Wednesday 29 October 2014

Australia 2014 - (21) Port Hedland

Today I took a ride around Port Hedland and its sister town South Hedland. Port Hedland is surrounded by huge iron ore mines and the town only has a small shopping centre and little else. South Hedland, by contrast, had lots of shops but much less in the way of heavy industry.

In the afternoon I took a tour of Port Hedland’s harbour run by the Seafarers’ Mission, a Christian charity set up to support overseas mariners. The Mission provides a home from home for sailors based on the huge ships that come in to take the iron ore to China and other destinations and everyday they provide a ferry services that goes around all the ships picking up sailors from their vessels and taking them to the Seafarers’ Centre then on into town, or dropping them back off again. As a way to fund this service, they offer tours to visitors.

The tour lasted about an hour and half and took us from one vessel to another collecting/dropping off sailors. Steep gangways are lowered from their deck to our tiny ferry and the sailors have to hop over the harbour waters below onto the gangways and make their way up/down. It was a calm day today but I thought it would be quite scary if it was at all choppy.

The harbour was huge and so were the boats within it but I was loving being out on the open water where there was a respite from the constant heat and humidity.