positive note.