To Port Hedland…

I finally got the Australian flag fixed onto my luggage...!!

There would be no more lost video cameras in future...!! My rear camera was now facing forward in place of the one I had lost....

The few enjoyable days I was able to spend with my South African hosts in Broome, had come to an end… I’d had a marvelous time catching up on what was going on back in South Africa, re-acquainting myself with the offside rules of rugby, and of course, speaking one of my favourite languages, Afrikaans…!!

Coenie and Rene had gone out of their way to make my stay at their home as comfortable as was possible, and from the outset, I had been made to feel “at home”, and part of the family…

Being called “Oom”, (Uncle…) by their daughters Siobahn and Nicole, only added to the closeness I felt for this family…

They gathered around the bike to wish me well on my ride down to Perth… After another round of hugs and kisses, I was ready to hit the road, having made yet another set of good friends that would become a part of my ride around around the world…!!

Coenie and Rene Human dished out good old fashioned South African hospitality by the bucket-full...!!

Nicole and Siobahn were also there to see me off... "Tot siens, Oom...!! Veilig ry...!!"

A light mist had descended over the town, and Coenie suggested that I wait until after 8.00 am before setting off… I stood out on their patio after the Human family had all left for work and school respectively, watching the street in front of their home slowly swim into focus as the mist began to lift…

By 8.30am, I was itching to get going, as yet undecided as to where I would stop for the night, but wanting to cover as much distance as possible before dark…

The mist made for a cool start to the day's ride...

Still no fences...??

My first fuel stop would be at Sandfire, a roadhouse a full tank’s ride down the Great Northern Highway.

A sea of emptiness...!! In the first hour, I saw barely a handful of vehicles...!!

Once the hot desert sun had melted away the mist, I could see for miles ahead…. Literally…!! The countryside here was as flat as the proverbial pancake…!!

Endless vistas of waving yellow grass, dried out by the relentless sun, was all that I saw for hours on end…

I scanned the horizons ahead and to either side of me, hoping to find something to focus my attention on, if only for a few minutes to alleviate the boredom…!!

Being able to see so far ahead, I figured I would easily pick up an ambush by traffic control officers, so threw caution to the wind and wound the throttle to the 130 km/h mark and let the Big Fella eat up the ground to Sandfire… We took just two and a half hours to ride the 320-odd kilometres from Broome to this “middle-of-nowhere” fuel stop, and arrived just before 11.00am…

This snow-white Peacock was one of a large flock that wandered around the convenience store at Sandfire...

I turned off the highway and bumped my way over the hard packed red earth and stopped under the sheltered pump area…

The usual crowd of “Gray Nomads”(the collective name for retired couples who had purchased a caravan or camper van, and spent their lives touring the Outback for months and even years on end…) were parked in the open area surrounding the pumps…

Half a dozen road trains were also parked there, their drivers gathered together in a group, presumably discussing how many Wallabies they had managed to annihilate on the way to Sandfire…!!

Wallaby carcasses had littered the roadside all the way from Darwin, the smell of their rotting bodies usually drifting into my helmet on the wind, long before I actually came across them…

I had scattered many flocks of Crows and Whistling Kites as I rode across the barren landscape, on occasion almost colliding with them as they lifted off the road in front of me…

I had batted one away from my face as he zig-zagged in front of the bike and came over my handlebars a few kilometres outside Broome earlier that same morning…!! Had I not fended the damn bird off at the last second, I am pretty sure I would have ended up with a mouth full of feathers, not to mention a possible “coming to earth”…!!

I bought a few bottles of water and then wandered around taking photos of the flock of Peacocks that this particular roadhouse was famous for…

These birds were very tame, and even jumped up onto the tables people were eating at, to try and peck at any food left unattended…!!

I watched a large lizard dash about scooping up ants and other insects, and ambled closer to get a better look at him… Completely unconcerned by my presence, he continued to enjoy his early lunch, and even took a small beetle off my boot as I tried to get a decent photo of him…!!

I met a pair of French backpackers, who were driving a small van from Darwin to Perth, and we sat chatting for longer than I had intended to stop at Sandfire, but exchanging ideas and experiences with fellow travelers was always a pleasure for me, so while we sat drinking our water and munching on sandwiches, I made the decision to ride only as far as Port Hedland, a further 300-odd kilometres down the drag, rather than attempt to get to Wickham, which was more than 500 kilometres to the south of where I was sitting…!!

"That a beetle on your boot, Mate...?? Don't mind if I do...!!"....

I hit the road prepared myself for another stretch of mind-numbing riding… My friends in Broome had warned me that the next few days riding would be like watching paint dry, and they were dead right…!!

