Day 46 Thursday 28th July

Day 46 Thursday 28th July

We all decided to drive into the centre of Karratha and check out the main shopping mall, this morning. Karratha has grown so much over the past 16 years. It has a few high rise buildings and a very large modern, shopping mall. There are many new housing developments all around us and this seems the trend here despite the downturn in the mining industry. After lunch we all drove out to the Woodside North West Shelf project(natural gas) area's visitors centre. Rob and I had been here many years ago and really enjoyed it. We were the only people in the centre to start with and were well and truly looked after by the lovely young woman looking after the centre. It was free and we were treated to a 15 minute video explaining the development of the natural gas industry here and also about how the gas is mined off shored, treated and sent either overseas in ships or down to Perth via a pipeline. We were given i-pads which we could hold up to the windows and point in different directions over the huge plant and the ipad would tell you all about that particular part of the plant. There were many other displays that we enjoyed too but the best part was when we were offered food..... There had been a seminar in the complex and there was a whole lot of food left over. The young woman offered it to us rather than throw it out. Despite having lunch we all managed to put away wraps, cheeses and biscuits, fruit, cheesecakes etc. We were really happy when some other people arrived at the visitor centre to eat some of the food! After this we drove down to the end of the Burrup Peninsula and Paul tried a bit of fishing but lost his lures in the rocks. We all drove to Deep Gorge where we went for a short walk to see some Aboriginal paintings on the rocks. We also drove to Dampier to see the famous statue of Red Dog and also the Port and Rio-Tinto port operations.