Wednesday 29 August – Happy Birthday Janine, and have a good one!  And two more anniversaries today – it is one year since I got my new shape (and lost the odd kilo or three as a result), and it is 20 years today since we lost Grant.  It’s very hard to believe that he has now been gone longer than he was with us.

This morning started off like the others, though I did sleep a little later than I have been.  By nine o’clock we were in town at the Visitors Centre, where we paid for this morning’s mine tour, were issued our goggles and hard hats, and waited with 51 fellow passengers for departure time.  Our driver/guide was Baz, who filled us in on the Rio Tinto Mining Company, its amazing safety record (because no one is allowed on site without hard hat and goggles!!) and provided us with another bit of trivia – Rio Tinto is 51% owned by the Queen.  I guess she must get together with Gina for a cuppa whenever she is here in Aussie.

The tour was most informative, filled with lots of facts and figures, most of which have got jumbled together as you can’t take it all in, and the driver had to continually get permission to go to specific areas within the mine area.  We saw two of four brand new vehicles which are just about assembled, and the height of the wheels on one of them was higher than the windows in the bus.  They certainly are massive. 

 

One of the brand new trucks costing well over $1 million.

The only time we got out of the bus was at the lookout spot, but only once we had our goggles and hardhats on and our closed in footwear.  As the lookout was way out in the open overlooking the mine, I’m not sure what was going to drop onto our heads, but we were ready!! 

 Modelling the latest look in hard hat and goggles.

The scale of everything has to be seen to be believed, as we all know it is big, and have seen pictures of it, but once you see it you really get the picture.  The tour went for over an hour and a half, so we got an excellent overview of the whole operation.

Once back in town we got our supplies (mostly meat and veggies) for the next few days before going back to camp for lunch. We had to stay around close in, as sometime this afternoon the fellow who was going to service the car said he would ring to tell Grant when to bring it to be done.  It is now 3.30, so Grant will wait till 4 and then ring him if he hasn’t heard.

(Later)  Well Grant rang the fellow at 4 and asked if the part had arrived and he said it had (don’t know if he was going to call Grant as he said he would), so Grant took the car and had the service done.  I did some washing, read, sat around, etc, and now tea is over – left over pasta for me and snags and salad for Grant.

This afternoon the lady in the van next door – I think she said her name was Kay – came and asked us whether we happened to have a Nikon camera as she had left her charger at home and they particularly came here to go to Karijini National Park, and they are going on tomorrow’s tour, as we are.  She didn’t realise till today that she had left the charger home, and now may miss out on photos.  We couldn’t help her, but I did hear her asking another new arrival at the park later and they were able to help out, so she was lucky.  I did offer to send her copies of any photos we take, as a last resort, but now she’ll be able to take her own.

I forgot to mention that yesterday just as we were getting into Tom Price, we saw a bird we hadn’t seen before.  So once we got set up I got out our Birds of Australia book to try to identify it.  Well we have reached an impasse – I think it was a bittern, but Grant reckons it didn’t have green legs.  With the red dust that covers everything here, I don’t think you could ever be sure of any colour here, as everything has a lovely burnt orangey-red hue.  I haven’t had normal coloured feet since we hit central Australia – I won’t know what hit me when I get home and see their real colour again.  They’re fine when you get out of the shower, but by the time you get back to the van wearing your sandals or thongs, your feet are red again!!  Very few of the caravan parks have grass, but they ALL have bulldust, so what hope do you have?