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Tales of drama (TV, trains and testy wives) at happy hour

6/13/2014

The rock pools at the base of Red Rock, Indee's little Uluru.

Pebble mice, a mini Ayers Rock and people with tales to tell of television dramas, a young Irish couple stuck in front of a train, station life characters and drilling adventures: that’s Indee Station.

Itinerant work crews, campers and station hands are welcomed around the 10m long table in the homestead each night for happy hour. If you are not staying for a meal you need to clear out at 7.15pm so workers can eat heartily and sleep well before getting back into the Pilbara dust and dirt at daylight.

It is also a place where retirees drift back from around Australia to spend a few months helping out in return for food and accommodation and where backpackers lob in for a crusty and sometime scary taste of station life.

Alison Coop from Forrestville in Melbourne is one of the former. She’s a can-do Australian woman who worked as a cook on outback tours for eight years.

Before she retired she worked for 13 years on field locations for crews shooting movies and television series in regional Australia.

“We would supply the vehicles fitted out for whatever they needed – a makeup trailer and a wardrobe trailer, stuff like that. They would bring the makeup and clothes but we would supply the on-site rooms they needed.”

She worked on shoots for the Ben Elton Stark movie at Coober Pedy, the All The Rivers Run television series with John Waters and Sigrid Thornton and the Neighbours location shoots from its early days until 2009.

“We did a lot with the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. A lot in Queensland. It was fun but hard work. We did 14 to 16-hour days. You do get over it.”

She explored the Gulf Country after she retired and lobbed into Indee when she roamed around Western Australia in 2011, sleeping in the back of her car.

Indee was short-staffed so she stayed a month, upgrading to a room and looking after the visiting travellers and camp facilities. The next year she returned for the March to August tourist season. She skipped last year for other commitments but is back again this year.

“It’s a good team here, a good atmosphere,” she says. Alison has a gentle charm and friendliness that makes her very much part of the welcoming package.

She tells visitors how to get to Red Rock – a kind of mini Ayers Rock overlooking the Turner River – with its rock pools and rare Aboriginal etchings. Colonies of rare pebble mice are also on the station: they are nocturnal so unless you want to sit in the dark to watch them gather all the rocks for their complex housing units you have to be content with viewing the little rock volcanoes they build.

Ore trains rumble in the background. BHP and Fortescue have built rail lines through Indee to the Newman area; Gina Rhinehart is building another to the new Roy Hill mine. One could surmise that they disturb the bucolic mood of cattle station life but a sense of industry is everywhere in the Pilbara and Indee has an energy created by work crews and travellers accommodated in converted containers and campers in an assortment of caravans, motor homes, tents and sleeper utes and vans. (Hot showers, washing machines, camp kitchen for $20 a night for two people.)

Indee’s massive lounge room is filled with memorabilia. Tea, coffee and biscuits are waiting during the day; at night camaraderie grows as a changing line-up does the BYO thing – nibbles provided – at the long table.

Craig, one of the young blokes on the drilling crew was having matrimonial problems. His wife had expected him to be home with the kids for the long weekend but a drilling project took priority.

Drilling life doesn’t always suit married life, Craig’s father-in-law Dave cheerily confided. He and Mrs Dave parted company 12 years ago.

“And the last 10 years have been the happiest in my life,” he said. “I go where I want when I want. I drink as much as I want to and don’t have to worry about suiting anyone else.”

Driller Doug said he was not in a position to give advice to Craig. His marriage and a long-term relationship both fell apart, mainly because the demands of drilling mean little time at home.

At the top of the table is Big John Spencer, a semi-retired former farmer from the east who came travelling through the Pilbara with his wife Julie last year. Their son was working at nearby Wodgina mine, where 76-year-old station boss Colin Brierly still puts in two days a week. One thing led to another and they stayed on at Indee, returning this year. John does mechanical stuff and Julie cooks.

“You don’t get paid but it costs nothing to stay and it’s interesting,” John mused. “I’m not ready to do nothing yet.”

That was lucky for a young Irish couple travelling Australia last year. They put in a few weeks working at Indee and were driving an old open Cruiser converted to a bull ute. They approached the gravelled crossing of the double BHP line in the wrong gear and the wrong revs. Stuck. And of course a 2.6km ore train soon materialised in the distance.

