Day 85 – Another Day, Another Day (and $400) Wasted.

While the gang of trucks that we parked next to last night offered us some protection should anyone care to complain about us parking overnight in a day-use only area, the negative was being woken up at 5AM when some of them started up their engines. But, I did plan to get up early anyway and try to take some sunrise photos down by the water. It’s the first time (I think) that we’ve been by the coast for a sunrise over the sea, so I tried to make the most of it.

I’m fairly confident in saying that I’m not going to be quitting my day job (the one that I’ll be back doing once this jaunt finishes) any time soon, but it was fun running around in the near dark with my camera gear and that was good enough a reason to be awake.

I don’t know how we missed this yesterday on the drive in, but this morning we saw this behemoth from nearly a kilometre away. I know it’s such a boy thing, but just looking at the scale of these trucks blows my mind. And, it’s not just the size, there was a plaque that gave information about this truck, and in its service life, it operated for 60,000 hours, travelled 1,200,000km and hauled 40,000,000 tonnes! As bad as I know mining can be for the environment, the little boy inside me gets incredibly impressed by the enormity of the machines and the complexity of the logistics that are used.

Roebourne, for whatever reason, has lots of really cool old buildings, including the old prison that has been converted to a museum (with more brutal facts about the way aboriginal people were treated), a neat old church (built in 1895), and several others.

Arrived in Karratha around 11AM, which was much later than I’d hoped (but, we had fun with the little side trips). Was lucky enough to find some shade in a car park near an auto electrician and a shopping centre, so went about removing the alternator for the auto electrician to replace the worn bearings. It wasn’t a difficult job, taking about 30 minutes to remove the alternator (and everything else that had to be moved first). I dropped it and the bearings to them, and killed some time at the shopping centre across the road.

First I had to buy another pair of thongs – fourth pair purchased on this trip. Also, I can’t believe how cheap Target/K-Mart can be… I bought a nice pair of board shorts for $7! SEVEN DOLLARS! I paid more than that for a second hand pair in Broome. I also bought some long sleeved shirts from K-Mart, one cost $2, the other (which was slightly nicer) cost $5. Plus, $7 for another three pairs of underwear. Oh, and Risa was craving McDonalds (don’t ask me why), so I humoured her and we went there for lunch, only to find that they have two-for-one Tuesdays! Today was the day of bargains!

Until the mechanic finally finished with the alternator (4:30PM) and gave me the bad news that the regulator/rectifier was dead, and we required a new alternator… I was devastated. On the plus side, at least it was discovered before I destroyed the batteries and the ECU, too.

I was starting to have visions of us being stuck in Karratha and wasting even more time here… but, to my surprise, he had a replacement one ready for me within 10 minutes! $360, which is an alright price for a brand new (non OEM) alternator, but it’s still a whole lot of money that I’d rather not have had to spend. By the time I’d installed the new alternator (and screwed around with the fuses that I blew, and replaced the connector lug that broke) the sun had set and it was starting to get dark.

The closest rest area that we could see in Camps 7 was a ‘day-use’ area in Dampier, so we thought we’d try our chances again. As we were driving from Karratha towards Dampier, we saw (an amazing sunset, and) what we thought were flames on top of chimneys. It wasn’t until we’d gotten near our ‘campsite’ that we realised just how large this gasworks area was! The flames were ENORMOUS! The refinery (at least that’s what I think it is?) looked like a huge cruise ship all lit up at night. I tried taking a few photos… but it was a little dangerous on the side of the road with all the road-trains flying past to set up a tripod and a telephoto lens – I think you get the point though, it was pretty freaking huge.

Campsite ended up being only a few kilometre from these enormous fires, so now as I sit here and type this, I can see these two enormous fires out of the corner of my eyes – good thing we have a curtain for the front window!

８５日目　８月　６日 (火)   デリちゃんまたもや修理。。。。

良かったー。　昨日は難なくキャンプ禁止地で車泊できました☆　まだ暗い朝方に大きなトラックが出発して目が覚めたのと、朝日の写真をとるのに何度も起きてチェックしているロスくんの気配であまり良い眠りでは、なかったけど。。。

朝は、この小さな町   Roebourneのクイック探検。

まずは、道脇にどどーーんと展示されている超巨大重機！！

鉱山で使用されているトラック。　タイヤの大きさだけども４m以上はあります。
デリちゃんと比べてみると、デリちゃんが小さな模型車のよう。。。

これでも１９９３年に引退したものなので、現在使われているものは、当然これよりさらに大きいのかと思うと恐ろしい！！

次に、古い刑務所のミュージアムに行ってきました。

この建物,刑務所だけど、イギリスの田舎町に建ってそうな、とてもかわいらしい外見をしています。

中の大きさは、刑務所というにはとても小さく、大きめの４ベッドルームくらいのサイズでした。

建設当初は、１４人ほどのみ収容されていたようですが、アボリジニの人々が奴隷として収容されていたピーク時には、なんと９０人程が収容され、外で就寝していた人々もいたようです。

ミュージアムの外には、この辺りでとれる様々な岩の展示がありました。（岩が地面に並び、名前があるだけですが。）
岩ってほんとうに色んな種類もあるし、色、表面の質感、とても個性的です。

その次は、かなり古い教会と、古い民家。　民家はすでにかなり大破していますが、なかなか味があっていい感じです。

今までクイーンズランド州や、ノーザンテリトリーで見て来た古い建物は、ほぼ木造もしくは、トタンだったので、石作りの建物を見る事ができたのは新鮮で、少し不思議でした。

Roebournenoの町探検のあとは、Karrathaという町へ行きました。

Broomeの町で治そうとしていたデリちゃんの故障部分。

幸いにもすぐ隣がショッピングモールだったので、そこで時間をつぶしていました。

なんだかんだで、時間がかかり、さらに部品交換だけで済むと言われていたのに、実は、そのものが壊れていたらしく、大きな部品丸ごと交換に。

＄４００、、、、、

まじで泣きたくなりました。　　勘弁してくれよデリちゃん、、、

しかも外は、既に暗いし。

予定では、今日のうちに隣町のDampier 観光もするよていだったけど、今日は、キャンプ地に移動するのみで終了。

暗くてよく見えなかったけど、この町は世界一の塩の精製所らしく、そのプールらしきものにキレイな夕日の最後の色が反射していてとてもきれいでした。
そして、ずっと遠くから見えていた大きな煙突からでている炎。　これは、ガスの精製所のもので、炎の大きさは、おそらく１０〜１５mくらい！！

その煙突の周りの工場の明かりが巨大な豪華客船のようで、なんだかテーマパークのよう。。。　おそらく日中にはかなり汚い、機械的な見た目をしてるのだろうけど、このキャンプ地からはかなり近いので、ごうごうと燃える音が聞こえます。（遠くのジェット機のエンジン音みたいな）

この辺りは、こんな工業地帯もあるけど、なかなか景色がきれいな場所だと聞いているので、明日の探検が楽しみです。