Today was a jam-packed day of action and excitement… First we met up for lunch with a mate of Dave’s
from work. It felt pretty good to do
something ‘normal’ for a few hours… We
left there to make our way to the Seafarers office in the town centre. The Seafarers are an awesome not-for-profit
organisation. When the ships dock, the
Seafarers essentially run a free water taxi service so the crew can get off the
ship for a few hours. They not only
provide them with a taxi service but a building where they can relax, have a
drink, play pool, get in touch with loved ones or buy essential supplies (every
second person we saw seemed to have purchased an Australian wool doona…). They also taxi them to the local shopping
centre.
Much like many other charitable organisations, they receive
next to no money from the government.
So, to help fund this service, tourists (like us) can ride on the ferry as
they are taxied to their ships. We thought
the tour was awesome… there were 15
ships docked so we pretty much did a
full lap of the harbour, getting right up next to ore carriers, salt carriers and
other massive ships. We were even lucky
enough to have a ship travel up the harbour to dock while we were less than
100m away… so cool.
On the boat… these are grins of anticipation
Looking out to the harbour. I managed to snap a shot that had everything going on… an iron ore ship, a tug and a helicopter ferrying a pilot from a ship. Apparently there were about 40 ships moored off the coast of Port Hedland. There are helicopters constantly flying back and forward to the outlying ships…
Here’s a shot of some guys ready to jump on and off the ferry
It’s hard to get a good photo depicting the sheer size of these ships…
Happy tourists…
One of the bits of information we learned was these ships
have a draft of 18m but the harbour is only 15m deep… so obviously they have to
wait for high tide for the water levels to rise before they can come in and out. Armed with this knowledge we headed back to
the jetty overlooking the harbour at 7pm, knowing it was high tide and likely a
fully loaded ship would leave. Luck
would have it we saw a ship being escorted out by four tugs. It was one of the ships we had ferried crew
to earlier that day…
Once the ship had passed us by we then spent the next hour
hassling some poor guy fishing for squid off the jetty. He had the kids well and truly entertained…
A blurry but pretty shot of an iron ore carrier docked directly across from the jetty
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