Tom Price

Tom Price is an 'interesting' town. Sitting at the botton of Mt Nameless, which the Indigenous people point out is not nameless at all but had a name for thousands of years before we came along ... the town is named after a mate of Lang Hancock's who died before seeing plans for mining iron ore here come to fruition. There's not a lot to do here, but we went for a walk late afternoon up to the base of said Mt Nameless, which in the King of the Mountain last year someone ascended in a little over 18 minutes.... as I said we made it to the base but big sooky la-la that I am I piked and so Michael reluctantly didn't make the ascent (which at this time would have been in the dark!). We stopped and chatted to some others at the top of the first really steep bit, and they pointed out the 8 foot long olive python we had possibly just stumbled past!!!
However we watched the sun set and walked back to the camper.
Next morning v. lazy, doing washing, sudoko and reading. Exhausting but someone has to do it!

Early afternoon we went along for the mine tour of Tim Price mining operations (Rio Tinto). This is an operation on a giant scale - everything is huge. We can only remember a few of the amazing stats.

The trucks hold about 200 tonnes of iron ore each. The fuel 'economy' is about 20 litres per kilometre - yes you read that right!! They hold about 560 l of oil, roughly the same in water, and petrol we think about 800 litres. Ye gods,
They have 3 fire retardant canisters that engulf the tuck in foam if they catch fire.
The tyres cost about $100,000 each and they prefer women drivers because they are more gentle on the trucks !! HA!
The drivers work 12.5 hour days, 3 on, 3 off, earn about $100K a year with subsided everything and airfares to Perth 3 times a year. Some of the executives don't want to live here, these guys are refwrred to as FIFO - fly in fly out - which explains the derogatory stubby holders we've seen that say "FIFO - fit in or fuck off"!!! LOL
Trains - 230 carriages each carrying 116 tonnes of iron ore - about $5 million in every train load and there are 28 trains on the system 7 days per week. Train drivers earn about $150 - $180,000 per annum. Yes that is a lot! They do the run from here to Dampier in about 7 hours.
Tomorrow we are off back into Karajini to go to the other gorges that we missed out on due to their shitty roads.