Day 50- 29th May 2013 - Karijini Eco Resort – Tom Price
Didn’t have to get up in the dark this
morning which was good – We enjoyed a lovely cooked breakfast in the resort
before heading off. Walter offered to drive the dirt road section back to the
main road and I enjoyed being a passenger for the day.
Arrived in Tom Price at 9am in plenty of
time for the 10am open mine tour. Bob the tour guide was a ‘mine’ of information
and his dialogue was interesting and gave us a good summary of life in Tom
Price and the life of miners. About 800 are employed and many of these are FIFO
(fly in fly out) workers who work one week at a 12 hour day shift then one week of a 12 hour night shift
and then fly out for a week’s break. Miners here earn between $150,000 and
$180,000 per year. Bob was very cynical about the FIFOs as he believed they did
little to contribute to the Tom Price community. We were taken to the look-out
where we could see the enormous open cut mine and we watched as monster trucks
and diggers made their way around the site taking the iron ore (2 types are
mined here - lump ore and fine ore for various markets) to the treatment and
crushing plants. Huge stockpiles are kept to ensure that the quotas can be
fulfilled at all times. We were driven around the site and shown all the
processes involved in the treatment of the mined materials before the finished
iron ore product was loaded onto the 2.5 km long trains (each with an average
of 132 wagons) to transport to the port of Dampier where it would be exported
to various overseas countries.
Afterwards we found the caravan park and
spent the afternoon catching up on correspondence and updating our blog as yes
there was internet coverage here.
 |
| Observing mining in operation |
 |
| Monster trucks bringing the raw iron ore from the open mine |
 |
| Small child - gigantic digger |
 |
| part of the huge mining operations |
No comments:
Post a Comment