10th March 2011 - Perth: We had a fabulous day with Mort & Linnea and Linnea's sister Beth. It was so great to see them we picked them up at Beth's place (the Swan Brewery pent house daaaarlings), then we went off the King's Park and walked across the glass bridge and checked out how our Kimberley Boab tree is going. Then down to Trigg Beach - very very spectacular - for lunch, then further onto Hillary's Boat Harbour looking for the "Escapade", but apparently it is at Fremantle, never mind.......then fond farewells to Linnea & Mort after a fab day and Tilda cried to say goodbye to her God/Dog-Mother! :(
2nd to 6th March 2011Port Hedland to Mt Magnet to Perth... 
6thMarch 2011 Newman to Mt Magnet: And guess what we came across - Lake Austin, and of course an old Austin car rusting away parked just there in the dust, and the only water we have seen forever, and Austin is DB's mum's maiden name - How about that one for the books Daphne ? Then we drove through the thriving town of Paynes Find, but it was shut, a willy willy took the roof off the servo last week.
5 March 2011 Port Hedland to Newman. What an amazing drive, we loved it. The Chichester Ranges and spectacular red hills. Newman is 1186 km north of Perth on the Great Northern Highway in the heart of the East Pilbara region of Australia's North West. The temperature hovers around 40 degrees here - mmmm, bit hot for me luv! It is another BHP Biliton town, but quite tidy. Apparently it has the world's largest open cut pit, but we didn't go there, it seemed a better idea to keep moving to somewhere cooler !
2nd March 2011 - Port Hedland on the Great Northern Highway - yuk - a BHP town and since the 1960's Port Hedland has been the centre of iron ore industry. It handles the largest tonnage of any port in Australia with a 40,000 population of miners, truck drivers, train drivers and everything industrial that 
means that everybody - I mean everybody, wears orange work shirts, blue jeans and boots - niiiiiiice ! Port Hedland processes and exports iron-ore, it is unloaded, screened, crushed, stockpiled and conveyored to the pier for export to Japan, Europe, China & 
South Korea. On the way into town we passed the 426km long railway that was purpose built to carry iron-ore to and from Mt Newman - the trains can be up to 3km long ! Next we saw huge pyramids of snow-white salt stockpiled. So in short, Port Hedland is yuk - amazing and interesting too though, it's messy and the only caravan park for dogs is yuk, mostly dongers and orange shirted people, we had to poke the tent in a yukky little corner overlooking a truckies fuel depot - and the trucks there are four (yes 4) trailer road trains, it was hot and our first night in the tent was not good - and I stuck to the blow up mattress by s
weating - yuk. There were lots of mozzies too, and poor poodle got no sleep, she was busy all night on watch duty, scratching around on the plastic tent floor.........hmpf, how
ever, it is still really interesting to see such a town, so industrial and, so expensive too! Great place to check out, but I definitely don't need to go back
means that everybody - I mean everybody, wears orange work shirts, blue jeans and boots - niiiiiiice ! Port Hedland processes and exports iron-ore, it is unloaded, screened, crushed, stockpiled and conveyored to the pier for export to Japan, Europe, China & 
South Korea. On the way into town we passed the 426km long railway that was purpose built to carry iron-ore to and from Mt Newman - the trains can be up to 3km long ! Next we saw huge pyramids of snow-white salt stockpiled. So in short, Port Hedland is yuk - amazing and interesting too though, it's messy and the only caravan park for dogs is yuk, mostly dongers and orange shirted people, we had to poke the tent in a yukky little corner overlooking a truckies fuel depot - and the trucks there are four (yes 4) trailer road trains, it was hot and our first night in the tent was not good - and I stuck to the blow up mattress by s
weating - yuk. There were lots of mozzies too, and poor poodle got no sleep, she was busy all night on watch duty, scratching around on the plastic tent floor.........hmpf, however, it is still really interesting to see such a town, so industrial and, so expensive too! Great place to check out, but I definitely don't need to go back 
2nd March 2011 - MDM tenting around Oz - yay yay yay, we finally hit the road for our big road trip tenting from Broome to Perth to Adelaide to Caloundra to Sarina Beach to Port Douglas to Broome and back to work at Cygnet Bay ......... First up the roads are flooded (Cyclone Yasi again) so luckily the water level had dropped to about 300 ml - enough for us to get through and our first stop is Sandfire Roadhouse, 318 km south of Broome, with white peacocks, colourful roosters, ducks and geese - Tilda thought it was Christmas! And margo thought it was fab to sit in the airconditioned car with 34 degrees outside ! The country side is beautiful, very picturesque, so bright green from the rain and the red plains, not a hill to be seen anywhere, just as flat as a pancake for as far as the eye can see and low salt bush growing randomly. 290km to our next stop - Port Hedland.
