Tom Price to the Coast, Western Australia.

Leaving Karijini we headed to Tom Price for the night. With so many walks closed and building projects going on in Karijini we are glad we couldn't stay there.

One of the things to see at Tom Price was 'the big mine truck' and just as we reached the edge of town we were guided into the pull over for the mine truck to let two other big mine trucks go past. Bonus.

First stop once in town was the info centre to book a Rio Tinto Iron Ore Mine tour for the following day. The tour was $35 for about 90 minutes. You'll have to check PetalliTravellers for the video of the tour (I relaxed in the van doing some sewing). There was no where to park the van, so we ended up phoning to book. We planned on staying at Tiger Eye Pool free camp but the road in was so chopped up it was too difficult to get there with the van so we headed back to the caravan park - $50 a night, and $10 extra person per night. It was an ok caravan park. Nothing fancy, and the only one in Tom Price. We loved the sunsets in Western Australia.

Tom Price is the highest town in Western Australia at 747m above sea level, and is located at the base of Mt. Nameless, also known as the Aboriginal name of Jarndunmunha - meaning the place of the rock wallabies. I guess no one asked if the mountain already had a name.

In the 1960's Thomas Moore Price, the vice president of the US steel company Kaiser Steel, convinced mining companies to appraise and mine this isolated area that he had appraised. He returned to the US and within hours of hearing of the rich iron ore deposit find, he suffered a fatal heart attack. The town is named in his honour. The town also has one of the oldest drive-ins in Australia. We were surprised that the town had a Coles supermarket, so we did another grocery top up.

We checked out of the van park just after 9am, parked out the front, unhitched, and the boys went on the tour. The Rio Tinto Iron Ore Mine site is one of the largest open cut mines in the world. They saw working trucks and crushing machines, water trucks, the workshop area and the lookout over the pit. Peter said the commentary was great, just too much information to take in, and that an information sheet would have been good. The SeaFaring info sheet in Port Hedland was a great idea, the mine tour needed something like that.

When they got back we had lunch and headed the long way to the coast. The long way because the short way road was closed, or so we were told. This road was the road we were on going to Tiger Eye Pool, and we would have gone 3/4 of the way along that road. Anyway, we had to go via Paraburdoo. Driving into town we came across this sculpture called 'Resilience', sculptured by Alex Micke and created from steel plate and shaped during a series of controlled blasts and from iron stone excavated locally. The sculpture weighs just under 9 tonnes.

The name Paraburdoo comes from the Aboriginal name Pirupardu meaning 'meat and feather'. This was another town built to support the mining industry and was established in 1972. Paraburdoo was also the birthplace of the famous 'Red Dog' who was born in the early 1970's and after the death of his owner in 1979, Red Dog hitch-hiked around Western Australia.

also has a big truck.

Continuing from Paraburdoo along the Nanuturra Road we pulled into a rest area for the night. Can't remember the name but even though it was still early in the afternoon, about 2.30ish, the main area with the toilet was full. Luck there was another section a little further away that we tucked into. Within an hour that area was also full but we had our own little section.

Again, the views were magnificent.