When John and Julie came around the corner, the Irishman was still trying to push the ute off the rails and his partner was running down the line in a futile attempt to stop the engines and 248 wagons.

Big John summed up the situation quickly and put his foot down. “I didn’t really stop to think. I just put my foot down.”

As the train bore down, John crashed his ute into the back of the jammed Cruiser, shunting it out of the way with a few seconds to spare. It took a while for the full impact of what had happened – and the disaster that could have happened – to dawn on all players.

“Julie was OK but she cried all the next day.” BHP concreted over the crossing. The ute, with the radiator stoved in, was parked in one of the station’s spare parts bays. And of all the people who leave Indee with stories to tell, the Irish couple have one of the best.

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Drawing the lines through Indee: BHP, Twiggy and now Gina

6/12/2014

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Colin Brierly’s friendliness fades when the conversation turns to city folk.

“They have no idea. Jesus, they drive me insane. Bloody peanuts. We’re being run by idiots.”

The burly boss of Indee Station turns 76 this year. Dubbed The Iron Man of the Pilbara in the media, he’s run the 420,000 acre cattle station an hour south Port Hedland for 52 years. For the last 17 years he has also worked at the Wodgina mine to the south. He still puts in two long shifts a week.

Since the century turned he has wrought and fought new changes that have sliced through the station. Conflicting onslaughts of industrial ventures and environmental regulations have ripped into the domain Colin steered through gut-wrenching car and plane crashes, crashing wool prices, high interest rates, the live cattle export ban and the agricultural constants of drought and flood.

About 4000 head of cattle roam Indee but not as freely as they once did. Three privately owned rail lines have pierced the station. Some of the longest and heaviest trains in the world rumble 24/7 in the background, taking iron ore to Port Hedland from around the Hamersley Ranges.

“BHP was worst of the lot to deal with but it was a great teacher,” Colin said wryly.

He had been dozing in front of Landline when we met in the cool sprawl of the Indee lounge and dining room, dominated by a 10m long table that is home to happy hour each night for the campers and work crews who drift in and out of the station.

Indee is hospitable, welcoming and casual for campers. “Old Farts Haven” says a sign on the gate, presumably targeted at Grey Nomads. Glorious piles of machinery and building material – in use, recycling and decaying – are scattered between the homestead, sheds, containers and campground.

An old Massey 65 rusting under a tree came with Colin from Muckinbudin, down in the sheep and wheat belt, when he took up the Indee pastoral lease as a 23-year-old. He set out in 1962 with the tractor on the back of a tray-back truck which broke down not far out on the 1200km journey. The Massey was backed off and used to tow the truck for the rest of the slow journey north.

Six years after Colin started sheep raising at Indee a Vickers Viscount 700 crashed into Indee, killing all 26 on board in one of Australia’s worst civilian air disasters. Colin and some of his station hands saw the crash and raced to get there within half an hour, finding only scattered charred wreckage and body parts. More than 50 body bags were used by the retrieval crew working grimly in 45 degree heat.

An engine fire on the plane had caused the crash. The Viscount 700 was withdrawn from service after an inquiry revealed the plane’s defects.

In 1992 Colin’s first wife was killed in a station vehicle crash. Wool prices fell amid rocketing interest rates.

Stoically Colin took stock and began the first of Indee’s changes to meet the challenges. He subleased the land, worked at the Wodgina tantalum mine down the track, opened the station for campers, provided accommodation for transient work crews – mainly drillers – and eased Indee from sheep to cattle.

He asked a friend Betty to set up and run the camping and accommodation sector. She and her husband had moved north from Dongara a few years earlier to work on a station. Her husband had been killed and Betty seriously injured in a road crash.

“I had been coping by becoming a workaholic,” she says.

Indee’s accommodation and camping venture was a success and so was Colin and Betty’s partnership. They married seven years ago – Colin with three children and two stepchildren and Betty with two children – amid the bitter-sweet experiences of rail lines carving up Indee.

BHP was the first and the worst to deal with but Colin says philosophically he learned a lot about negotiating with big companies. “I didn’t get bugger all,” he said of the double line BHP built near the station’s eastern boundary, hauling ore from the Yandi-Marilana mine areas north of Newman. “I was determined it wouldn’t happen again.”

(On June 21, 2001, the longest and heaviest train in the world ran from Yandi to Port Hedland. With a total weight of 99,734 tonnes, the 7.3km train pulled 682 wagons carrying 82,000 tonnes of ore on the 275km trip.)

