The Pilbara, part 1

6 April 2012 – It’s been a miserable night last night. Between the heat, the trucks engine noise, the mozzies, the dust, I hardly slept. What a place. Let’s get the hell out of here.

So my quest for coffee failed at well, since I didn’t bother cooking last night, I can’t make my own coffee this morning. Oh well, Big M and a couple of bananas for brekkie, and on da road again.
Another ghost town, this one is historical, so it does exist, but it’s more a life-size museum than an actual village. Cossack is a small town on the coast, no one lives there anymore, only museum and aboriginal artifacts. It used to be a pearl industry center, but in the first part of the 19th century, pearl industry moved to Broome and the area followed the gold rush. Cossack declined then died around 1940.
No coffee shop there either 🙂

I pass road trains on my way to Port Hedland, here they have four trailers, where anywhere else they’re limited to three. So imagine a truck, with about 30 axles, each has four wheels (two on each side)… That’s how many wheels these road trains have. Insane. And they all drive as fast as any other car, so to overtake one, make sure there’s plenty of room ahead.

Port Hedland is as exciting as Karratha so I push on after a quick stop at Coles. And I arrive mid-afternoon at Cape Kerauden. The rangers show me the map of the range and let me chose my campsite, next to the beach. There has been a saltie spotted a few times though, so I don’t swim for very long. Just enough to cool down.

The sky is heavy with dark clouds and I can see the lightning on the horizon. It’s beautiful, one side is bright red and orange with the sunset, the other side is black as ink with the clouds, and it’s all illuminated with these lightning. I need a faster camera.

Distance today: 479km, total: 9957km.