Nanutarra to Exmouth

I made an early start and was on their road by 7.30 am. Actually it was so cold there was no point in hanging about. It was lovely to have the road to myself for the first hour as I drove along with the sun over my right shoulder. Then all the road trains started thundering along: they are allowed to travel at 100 kph.

My plan was to have breakfast at Fortescue Roadhouse, which was 1.5 hours down the road. When I got there it was all fenced off and boarded up. What a disappointment! I pulled off the road in a lay-by just afterwards and drank some coffee from my flask. This was my view over the spinifex grass:

This is the area where ironstone is everywhere. You pick up a pebble and it is twice as heavy as you would expect. It’s the black layer of iron ore running through it:

I arrived in Dampier at 11.00 am. At the Mermaid Hotel, they had finished serving breakfast and lunch would start in half an hour. So I sat down in their large open air dining room and concocted lunch from my own supplies, including a box of salad from Nanutarra. There was a beautiful view over the bay:

I had come to Dampier in order to visit the Burrup Peninsula. I wanted to see the ancient petroglyphs, the ancient rock carvings which have been in the news lately. It is claimed that the pollution from Woodside’s Northwest Shelf operations is affecting the carvings. I drove down the road to Hearson’s Cove and sat in the shade enjoying the cool breeze for a while. It was really the wrong time of day to go exploring among the rocks. Suddenly a bus arrived and I thought they were on a tour of the petroglyphs. It turned out it was a group of Woodside workers out for a picnic, so I asked them where to go.

I followed the sign to where a special walkway has been constructed to enable viewing of the petroglyphs:

The interpretive boards were full of information, but it was the wrong time of day to linger (mad dogs and Englishmen…)

This is one of Woodside’s LNG plants just across the road:

There are many more in the area. The debate is still going on, since Woodside has just been given the go-ahead to extend the life of its project till the 2070’s.