When “Twiggy” Forrest’s Fortescue men arrived at Indee to negotiate north-south access for a rail line to its Cloudbreak mine, Colin stood firm. He struck a better deal after a legal battle but says much of the compensation is soaked up by fencing, trying to stop cattle from being run over by giant engines pulling 248 wagons of ore.

He is also angry that FMG chose a different route, 2km from the BHP lines, splitting Indee up more instead of using the same corridor.

Gina Rinehardt is now building another line through Indee to the giant mine she is opening up at Roy Hill station. Negotiations for that land were a little easier. The FMG terms were a precedent and the Roy Hill line is on the same corridor as FMG, although a few hundred metres of no-man’s-land lies between the rail lines and both companies have put in their own service roads.

FMG and Roy Hill have built single lines but their sidings are 3km long to allow the trains – usually 2.6km – to pass.

“You do your best and make the most of it,” said Colin. “They would have beaten you sooner or later. The State backs them, as long as you get fair and equitable compensation.”

Railway money came in handy, however, when Julia Gillard slapped a ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia and crippled cattle stations across Australia’s north.

“A lot of stations went broke because of that. We would have too if it was not for the railway.”

ABC’s Four Corners triggered the ban when it screened a film of staggering cattle being flailed to death in an Indonesian slaughterhouse. Questions have been raised about whether scenes were staged for the years-old film. Some have drawn links to the ensuing industry collapses that led to Indonesian interests buying large tracts of Australia at bargain prices.

And cattlemen have been left with a sense of betrayal at the ABC, creator of Landline and other rural-servicing programs and the only broadcaster to reach into the remote regions of Australia. The publicly funded broadcaster draws protection for its rural reach but scepticism grows in the bush as all but a few select programs cater to left-wing and environmental academic audiences in the wealthy and/or green metropolitan suburbs.

“Greenies!” Colin flares again. “Nuts. No idea.” He is riled by the tight rules governing burning off and dealings with the local shire. “You need to burn the spinifex. If you don’t want big fires wiping out everything you need to burn off in a mosaic pattern when the conditions are right.

“I tried to apply for a permit once but they said I had to supply a satellite picture and give a date. How the hell would you know what date is going to be right to burn? What sort of brains have they got? You have to work with the right conditions but these city folk coming out here and running our lives wouldn’t have a clue. They should leave us alone to do what we are doing.

“The greenies should all go back to Tasmania and do what they want to do there. Then when the big fire comes there they can all jump into the sea.”

Colin relaxed and smiled hugely. He’s been battling for three-quarters of a centre and has plenty of fire left in him yet.

PICTURE SHOWS: Colin and Betty in the comfortable lounge they share with campers and work crews.

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Joe Hockey, you need a hamburger with the boys at Nowra

6/6/2014

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“Maybe your signature dish should be a superb sushi roll,” I said over wine and cheese that drifted pleasantly into being a substitute for dinner.

Mathew shuddered and let out a squawk. “Not rice! I still can’t do the rice thing. Maggots! It’s a long story.”

Terry Magill and Mathew Consiglio (above) were heading back to the east with a Nowra venture in mind when we were exploring the south of Western Australia.

We bumped into them first at Munglinup and a couple of days later backed Isabel up beside them at postcard-pretty Lucky Bay. We liked their company and we liked their style on two counts: first they had a bit of get-up-and-go – combining a solid work ethic and entrepreneurial ideas – and second they served a salubrious spread to pick at with wine as the sun set.

Joe Hockey would be proud of these two Australians. No age of entitlement nonsense here. Terry had begun work as trolley boy at Woolworths and worked his way through the ranks to third in charge of a supermarket. Most of his time was spent managing bottle shops at various stores,

Mat was also at Woolies for four years, two as customer service manager and two in the office doing public liability.

“We got sick of the same routine every week,” said Terry. So they hopped on a plane to Perth, bought a vehicle and drove 1000km north to Minilya, a roadhouse managed by Terry’s sister Danielle.

At Minilya they learned the takeaway ropes and much more: remote roadhouses are little communities with fuel, accommodation, camping, modest restaurants and shops with basic supplies and the ubitiquous over-priced T-shirts.

For 18 months the couple (they’re engaged) worked, explored nearby Ningaloo Reef, helped ill-equipped or troubled travellers and saved enough for a grubstake for their own business.

