The primary business today was to get a new rear tyre for the bike. This was completed by 9:00am at Kimberly Motorcycle Center. I owe Peter and his team a big thanks as they went out of their way to fit me into their schedule.

This morning while having breakfast and packing up I got a visit from some of the permanent residents of the Sandfire Road House.

Before leaving Marble Bar this morning I wanted to take a photo of Marble Bar Pools. These are a series of water pools about 3 km west of Marble Bar on the Coongan River. Unfortunately the roads down into the river bed and to the pools were closed for some kind of earth works project.

The first task this morning was a quick look around Port Hedland and some photos to try and capture this town. The BHP sign on the tank in the first picture below seems to me to sum up this town. It is without a doubt an industrial site that happens also to be a town. There are large bulk carrier ships in the harbor, hugh fuel storage tanks close to the main street, and the large salt production facility on the main entrance to the town. In the large flat area south and west of the harbor are all kinds of facilities like the airport, power station, and depots for all those road trains I discussed in yesterdays post.

The Auski Roadhouse was a very busy place with road trains by the dozens coming and going; and it was a preview to the days riding. During todays the 2-3 hours riding to Port Hedland I estimate I passed a roadtrain every single minute and many of them were big ore carriers, like the one in the images below. The ore carrier below has 4 trailers behind the tractor, the tractor has 2 steering axles at the front each with two wheels, the first trailer has 2 sets of 3 axles (each with 4 wheels), and the subsequent 3 trailers have 3 axles (each with 4 wheels) at the front and 4 axles at the rear. Thats a total of 112 tyres/wheels (3 x 7 x 4) + (3 x 4) + (3 x 4) + 2 + 2.