Dampier is only 20 km from Karratha, right on the coast. As the name suggests, it was named after William Dampier who first sighted this region of the Australian coast in 1688. Dampier is a small seaside town. It has a marina which houses all the boats that head towards the islands of the Dampier Archipelago. There are 42 islands in this conglomerate. There is also another iron ore processing plant here, and one on East Intercourse Island, just off Dampier coastline. A stone causeway has been built across to the island. There is also salt pans and a salt processing plant near Dampier. Besides all of that, Dampier is also the home of Red Dog ( as immortalized in the movie) – he is also known as the Pilbara Wanderer. There is a monument at the entrance of the town. We drove around Dampier and got out at the lookout.
The Burrup Peninsula stretches north from Dampier. About halfway up the peninsula is the huge North West Shelf Gas project. This was set up about 40 yrs ago (about the same time as the iron ore mining). At the time, it was one of the biggest resources projects undertaken by the Australian Government. Production from this facility accounts for about 1% of the country’s GDP. We went in to the visitor’s centre which overlooks the facility. It was a very informative visitor’s centre and they had a kid’s quiz for the kids to do ( an older kids one and a younger kids one) with a reward at the end for finishing it. All the kids did one which hopefully helped them understand the information. They found it interesting seeing the pictures and models of the offshore platforms and learning that people live on those for up to 2 weeks at a time. There are currently 3 offshore platforms and the underwater pipe bringing the gas back to shore is 324km long. After the gas is processed and liquified at the plant, it is piped out to the waiting ships and loaded on, or piped to the storage tanks for domestic use.
After the gas plant we drove onto the eastern side of the peninsula to visit deep gorge. This is the site of the most prolific aboriginal rock art in Australia. There are around 40,000 individual rock engravings (petroglyphs) and etchings in the 100m of the gorge. We only saw a few of them because we somehow ended up walking along the wrong track – once we realised this, the kids were too hot and tired to walk the correct track, but we had seen some of the etchings at least.
After this we had planned to drive to Hearsons Cove on the peninsula to have a swim. It was only about 2 km down the road from Deep Gorge. However, once again we were caught out by being there at the wrong time for the tide. It was low tide and the water was quite far out. We checked the map and decided to drive a bit further north up the peninsula to see what the bays up there were like. They wasn’t a sandy beach, but there was an area that had some water without rocks around it. The kids had a bit of a swim here to cool off.
Then we headed back to Karratha to the van park. We had a bit of down time while the younger girls played on the playground next to the van. Then Sam and I went to the shops. Sam needed new runner shoes which we were hoping to buy here. But there wasn’t anything suitable. So then he had to stay with me to help me do the grocery shopping (much to his dislike – but he was good hearted about it). Lauren was cooking dinner tonight all on her own – she did chicken schnitzel burgers and did a great job. I was really tired tonight, so asked to go to bed straight after dinner – this helped a lot.