Day 41: Rest day

July 6, 2022

During the night I heard many trains. They are carrying iron ore to the port to be shipped overseas.

These are the iron ore train containers.

I later found out these trains are 3kms long. 45 of them come to the port each 24 hours. This explained the never ending noise during the night.

It is a very busy port.

The shipping list is updated daily at the information centre.

POB = Pilot on board. A helicopter flies the pilot out to each ship to park it in the port.

I went to the post office and collected a couple maps Serena had sent me. These maps will get me to Perth.

I had a healthy lunch at a pub. It felt good to eat some vegetables.

In the afternoon I went on a tour to see how Rio Tinto Dampier make salt ($50). Simply, they just evaporate sea water.

Harvesting the raw salt to be taken to the cleaning plant.

The salt isn't used for food. It's a high grade salt that is used in manufacturing for things like hydrogen gas, sodium hydroxide, and chlorine.

Loading clean salt onto a truck to be taken to the port.

After the salt tour, I did a tour of the port ($55). We were driven around the various parts of the port while the driver explained stuff.

The port is the world's largest bulk export port. There were many big trains, machines, 500kms of conveyor belts, and big ships.

I think he also said it was the world's largest tug boat fleet. There were many big statements.

There are 20 shipping berths and they are building two more. It takes 24-36 hours to fill a ship with iron ore.

Everything was on a behemoth scale. There are billions and billions of dollars leaving this port every year.

There can be 40-60 of these ships waiting for their turn to come in from offshore.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It creates money and jobs but there must be a lot of irreparable destruction happening at the mine sites.

I had a late dinner and a couple bevos to give me courage to ride back to the camp site in the dark.

Now that I've been on the road for a while, I get the occasional greeting from people who have seen me in another town. They come up and say where they've seen me and ask about my latest travels. It's nice. It feels like a big family out here.

Today's ride: 36 km (22 miles)
Total: 2,372 km (1,473 miles)

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