Birthday in The Pilbarra

Sunday 22 August 2010 – my 60th Birthday. We are in the Pilbara in the north of Western Australia – one of the driest, hottest areas of the country famed for its blue skies and low rainfall. At dawn, on my birthday, we were awakened by the ominous sound of rain lashing the canvas – yes, the Rain Gods had tracked us down once again! Emerging from the tent we were faced with rain, a grey and overcast sky with not even a crack of blue to suggest things were going to improve – and it was COLD! Forgoing the opening of presents until my special birthday dinner that night, we packed up and headed off towards Newman for a place we had heard of called Kalgan Pool. I did however receive a special birthday breakfast – a cheese sandwich, artistically presented, with the crusts cut off to form the figure 60 all topped off with a musical candle which played “Happy Birthday” – such thoughtfulness.

Kalgan Pool was supposedly a “not-to-be-missed” destination, a deep pool of permanent water at the base of a sculptured cliff face, in a narrow valley surrounded by towering cliffs. It was one of the locations for that famous film “Japanese Story” starring Toni Collette (no, I hadn’t heard of it either!) what’s more you needed a permit to visit, which we had, so it was going to be a fairly quiet and select spot.

But first we needed to re-provision, especially to buy the steaks for my birthday dinner and this is when the next problem became apparent. Those of you who remember Inverness in the late 1960’s (and even Stornoway a few decades later) will recall that shopping for a loaf of bread was difficult enough – but fillet steak and salad – impossible! This is still the case in Newman – my birthday dinner was going to have to be sausages, potatoes and beans as most of the shops (and there weren’t very many of them) were shut. But looking on the bright side we did have a couple of bottles of bubbly and some cans of Guinness to supplement the usual XXXX Gold.

It was getting late so, with darkness only a couple of hours away we set off in convoy to Kalgan Pool, which was 40k down the obligatory dirt track. Then the next problem – a bang, a hiss and wobbly steering - one of the new tyres I had bought only last week in Broome was ripped apart. Wheel changed, we arrived at Kalgan with no time to admire the scenery – tents up in the rain and on with the birthday bangers and mash. We had a different but very memorable birthday party sheltering from the rain in the inner depths of the tent. Presents were of a practical nature and included a knife, a head torch, fly repellent and a new “pee bottle” to save trips outside during the night (Sandra had ruined the last one by disinfecting it with boiling water – it melted!) The evening was rounded off with a quiz night testing our knowledge of Australian wildlife. And thus were made memories.

The next day there was still no time to admire our surroundings as we had booked a mine tour for Monday morning and had to be packed up and on our way not long after dawn.

The BHP Billiton iron ore mine at Mount Whaleback is staggering – both in sheer size of the mine itself and the size of the machines in operation. It is the largest open-cut iron ore mine in the world – currently 5.5k long and 1.5k wide – and the seam has approximately 1.6 billion tonnes. It was called Mt Whaleback as apparently that is what the mountain originally looked like before mining started at which time it was 805 metres above sea level. However, it is now considerably lower and, at the end of its productive career, in about 60 years, it is likely to renamed Mt Stickleback! All tour visitors had to wear headgear and safety glasses - presumably to keep the sun off our heads and dust out of our eyes – this was totally unnecessary in our case as the clouds sorted out the sun and the rain kept down the dust – and it was still cold!
After a trip to the supermarket we set out for the strangely named town of Tom Price – another mining town. After a long drive in rather gloomy weather we couldn’t be bothered looking for another exotic campsite and opted for the Tom Price Caravan and Tourist Park. With the weather reminiscent of a wet day in Dingwall we set up our tents in the rain with the only positive thing to say about the place was the showers were hot.

The following day we decided to outrun the weather and headed for the coast a mere 525k away. As it rained most of the day being in the car was probably quite a good option – and then we hit paradise, although we didn’t know it at the time.

Ningaloo Station is a 50,000 hectare pastoral lease running alongside the ocean with, about 500m off shore, Ningaloo Reef providing shelter from the Indian Ocean rollers. The owners of the station allow camping and so, as darkness fell, we set up our tents in the dunes behind South Lefroy Bay. We have been to many beaches since coming to Australia and this was one of the best with pristine sand looking out over the turquoise waters of the lagoon, with waves pounding onto the reef a few hundreds metres away. We watched whales, dolphins and flying fish from our vantage point on the dunes, swam and snorkelled in the sea and generally relaxed. At sunset we sat on the dunes with a few beers to watch the sunset – fabulous.

At Ningaloo we saw plenty of Kangaroos and also our first wild emu. The other wildlife included goats, one of which got very “wild” with Sandra when she tried to take a photograph of its kid – the attached photo was taken about two seconds before Sandra got a good butting – serves her right!

Unfortunately all did not remain well in Paradise – Sandra came down with a tummy bug which knocked her for six and confined her to bed for most of the day. The good news is that she is now recovering – the bad news is that Johann has come down with the same thing. However, I can report that Stretch and I are fine. To avoid a repetition of this food poisoning episode, hygiene standards are being tightened up and, as I type, Sandra is boiling up the tea towels in an attempt to kills bugs and bacteria. I anticipate this new cleanliness regime will last for about two days!