We are now heading back to the coastal towns of Dampier and Karratha, I think they call Karratha a city. In some ways these two places are similar to Port Hedland. They are iron ore ports for Rio Tinto like Port Hedland is for BHP. Rio also has another export salt production operation here, similar to that in Port Hedland. The similarity ends there though as Dampier and Karratha look to be lively places with more diversified activity. But more about that later.

We have chosen to head for Karratha from Tom Price along the Rio Tinto private road beside the railway line. To do this you need a permit. Permits are not hard to get, you just have to sit through a 20 minute video on the dos and don’ts at the Visitor’s Centre. The video is a little dated we are told but the sentiments hold! It was one of those videos that sort of make it all sound a bit hard, risky etc.

The Visitor’s Centre people tell us that it is a better gravel road than the unsealed public one. So we decided to do it, as it turned out not a lot of others did!

Some great scenery along the route and some train encounters as well.

We only saw a couple of other vans and that was near the end and they were coming the other way. Mostly railroad maintenance people out on the job used this road.

It was a pretty good road all the way to where it joined the Red Dog Hwy which then took us to the outskirts of Karratha. Our problem was that we didn’t have a booking for a van park. Same old reason school holidays.

A big 24 hour Servo appeared in front of us and Allthego thought maybe they would let us stay out the back on their big concrete pad.

There were a couple of other vans there. Yes the attendant said no worries mate. Free too! Ambience was marginal. So we set up there for our two nights in Karratha.

As we were doing this a fellow nomad next to us pointed out that the back tyre on the truck was partly deflated. Allthego looked and he too became deflated. A flat. A bolt through the tread and thus a slow leak. Lucky we made it to the Servo, no idea where this happened. The spare came out and a quick change was completed. Found a repair place to take the tyre to the next day.

As we settled in for the night we realised we were just down the road from a railroad crossing. All through the night there were loud long train toots at the crossing. Endless! Got used to it after a while.

Through the evening a stream of big trucks also came to park near us as well, including two triple Bs with cattle on board. Thankfully, the cattle trucks eventually moved on to other places.

We have a day here to check out the Red Dog story and all the other action, the first stop in the morning will be the Visitors Centre.