A Week in Karratha

It’s been a quiet week in Karratha, but nice. Our sailing trip didn’t come off because it was too windy. I couldn’t believe it, but there you go! We took the lunch we’d packed to take sailing and drove out to Cossack-an historic town of beautiful old stone buildings that was the main port until ships got to big. It’s deserted now apart from a backpacker’s and an art gallery. We went to see the buildings and a big art exhibition that had started that day. There was over 350 paintings displayed in 4 buildings and some of them were really good. It’s apparently the biggest prize pool for an art exhibition in regional Australia.

After we’d visited Cossack we drove to the remote camping area of Cleaverville to eat our lunch before heading home.

Monday we took the tour of the Iron Ore Loading Facilities. I wouldn’t recommend it as a “must do”, but it was interesting enough and filled in a few hours. Our guide (who was doing her first tour) couldn’t work out all the zeros in the figures she was quoting, so it got a bit confusing at times. Part of the wharf is being extended and improved, so we couldn’t see that bit. The tour finished with a drive past the school and sporting facilities in town and still finished about 15 minutes early!

Today we did a bit of running around-doctor, chemist, optician, then did some 4WDing behind the caravan park to have a look up close at some of the wild flowers. It’s a good season here as they had a metre of rain in the last cyclone.

It’s been too windy to take the boat out, but Russ caught us a feed of fish off the beach last night-dinner tonight. Right now he's getting the boat ready to go up on the twin cab where I suspect it might stay until we get to Perth.

Tomorrow we will be in Port Hedland.

PS. The boat’s on!