23rd August
Newman to Karijini National Park
Newman is a modern mining town where Whaleback owned by BHP
Billiton is the mine. Stan and Carl had to get new tyres and couldn’t get them
until 1pm so the rest of us decided to do a mine tour. The visitor centre
donated by the mine was great, had a lot of interesting displays and info. and
a beautiful wild flower stained glass window.
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| Beautiful stained glass windows WA wildflowers |
We had to wear safety goggles, a vest and hard hat for the
tour in a bus!!!Got picked up at 9.30am and driven to Whaleback which is just
at the edge of the town. The mountain before mining use to resemble a humpback
whale shape from the air hence the name. Great explanation along the way to the
lookout over the whole mine. It is the largest single open cut mine in the
WORLD! The pit is 8kms long at the moment and is expected to continue mining
here until 2060. Everything is ENORMOUS. We looked down at the pit and huge
trucks looked like ants crawling everywhere. You can see the size of one of the
smallest trucks we are next to. They have bigger ones. Look closely in the mine
pic and you will see some. We had a group picture in one of the shovels.
Everything is ENORMOUS!!!!!except me!
Had lunch just out of town and headed off to Karijini National Park. All bitumen and with about 40kms to go we got behind to road trains transporting two new dump trucks they were gigantic. They just cleared the white posts on the side of the road. Police escort and mine escort as well.
Arrived at Karijini NP at about 2.30pm went to visitor
centre and got some info beautiful NP. I don’t think we have been here before
have to check my old diaries from 1989. Only had time to check out a couple of
lookouts over magnificent gorges and then off to Eco Retreat to set up camp for
the 3 nights.
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