“We loved it up there,” said Terry, “but we had other things we wanted do.”

They bought a van and took a leisurely long road back to NSW, exploring Oz in company with the Grey Nomads and young foreign backpackers they had served at Minilya. They were fishing along the way with a spectacular lack of success and collecting elements as souvenirs – white sand here, red soil there, a rock here.

We joined them for sundowners each night. I plonked down a rudimentary plate of brie and biscuits; they presented stylishly displayed hors d’oeuvres and details of their plans to buy the Hillview Corner Store at Nowra.

Takeaways are a big part of the Four Square business and the boys had been giving it a lot of thought.

“We want a signature dish,” said Mat. “Probably something healthy to balance the fish and chips. Any ideas?”

I remembered the delectable sushi made by the French Hot Bread bakery in Maryborough. Morsels of crumbed chicken, avocado and tomato were stuffed in the centre of the rolls.

Mat’s rejection of the suggestion verged on paranoia. “Not rice!” He was coaxed to explain, with groans and shudders, his scarring experience in his younger days when he had to clean maggots from a large container. Revolted, he summoned his courage and still reeling walking back to the house when his mischievous sister threw a container of rice – maggots! – over him.

I suggested he might need counselling for his rice phobia but he said he’s working on it.

The boys headed across the Nullarbor and we headed back up north, calling into Minilya to meet Danielle and discuss briefly Mat’s rice problem. He had a bit of therapy handling some rice at Minilya, she smiled, and was much better by the time the boys left.

Terry and Mat are now working furiously at the Hillview Corner Store venture, revamping the store and upgrading the menu.

They just had their busiest day, had to rush out for more supplies and are compromising on the signature dish because it looks like it is sorting itself out: hamburgers filled with superb salad.

“Customers are telling us our hamburgers are like the old traditional ones and taste really fresh,” says Terry. “Apparently our plain burger is like a burger-with-the-lot at other places.”

Anyone knowing anyone travelling near Nowra might want to check in with the Hillview Corner Store in St Ann's Street and try the burgers. We’re going in the wrong direction right now but we will get there one day.

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On top of old Sheila with 360 degrees and a flat

6/5/2014

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Well worth the 2km climb on a bitumen track ascending at a cable car angle.

If we had known what grandeur awaited us, we would have planned to spend the night on top of Sheila. But then we might have missed out on crème brulee coffee delivered by a couple of tired but happy miners the next morning (right).

We had coasted on the unsealed road around the western side of Karajini National Park after exploring its splendid gorges. Hamersley Gorge was still beckoning and then I spied Mt Sheila lookout on the map. I had never heard of it, lying almost on a direct line west of Hamersley Gorge, along the Hamersley Road.

A nice little diversion, I suggested to Tony. It was more than a diversion but an experience we would not have missed. We drove past the front entrance to the giant Solomon mine complex opened up in the last few years by Fortescue. Daughter Amber and her fiancé Dean were asleep in there after working night shift.

After a jolting 30km ride we crossed the Tom Price-Dampier iron ore rail line and rattled another 12km towards Mt Sheila. White paint daubed on a green drum helpfully pointed the way at a Y junction.

Pilbara scenery of growing grandeur rose on each side until we came to the only sign we have ever seen that said 4WD vehicles only were allowed to travel on on the bitumen, as against usual warnings saying 4WDs only were allowed off the bitumen.

We were at the base of Mt Sheila, a former Telecom tower site. We looked ahead and had a bit of an OMG moment. The 2km narrow bitumen track ran up the mountain at an angle of about 30 degrees. Isabel climbed like she had never climbed before, mastering a couple of high-grade potholes before we reached the top and had a succession of OMG moments.

We felt as if we were on top of the Pilbara. Around 360 degrees magnificent landscapes fell away to the horizon. A few tiny dust clouds and a scraped mountain side showed where mines were being worked. Again I had that ethereal sense of something about the Pilbara that laces tendrils into your soul, a timeless raw grandeur both forbidding and fascinating.

My spiritual flirtation was punctured by the last OMG moment (not counting all those on the downward trip). Isabel had her first puncture. It transpired that a tiny sliver of something sharp had slipped through the treads in a million to one chance but it put paid to further musings about spending the evening on Mt Sheila so we could watch the lights of the mines dotted below.

