Anyway so the 16th, hmmm lets see, well it was a very long day in the car, though did manage to get a lot of miles/kilometres, 611km, done and managed to end up in Port Hedland by the end of the day, which was not a bad effort I think, considering that the poor Count has been having a bit of clutch slip for a while now and it has just been getting worse. It usually only slips when trying to accelerate say between third and forth, so accelerate up in third, change to forth and try to push it to accelerate more and it will slip, but just let it cruise and it is fine and it doesn't slip at all going up hills etc. Lots of this today though,
So, continuing, Port Hedland, no matter which way you look at it there is no escaping that it is a mining centred town and the evidence of it is everywhere, from the big mining companies sites to the huge ships and loading machines at the port and even the huge number of FIFO (fly in, fly out) mining villages of donga accommodation. Anyway found the way to the visitors centre at about 4:30 pm, just as they were getting ready to close up for the night, managed to fine that there were a couple of Van parks, but only one in Port Hedland and the others were at South Headland, back along the highway over the bridges (great and the clutch is slipping too!). The very nice lady gave me a map and pointed out the things that were highlights to see in Port Hedland, two of which were Pubs and one a Cafe, so over all not much to see really. I wandered about a bit in the "Heritage" area and had a look about, though didn't spend long as everything was closed up for the night and I had to go and find some accommodation in South Hedland, "just go past the salt" they say, before I ended up having to put the tent up in the dark.
Heritage area of Port Hedland is small and includes the Visitor's Centre
Main strip of the Heritage area leads up to the park and the "lookout"
Some of the view from the lookout in the park. The lookout is at road/town level so no panorama really.
More from the lookout
View from the park looking back along the main strip of the Heritage area
More views of the Heritage area
To be honest with you there is not a real lot to say about the place, I mean don't get me wrong, it seems to be a very nice and tidy place, it is a 2014 Tidy Towns entrant after all and it doesn't have a bad feeling about the place like some others. It's just what it is, maybe worth a visit in its own right, but not really for me. As for South Hedland, well it is like a suburb where most of the people live, it seems to be just a housing estate as they only had limited land in Port Hedland and had to build houses somewhere, there doesn't seem to be much happening there. Mind I was rather put off by the Van Park place I stayed at as they said to me on the phone that I could have a powered site for the tent, though when I get there they refused and said I had not told them I had a tent and that they don't permit tents to have powered sites, quite frankly it was a bit of a dump too, though perhaps it was the stench of the Van loo dump point that seemed to drift over the place. So as you can no doubt guess I wasn't too sad to leave for places new in the morning and not hang about.
Oh and the "just go past the salt" statement;
That is something else they do there too, just by the highway and next to one of the long bridges over to South Hedland.
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