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| Mining Town of Tom Price from Mount Nameless |
I was going through parts of my journal and came across some beautiful photographs I had forgotten about. They were taken in the Fortescue of the beautiful Hamersley Range and a massive, lovely cone-shaped hill of Rio Tinto Gorge. the Hamersley Range is really spectacular with its range of colours, depending on the position of the sun.
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Within the Hamersley Range at Tom price. Taken from the
top of Mount Nameless |
When I took these photos, grey-haired and 55, I was on my field trips in the North West of our large state of Western Australia, one in 1996 and the other 1997. As I was pursuing a doctoral degree, it meant visiting everything, interviewing people and photographing everything. Iron ore mine was the dominant production in the North West, with Mount Tom Price the leader. I interviewed the manager of the mine 'Where was that iron ore going to and what was it made into?' I knew that in the past iron ore was used for vehicle engines, our wood stoves, cookware for both indoor and outdoor, machinery for a variety of industries and so on. Antique cast iron cookware has lately become popular. Some fencing products are made from cast iron, and some machinery and piping. This I knew before I ventured the million dollar question. His answer stunned me. He thought I was a grey-haired old dame that could be bamboozled into thinking they were doing great things and I wouldn't understand! But I knew differently. Billions of tons of the stuff were shifted daily by massive trains over a kilometre long, snaking their way across the dry, spinifex landscape to the isolated but very busy ports on the coast.
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| Hamersley Range from Mount Nameless |
I knew that the old iron ore was antique and that the new iron ore, mixed with alloys, made fencing, piping, machinery parts and so forth. So what did this manager of this huge mine have to tell me, anything different? 'Why, haven't you seen that giant carrier berthed at Port Hedland?' he asked. 'Our iron ore goes to Japan in these carriers and builds even bigger ones.' Guess my eyebrows rose at that reply, for I had hoped to receive something more technical. I replied 'so the iron ore has gone to Japan to build the big carriers that cart more iron ore to build even bigger ones of gigantic proportions?
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| The giant carrier berthed at Port Hedland |
' 'Yes!' said this twit enthusiastically. I think I left that office a very unpopular woman, for I made my final remark: 'Well, isn't that rather a Catch 22 situation?' My poor Hamersley Ranges were suffering to build these giant
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| Entrance to Rio Tinto Gorge |
ships was the way he put it, never mind about anything else. Come on iron ore magnates, what are you doing with our beautiful country of Western Australia? Look at the most interesting design of the cone-shaped hill at the entrance to Rio Tinto Gorge, which is another entry to Tom price from the Great Northern Highway. And on the coastal highway we have the interesting cut in the landscape of Wunjina Gorge. After all, these beauties exist within a very harsh and inhospitable environment where the sun bakes the countryside in extremely high temperatures every year and cyclonic gale force winds at periodical intervals scream across the landscape uprooting trees, demolishing scattered properties, and leaving behind sometimes devastating floods, but bringing the most welcome rain. Let's care for our strange but beautiful land.
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| Wunjina Gorge |