The scenery changed very little over the next few hours, flat scrubland with the occasional stunted tree to break the monotony…

Long straights made things even worse, and I let my mind drift away to faraway places I had been to, and still other faraway places I had yet to get to…I did a few mental calculations regarding the distances to Perth, and tried to figure where the best place to spend a quiet day would be, before I rode into Perth on Thursday night…

I wanted to get at least two good rides under my belt before taking a break, and to while away the boredom, I set my throttle control to the 120 km/h mark and then fiddled about with the GPS, plugging in place names and checking on the mileages between them…

That got me through half an hour perhaps, and then I went back to staring at the empty countryside I was riding through…

not a heck of a lot to see out here...!!

I began passing road trains that were either carrying loads of minerals or tankers of petroleum and diesel… I noticed that the colour of the earth was changing from a bright red, to a deeper and darker colour, which reminded me of the soil in the Thabazimbi area of our own North West Province back in South Africa…

Roadsigns depicting the turn-offs to various mines became commonplace, and I soon realised that I was in Iron Ore country…!!

The highway went through Pardoo and De Grey, small communities that sat on the banks of dry creeks, and as I passed through Pippingarra, the heavy mining trucks carrying equipment and ore became commonplace…

The town of South Hedland sat on the crossroads that either took one to Port Hedland itself, or led further south, and seeing that I needed to refuel anyway, I turned right and rode towards the line of building I could see on the horizon, that represented some form of civilization at least…!!

The Pier Hotel looked as though it had been built from old shipping containers...!!

Port Hedland was a dreary looking place to say the least… Everything seemed to be coated in a fine layer of deep red dust, and as I got closer to the centre of town, I saw huge ore stackers that were loading three ore carriers docked in the small harbour…

The first hotel I stopped at was asking a mere $380 for the night…!! It was probably the best place in town, and at that price, I figured you would have free internet etc…!! Wrong…!! Internet was an optional extra which would be charged for…!! Shaking my head at the craziness of it, I walked out into the bright afternoon sunshine and began asking passersby if there was any other accommodation to be had nearby…

“You could try the Pier Hotel around the corner…!!” one guy said, “It’s probably the cheapest you are going to find out here…!! We have a population of 15 000 people here in Port Hedland, and another 15 000 visitors daily…!! It’s the mines you see…!! People fly in and out of here for meetings and business reasons, and then get out just as quickly…!!” he continued…

And I could certainly see why…!! Apart from the riches that the earth was giving up in this area, there seemed very little else to recommend the town as anything but an overnight stop… If of course you happened to be very desperate…!!

Yeah, right...!! From what I could see, none of the rules were being enforced, and by the look of the clientele, I would not want to be the manager foolhardy enough to try...!!

The Pier Hotel was one of those “rough and ready” joints, painted the same colour as the dust that blew over the place from the harbour situated directly across the road… A very large bar and open eating area took up most of the courtyard that the hotel was built around…

The front part seemed to be made from shipping containers, while the rooms at the rear were breeze-blocks cells that contained two single beds and very little else…!!

My cell in Port Hedland...

And the cost of all this extravagance…?? A “cheap and cheerful” $150 a night…!! Breakfast optional, and internet non-existent…!!

I spent a long and hot afternoon in my room, sorting through photos and downloading video footage from the day’s ride… Then I went foraging in the streets above the hotel, looking for a restaurant to eat at…

The two that were there were both closed, so I settled for a fistful of chocolate bars, a few bottles of water, and a beef pie that left my stomach doing flic-flacs for the remainder of the evening…!!

A commotion out in the courtyard drew my attention later that evening, and from the metal walkway in front of my room, I peered through the gloom to see what was happening…!! At first I thought that a movie was being filmed there, which included a mass brawl…!!

But there were no cameras on tripods in the corners, no lighting technicians moving their equipment around, and certainly no directors shouting things like “Action…!!” or “Cut…!!”

No…this was just a normal Monday evening brawl between about 20 of the patrons in the bar…!! Half of them were dressed in “Footie” kit, and must have been a team touring through the area, and the rest were the typical hard-bitten miner types, out to show the athletes how hard they could punch…!!

From my room on the upper floor, I had wonderful views of the crushing plant across the road, and the noise of the crushers that continued throughout the night, rounded things off very nicely...!!

I watched in fascination as one guy was knocked clean over one of the picnic tables, scattering beer bottles and glasses alike, while another took a kick to the solar plexus which put him down on the ground for the remainder of the festivities… For the rest, it was more a pushing, pulling, wrestling match that saw a few small groups rolling around on the concrete floor of the courtyard…!!

I figured that this might not be the best time to wander down and order a beer, and after making sure that the action was not getting any closer to where the Big Fella was parked, went back into my room to try and get some sleep…

Strangers in Port Hedland were far better off tucked into bed, than making eye contact with locals out on the piss…!!

©GBWT 2011