– Roebourne is 90percent aboriginal population. It has a reputation for having a lot of social problems related to drunk and disorderly behaviour, such as graffiti and damage to buildings. Many of the buildings in the town that the tour guide pointed out have been shut down due to continually being broken into, or have bars on the windows and doors.
– After years of having very little new residential buildings (or public buildings), the government lately has been putting money into growing and upgrading things. We saw evidence of this.
– The land around that region has become very expensive due to the government being so slow to release new land. So people selling their private land just near the edge of town are getting a million dollars or more for it.
– Rio Tinto (which runs the mining facilities around there) set up ‘camps’ for the ‘fly-in, fly-out’ employees (called FI-FOs by the locals and not particularly liked by them) which includes their accomodation, mess halls for meals and recreation facilities.
– Rio Tinto also subsidises new residential areas in the region to cope with the increasing demand for a greater number of workers.
– There are 3 main iron ore processing plants in the region – the largest at Cape Lambert, which we visited. Rio Tinto owns 11 mines in the Pilbara Region which send ore to the processing plants on the coast. They produce 220 million tonnes of iron ore per annum (and once their current expansion program is complete, it will increase to upwards of 350 million). 25percent of all seabound iron ore is from Rio Tinto.
– They have their own private railway system in the region to transport from the mines to the coast and out to the ships. Most of the trains are up to 234 carriages long, and each carriage carries about 100 tonnes of iron ore.
– At the processing plant, we watched how the carriages rotate completely to dump the contents where they need to go and we saw the conveyor belts moving the ore along. Every bit of machinery seems completely covered in red-brown ( from the dirt). Apparently in summer, a lot of sprinklers are used to spray water over the huge piles of crushed ore – to keep down the dust.
– The jetty at Cape Lambert is the 2nd longest in the Australia (after the one at Lucinda which we already saw on this trip). It is long enough to go out to the deep water so the overseas ships can come alongside to be filled. Each ship has a 250 000 tonne capacity (can take about 220 000 tonnes of ore). The process can load 1000 tonnes per hour, so it takes about 22 hrs to load a ship. The jetty can load 2 ships at a time and have 2 more ships waiting at dock ready to be loaded straight after the previous one has finished. We still saw 3 or 4 ships waiting out at sea. Apparently if the ships have to wait too long out at sea, they can start charging Rio Tinto by the hour. They can also do this if it takes too long at the dock – so obviously the company tries to ensure processes run as smoothly as possible.
– Part of the expansion process is building a second jetty. This has been underway for about 2 yrs now and we saw it looked about halfway finished still. It will be. Able to load the same capacity.
It was very interesting learning all about this part of Australia’s iron ore industry.
The tour then took us back to Cossack which was actually the site of the first port in this region, back in 186?. Cossack was also the original site of the pearl diving industry, along with Eighty Mile Beach, before it started in Broome. It was the largest port between Darwin and Perth in its heyday. There was also a short mining boom in the area. (It was actually the site where the biggest nugget of alluvial gold was found in Australia). However, it was only a significant sized town for 40 yrs. Repetitive silting up of the inlet meant the port was eventually moved to Point Samson. When the gold ran out too, the town quickly declined. It is now a ghost town and only has a cafe, museum and accomodation in the old stone buildings. Only the caretaker and his wife actually live there. Interestingly though, Cossack is the location for one of the nation’s best known regional art competitions – regional artists from all over the country ( and the world) send their art here for the competition in August – and thousands of visitors come to the area. I’m glad it wasn’t that busy when we were there. We had lunch at the cafe at Cossack ( we had had to put our orders in that morning). It was nice to have a change from taking our own lunch. We had an hour all up to have lunch and look around at the old buildings there – a jail, a courthouse amongst others.
Then the bus drove us to the lookout above Settler’s Beach. We had a good view of the area all around and saw some whales breaching way out to sea.
Then it was back to Roebourne and back to the visitor’s centre. They had free tea and coffee there so we had a cuppa and a bit more of a look around the centre.
Then we drove the half hour back to Karratha, stopping at the shops before we got back to the van park for a box of icecreams from Woolies. We had a nice treat, then the kids had a swim back at the van park, then it was time for the usual shower, dinner and bed routine, discussing plans for the next day over dinner.