Finally back on the road today with a 500k trip up to Port Hedland then east on the road to Broome.
The first part of the road north took us through the Karajini National Park again and through some outstanding natural landscapes. As we left the park the scenery changed completely from rugged outcrops forming large hills to a large plains area.
Traffic on the road to Port Hedland seemed to be made up primarily of road trains either moving ore north or coming back empty to the south. There seemed to be, literally, hundreds of road trains operating between the numerous mines and Port Hedland, each pulling 4 trailers or 3 trailers with 4 ore skips. There are also numerous mining industry utes that seem to run up and down the road on one mission or another. It kind of reminded me of a trail of ants with the road trains busily moving goods back and forth while the fleet of little white utes buzzed about them like the soldier ants, ready to respond to any form of hitch or breakdown.
We didn’t stop at Port Hedland as it all seemed very industrial with new roads and rail terminals seemingly being built to support the mining industries’ needs. Instead we continued east to our preferred stopping point for the night.

We’ve stopped at a free camp spot at the side of the De Grey River. Telstra reception is sporadic so this might not get posted until tomorrow or it might not have any pics until tomorrow. The local council have paid for free WiFi access at the camp site but we’re camped a bit far away from the hotspot to make use of it. The site is really nice though and there are a few people here who are staying for the whole weekend it would seem.
Tomorrow we’ll continue on towards Broome, not sure yet if we’re going to stop along the way or just go for it to get there. Broome and then Derby are really just somewhere we need to go to get to the Gibb River Road so how much time we spend on little diversions along the way I’m not sure. Broome is only 500k away now and we did that today quite comfortably but the dilemma is always, do we want to zip through somewhere or should we take our time to discover the hidden gems that the area may offer.