Hamersley Gorge awaited and, despite a ho-hum report on-line, we found it to be the gem of the Karajini gorges. Waterfalls splashed into tranquil pools – perfect for swimming and one forming a spa pool – and flowed down many-hued flat rocks into a larger pool and then slipped through a canyon.

Hamersley Gorge is small compared with others but more easily accessible. It is entrancing and exceptional for its cliffs, sliced through layers of multi-coloured rock forced into wave formations by some molten upheaval a few billion years ago.

We camped nearby and in the morning took up the offer to have coffee at Solomon. Weary but still cheery after a 12-hour night shift, Amber and Dean delivered coffee – including a hitherto-untasted crème brulee coffee side order that was a bit of an OMG moment in itself. The rising sun slapped extra tonings of brilliance into the reds of the landscape.

We surveyed the resort-style two-tier accommodation at Kanji camp. It’s a far cry from the dongas and converted containers where miners often bunk down but with more than 1100 workers on site it is already overflowing. The former camp is being opened up as the operational crews continue to expand.

Fortescue’s Solomon complex has four discrete mines and is destined to become one of the biggest mining operations in Western Australia. Fortescue’s Chichester Hub of Cloudbreak and Christmas Creek already rails out 90 million tonnes of ore a year to waiting ships.

Gina Rinehart’s new Roy Hill venture has identified prospects of 2.4 billion tonnes and will funnel 55 million tonnes a year into Port Hedland over 20 years from next September.

In comparison, Solomon is ramping up with 2.8 billion tonnes right to go and a total of 5 billion tonnes as identified prospects – twice that of Gina’s Roy Hill.

The boom of opening up mines might be easing but in the operational phase mining in Australia is stabilising at levels that are still almost incomprehensible.

Regretfully we said our goodbyes. We would have liked more time to camp up on Sheila and tour the Solomon workings but we had to join dozens of trains more than 2km long and head back to Port Hedland.

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Kim defies decades and gravity on Karajini high spot

6/1/2014

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From the Joffre lookout: That wee dot on the top of the rock pillar (top right corner) is Kim, after clambering down into the gorge and up the other side.

Being thin, young and nimble is a big advantage when you explore the gorges of Karajini, the national park at the heart of the Hamersley Range and the Pilbara.

Meeting none of the three criteria above, I gazed enviously from the Joffre Gorge lookout to where a white-hatted young woman had scrambled across the gorge floor river and climbed up the flat-cracked, stacked red rocks to a lofty perch.

Her husband (I assumed – he looked older but he was not much more than a speck) wandered along the river at the base of Joffre, which was a worthy gorge to inspect, we decided.

We had been to Karajini three years ago but just ducked into Dales Gorge, a majestic red gash in the Pilbara tastefully decorated around the rim with snappy gums, stark white sculptures topped with green bunches of leaves. Dales Gorge has a mildly challenging track down to the canyon floor to tranquil Fern Pool, Fortescue Falls and Circular Pool. It is easily reached by a sealed road.

This time we wanted to inspect the less accessible gouging in Karajini. The unsealed road through the park is not too bad but it’s a rattling ride to the gorges on the north.

We inspected Kalamina and at sunset the more spectacular steep narrow ravine of Knox, where we chatted into the dusk with four young people from Perth – three guys and a girl – who had chucked their jobs and headed north. They were hoping to land jobs for the tourist season in Perth, refreshingly optimistic in being young, adventurous and eager to accept whatever came their way in their travels to … who knows where?

After admiring the young, adventurous, eager explorer of gorges at Joffre the next morning we rattled Isabel up to the Oxer lookout over four gorges, rated as one of the most vertigo-inducing lookouts in Australia.

Above the four gorges we encountered Kim from the depths of Joffre. With astonishment I realised the nimble canyon-climber was only a few years younger than me. No wonder they are putting up the pension age.

Kim, 58, and John Allison, it transpired, were from Moreton Bay, semi-retired and roaming Australia for a few months with their caravan, focusing on Western Australia. He’s an electrician; she’s a store merchandiser.

I apologised for taking her photo without permission but promised to email her some copies. She apologised because she and John had been taking photos of Isabel without our permission. That’s OK. Isabel has been photographed only slightly less than Kate Middleton.

