Wonderful Western Australian Wildflowers

We are very fortunate to be in WA at wildflower time and the Pilbara region is just a canvas of colour. Where ever we drive and walk, there are beautiful wildflowers adorning our journey. No need to say more – will let the pictures speak for themselves……..

Marble Bar - hottest town in Australia

13^th August

Don’t know why but I (Jo) had a hankering while we were in this part of the country to visit Marble Bar. A bit of back tracking and a roundabout way to get to where we were headed next but what the heck – we are on holidays and really not in any hurry.

Marble Bar sprang up as part of the gold rushes to the Pilbara in the late 1880’s and was named after the extraordinary colourful jasper bar that crosses the Coongan River just west of the town. A gold prospector mistook this jasper bar for marble and hence the name. We drove the 4km out of town to the Marble Bar Pool and Chinaman’s Pool to view this amazing mineral deposit. Fantastic colours and you can see how it was mistaken for marble back in the day.

Another claim to fame for Marble Bar is ‘the hottest town in Australia’. For 161 consecutive days leading up until 20^th April 1924, the temperature never dropped below 37.8 degrees Celsius and this record still stands today (listed in the Guinness Book of Records). Fortunately, it was a more pleasant temperature for our visit.

We were tricked into thinking  there was a café in town in the council buildings (beautiful old stone buildings) claiming to serve good food and ‘real coffee’ by some signs of the way in but on further investigation the café wasn’t due to open until Saturday and we weren’t keen to remain in Marble Bar to wait out the extra two days. Instead we drove up to the Water Tank Lookout and then headed out of town.

From Marble Bar we took the Hillside-Woodstock Road – a 130km dirt road which joins up to the Great Northern Highway. Wow – this took us through some of the most incredible countryside and made us really feel like we were in the Pilbara that we had imagined from reading about the area. The colours, rock formations and mountains are almost impossible to describe – some photos below may do it some justice but it really was a case of ‘you had to be there’. Saw our first Sturt Desert Pea in the wild along with an abundance of other wildflowers along the way which just added to the fantastic scenery. We finished our 3^rd audio book – Paper Towns, as we pulled into the Auski Roadhouse for the evening. A room here rather than camping to ensure an early get away tomorrow as we head into Karijini National Park.

Port Hedland and the Driver’s Licence Saga

12^th August

The drive from Pardoo Station to Port Hedland was only about 150km on good bitumen road so we rolled in there not long after lunch and booked a cabin at the Cooke Point Holiday Park. We hadn’t planned to come to Port Hedland however, as we were heading towards Broome, Stephen’s parents let us know that some mail had come for me from Roads and Maritime and it turned out my driver’s licence was going to expire at the end of August. This just wasn’t on my radar before we left but definitely something I needed to get sorted as given the amount of driving this trip entails we certainly need two current licences.

We found out online what needed to be done and completed all the paperwork complete with signed declaration of my identity and a passport photo and sent it off to Parkes, NSW (of all places!!). The only problem was where the new licence could be sent at a time that we might be in the same place at the same time. Fortunately, my good running friend’s daughter Kate is currently living in Port Hedland with her fiancé Dylan and after a few phone calls we sorted out that the licence could be sent to them. Timing was of the essence as we didn’t want to have to wait around too long but it could not have been more perfect as the licence arrived at Kate’s home the day before we arrived.

A bit of housekeeping in the afternoon – Stephen got a haircut, we refilled our gas bottle and did some grocery shopping then we took in the sights of the town. Port Hedland is one of the world’s largest and busiest harbours (300 million tonnes of product worth billions are shipped in and out of here each year) and bulk carrier vessels of up to 260,000 tonnes and up to 230m in length enter and leave through a narrow harbour entrance. A good vantage point for this is the town jetty and it was amazing to view the infrastructure in place for this work to occur. The scale of the place is incredible. At Redbank Bridge, we were able to see Dampier Salt’s towering stockpile and also some of the BHP Billiton trains (some of the longest in the world) which transport iron ore from the mines into the Port. Kate said that if you got to a railway crossing on your way to work just as a train was coming you would inevitably be late.

We met up with Kate and Dylan that night for a lovely dinner and sunset at the Ibis Hotel (and for the handover of the licence) and heard their stories about life in a remote town in the Pilbara. It was nice to catch up and we got to see the beautiful engagement ring before Kate’s parents. I did give a full report via FB.

And the moral of the story – check the expiry date on important documents before leaving home although the detour wasn’t a bad one.