Day 85 17th July 2014 Thursday. Packed and ready to leave by 9.00am. Headed to Visitor Centre to join our tour of Tom Price Mine. We were issued with hard hat and goggles with strict instructions to wear whenever off the bus. We also had to wear seat belts in the bus. The tour guide was a very colourful chap named Baz who called the bus chuckles as he ground the gears all the time. Got a lot of the history of the mine site and why Tom Price was named etc. Rio Tinto runs the mine and they have 36 large 240T trucks plus 6 smaller 100T trucks. The big trucks have a carrying capacity of 240T. We went to a lookout that looked down on a mine. There were face shovels, excavators, front end loaders galore. We then went through the processing stage and watched a train being loaded. The rail network is the largest privately owned system in Australia and currently services 15 mines over 1600km. Each train is 2.5km long and each load is worth approx. $3.5M. There are an average of 5 trains per day from Tom Price. Truck drivers earn $150k pa and train drivers $240K pa. Majority of jobs are fly in fly out. Once the tour was finished we left Tom Price at 11.445am and headed back on Karijini Dr. We stopped for lunch in a parking bay and got talking to a Welshman who works on the rail line. Was interesting hearing about his experiences. Stopped for fuel at Auski Roadhouse and continued on until nearly 5pm when we stopped overnight at free camp Herbert Parker Rest Area at Yule River. Didn’t go too far into area as was very sandy and the weather was overcast and we were expecting rain. It was quite humid after coming from a chilly interior. After pumpkin soup for tea we played canasta again. Girls won. Score 4 all.