The Allisons grew up in the tiny NSW town of Oak Flats and moved to Moreton Bay 21 years ago. John has dabbled in boats, running a charter business in Moreton Bay (“We didn’t make much money but had a lot of fun”) and working in the Whitsundays for a few years. Salubrious memories of that gig include living as caretakers aboard a luxury yacht and then being offered a caretaker job in a mansion atop Hamilton Island, with 360 degree panoramic views of the ocean.

They headed into the challenging Weano Gorge; we tramped down into the daunting Hancock Gorge, where some sections were negotiated by swimming. As we staggered out the Allisons breezed in, a fortunate occurrence as it proved we were not stalking them when we bumped into them two days later at Auski Roadhouse and two days after that at Indee Station.

After we climbed out of Hancock and down into Weano, wading and scaling along to the Handrail pool, where the handrail turned out to be a 6m vertical pole.

Inevitably troops of young French travellers arrived. Les Jeunes Francaise are everywhere on the WA tourist trails and have some turning up their noses (they travel in vans and little motorhomes with minimal equipment and leave a trail of merde et toilette papier in the scrub).

We have enjoyed meeting them, particularly the Handrail pool; Tony because the girls all stripped to tiny bikinis beside him and me because the bikinis showed that French woman do get chubby.

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Nice - but not at that price thanks

5/31/2014

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“It’s too bloody expensive now. The bastards doubled the campsite fees this year,” said Reg, our neighbour at the free camp area of Bush Bay, about 40 km south of Carnarvon.

Reg and wife Sue from Mandurah were in a roomy converted bus, up north for a few months and hanging out at Bush Bay after bailing out at the council-controlled camp beside the Quobba blowholes.

When they hiked the overnight site fees from $5.50 to $11, Reg hit the roof with a stand-up confrontation with the rangers. He refused to pay. The area has a couple of sparse dunnies and a collection of fishing shacks whose longevity means they cannot be removed.

We sympathised but didn’t think $11 a night was too bad for a site beside the beach. We have since heard that prices have been yanked up again to $11 a person a night. Rumour is rife that someone wants to build a resort at the beach site beside the blowholes and putting up prices will dissuade some long-term campers from staying there.

Rumour also has it the Carnarvon council would like to close camping at Bush Bay and New Beach too. Some odd long-term dwellers are ensconced in the “single men’s quarters” up the track. One hermit with two large dogs had moved into the “family” area where Grey Nomads and French vannies stop for a couple of nights or a couple of months.

“This might be the last year we can camp here,” said Rick sombrely. “The council wants to shut it down.” Rick used to live at Port Hedland. He retired but couldn’t stand it in Perth, so hit the road with his wife and fifth-wheeler five years ago.

Rick was a head serang in recreational fishing in Port Hedland, blithely producing evidence on his skill by pulling in more than 25 sizeable whiting each day while Reg, Tony and I landed little.

Twenty-five kilometres north of Carnarvon the Quobba road cuts west on its 50km sealed run to the blowholes before turning right on to a 75km rough unsealed road to Quobba and Gnarloo, two stations famed for their fishing and camping areas. Quobba’s Red Bluff and Gnarloo’s Three Mile camps are also noted surfing spots.

We felt we had to revisit Quobba to give it a chance to show its worth. We had lobbed into the station site about two years ago with camping buddies Ken and Noreen. We were camping in the back of our ute; they were in a Cruiser with a roof-top camper.

It rained. We sloshed in through sticky grey mud, bought some firewood, set up protective tarps and found it was too wet for a fire. During the night the blustery weather blossomed into a fine storm. Ken and Tony crawled out and held the tarps together. Noreen and I with a minimal show of reluctance agreed to their suggestion that we stay in bed, coffee supplied, until we could escape from bloody Quobba.

Escape we did but in the back of our minds was the thought we should give it another go.

We wanted to go further up the coast to fabled Red Bluff. Both Reg and Rick shook their heads. It was now really expensive up there and the road was terrible.

We went, stopping to admire the blowholes putting on a worthy performance in a lively swell. Then we headed north on the slowly deteriorating road past Quobba station. Isabel rode over corrugations and crawled through craters filled with muddy water left by a storm.

Red Bluff appeared before us, with cornflower water smoothly but forcefully swelling on to a splendid white beach. Thirty meters out the rollers rose and crashed on to the beach with ground-shuddering jarring.

