I was up early as expected, just on daybreak, because today would be a reasonably long ride in the heat. There was nothing from here to Port Hedland which was my goal for the day.

Here is Jim and his Moto Guzzi Vindicator and the trailer behind him packing up

And here is one of Lesley taking a photo of my bike 🙂

It was a wide open land so I put on some speed

It was warming up quickly so I stopped in the only piece of shade I could find, very sparse out here, no cover at all.

I kept spotting these trees that were covered in this weed; it looked like strangler type weed because I had also seen dead trees covered in dead weed. This one was still alive for the moment.

This was when I started to get a tad worried, my fuel was being chewed up because of my speed and the ferocious headwind. I had not really paid much attention to the next fuel stop; bad mistake on my part, it turned out this leg was 330km with no fuel. Easy to do, if I had not pushed hard to start with, so now I had to slow down. The funny thing was I had been following this BP triple tanker fuel truck, but no way to get fuel off him. That is him, the right hand white dot, the other is a caravan which I was not able to pass as I was down to 90kmh, LOL!

But, no worries, I eventually arrived at Sandfire where I fuelled up with 21.35l, the closest to empty I have ever been

This place is aptly named, the roadhouse had had a fire prior to Christmas and burnt to the ground, now the place was just a donga with fuel pumps. Onwards again and saw another fire, this time a wildfire on a large front, but nowhere near the road, so probably not man made. The next stop was Pardoo Roadhouse; once again I was low on fuel because of the headwind but only 300km this time, so I had more spare. I had some lunch here and a fair break because of the heat and fatigue.

There was a nearly dry river

And some strange landscape

I had also been seeing all these signs pointing somewhere but they seemed to be designed for midgets, either that or they were installed by midgets without ladders, buggered if I know what they are for but maybe something to do with the railway line out that way.

I eventually arrived in Port Hedland and had to wait for a train, it was over 2km long of empty wagons that normally cart iron ore. Apparently this mine has the record for the longest train of 7.2km and over 690 wagons!

The only caravan park that was near town, in fact right on the beach was very pricey at $39/night but I figured what the heck, the Stairway was on right there tonight, maybe I can get better photos. The other 2 parks were way way out of town nowhere near shops which is useless for me. Anyway, I set up on this stupid sandy spot covered in net. It was blowing its ring out and the pegs had nothing to grip into 😦 Lucky I had a heavy bag to stop it blowing away. Not very impressed with this Big 4 park, especially as the camp kitchen had everything except shelter from the wind, just open all sides!

Never mind. Put some washing on then had to go buy some pegs and bought some beer as well. Had a good feed before wandering down to the beach access pathway and set my camera up on a fence post. I used the tripod and decided to try some different things to get better photos; otherwise I would search the net and blatantly rip one off 🙂
Anyway, I took heaps and this is the best I can do with my limited skill and the point and shoot camera I am using

And this photo shows the whole of the industrial aspect of the port, similar to Gladstone, light up like a Christmas tree 🙂

I had a few more beers back at the camp and chatted with a couple of Irish travellers, Owen and Debbie, I think, before crashing out.

Day – 647km
Trip – 8921km
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