We were charged $30 a night. Apparently the fees there had doubled not long ago. Amenities were limited to a few see-through drop dunnies, a couple of rubbish bins and a modest store-café with immodest prices.

We watched a dozen surfers ride the waves at the point break. The swell meant conditions weren’t too bad for surfing, they said, but they mourned the increased cost of spending a night in their vans at Red Bluff. Most sidled out in the evenings, apparently to hide somewhere for the night before returning in the morning.

Fishing was impossible in the dumping waves and tackle-treacherous around the rocks at the base of the bluff. We caught enough small wrasse for dinner and were considered lucky.

After two nights we sidled off too but thought we would give Gnarloo Station a go. An impressive gateway announced we were at the station and a smaller matching entrance statement welcomed us to the Three Mile campsite. Sadly, the welcome was not so impressive.

The shop was shut and 2046 signs advised what could and could not be done in the camping area, which we surveyed with misgiving. Undoubtedly the beach and reef were nice but camps were jammed together like sardines. Apparently, like Quobba and Red Bluff, the cost was $30 a night for the privilege of using a drop dunny.

We sighed and trundled back down the corrugations and gullies to the blowholes. You were right, Reg and Rick, but it was one of those things we had to try. Been there, done that, didn’t get the T-shirt but forlornly found more cases of WA’s price hiking. And Red Bluff wasn't that red either.

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And talking about that Red Dog .......

5/26/2014

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Mathematicians (and Gibbs of NCIS) tell us coincidences don’t exist. We only have intersecting lines of probabilities.

Maybe. But it seems coincidence and small-world-syndrome is often waiting to surface at the next sundowner with fellow travellers at a roadside stop.

I posted my last blog about Red Dog, the famous wandering kelpie of the WA North West who was featured in the movie of the same name, while we were parked on the banks of the Yule River. Laptop snapped shut, we armed ourselves with cold beer and wandered down a couple of camp sites to take up an invitation to have sundowners with Clarke and Deborah (above).

We were a bit late. I told them about the blog. “Red Dog!” snorted Clarke. “I can tell you about Red Dog.”

And, it turned out, he knew also a fair bit about the only person Red Dog became seriously attached to: John Stazzonelli. Clarke had carted Stazzonelli’s body, rolled in a rug, into the morgue on the back of his tow truck.

Only he wasn’t John. He was Frank – which explained why he was a bit shadowy when it came to finding out his background as the Red Dog legend grew in the Pilbara and beyond.

“Well, it’s like this,” said Clarke. “A lot of blokes were getting away from something around Dampier in those days. Families. Paternity. Tax. A hell of a lot was done under the barter system.”

Clarke lobbed into Dampier in 1969 and talks nostalgically about the good old fun days when bars and dance floors were awash in blood and beer. He’s known only by his surname (first name William has been discarded) and by his nickname, “The Wrecker”, acquired through his wrecking yard business.

Like most of the Pilbara miners, contractors and business owners, Clarke worked long and hard, first laying concrete slabs for the town of Karratha, built as Dampier outgrew itself, with later business ventures in wrecking, tyres, wheel alignments, panel beating and windscreens.

In the early days Dampier was closed with the Hamersley Iron boom gate. “We had to go to Cape Lambert to get fuel and Roebourne to get supplies.”

His tow truck was called in by the police to help transport bodies when someone died outside the ambit of the ambulance. When he was called to that fatal motorbike accident scene in November 1975 and immediately knew the dead man was Stazzonelli.

Unlike the movie story, no roo was involved and Red Dog was at the scene, not waiting at home. Stazzonelli had rounded the bend at the T intersection (a bit over 100m from where the kelpie’s statue is today) and slid into a big rock, crushing his leg and whacking his head. He was killed instantly.

“We used to roll the bodies up in rugs. We didn’t have body bags in those days,” said Clarke. “Red Dog hopped into the cab and came to the morgue with me. He saw where body went and I took him home with me.

“He had had a bit of a set-to with my boxer dog Jason but they were good mates by then. He stayed a few days and then off he went. He seemed to stay around with people he could trust, then he would disappear. You’d have no idea where he was and then one morning you’d get up and bugger me dead he would be there.”

Red Dog was a very smart dog, said Clarke. He was a bit wary, a bit standoffish. If anyone started arguing he would walk off. “He had obviously had a few rough times.”

He rode to Perth several times, often with Neil Deanspread, sometimes with his brother Gary. Truckie Dicko used to often take him on runs out to Millstream. “Dicko had a dog called Buck, a bastard of a dog. He and Red Dog had a couple of dust ups but they sorted it out and became good friends.’

Something similar happened with Dicko and Clarke and they had “four good fights” before settling down to become good friends.

When the Red Dog movie was being made, Clarke was asked if he would lend his restored EK Holden for some of the scenes. He did with some reservations but was reasonably pleased with the movie result, even though some parts were fictionalised.

“They probably have to do that to make a good story but Red Dog’s story was good enough I reckon.” The EK, with a blue bottom and white top, is due to appear on postcards being sold in the area.

Clarke is more or less retired after his mercurial life. His son now runs the business.

“I’ve been broke five times,” he said cheerily. “Wasn’t my fault. People would go broke owing me money. I lost a house at the marina in Maroochydore (Queensland) once when I went broke. And a five-bedroomed house in Karratha.”

Long hours making a quid, breaking and rebuilding meant Clarke didn’t see much of his four kids. His wife would line them up at the table on Sunday morning and make him repeat their names.

He’s bought each of the kids a house. He gave his wife a house and more than a million when they split. “I offered to buy her a new car too. I thought that was pretty good but she still calls me a bastard.”

With 20 grand left in the bank (“plus a bit more coming in”), a house and a “shack” on Louis Island, about 12k off the Karratha Coast, he and new partner Deb are planning caravan trips around Australia.

Clarke reckons he’s tired more than retired but his zest for life crackles in the air. You get the feeling with some of these North-West blokes that the iron ore seeps into their blood.

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Red Dog: Facts, fiction and folks around the Pilbara Wanderer.

5/25/2014

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RIGHT:

So tell me the truth Red Dog. How far did you wander beyond the Pilbara?

Dave in Dampier got into a bit of strife because he gave Red Dog a few lifts when he was doing the crib run. John at Port Sampson said Red Dog used to go with him on runs for service call-outs from the mine workshop.

Michele in the Roebourne Visitors Information said she had been in Dampier since 1965 but had never actually seen the legendary kelpie. She did, however, work for the vet Rick Fenny who treated the Pilbara Wanderer who featured in the Aussie film. “They said he was a bit of a mangy thing. He wasn’t very friendly.”

I love that film. Daughter Tasmin gave me the movie CD and I have happily sobbed my way through it a dozen times, usually with another teary female.

Red Dog’s statue is in Dampier. It was a beacon for me. I wanted to talk to locals and sort fact from fiction in the story about the kelpie who cadged rides on buses, ore trains and trailers, in utes and trucks, roaming the Pilbara and beyond for eight years.

True: Red Dog was born in Paraburdoo in 1971 and always had a wanderlust. He moved to Dampier with owner Col Cummings when he was 18 months old and took up his wandering ways, turning up in the mining towns around the North-West, hitching rides, scrounging feeds and issuing deadly farts.

True: In 1972 Red Dog formed his closest bond with Hamersley Iron driver John Stazzonelli, shadowing him everywhere until he was killed on his motorcycle in 1975 at an intersection less than 200m from where Red Dog’s statue stands today.

True: Red Dog’s vet fees were paid mainly by various miners, especially Ron, who made him a member of the sports club and opened a bank account for the dog. He was shot at least twice. Three miners ended up in trouble for going on a bender after taking Red Dog to the Port Hedland vet (before a clinic opened in Roebourne). Red Dog was made a member of the union so taking him to the vet would be a legitimate excuse not to be at work.

True: Not everyone liked Red Dog. He was poisoned in 1979. “Killed by the hand of man” grimly states the bronze plaque at the base of his statue.

False: John was an American who courted a girl called Nancy, became engaged and was buried at Dampier after he died. John Stazzonelli was actually a fairly mysterious Eastern European guy who courted ……ummmmm …. well….

We parked Isabel for the night in the backyard of Dave and Stephanie Culling within a stone’s throw of the famous statue (which now has a mysterious new padlock on the left foreleg).

Dave, a train driver for Rio Tinto, has been in Dampier for about 35 years. He said Red Dog was a character, a local identity, turning up here and there, scrounging food and cadging rides.

“If he wanted a ride he would just walk in front of a ute and when you stopped he would walk around to the passenger door to be let in. He got to know which vehicles would stop.

“He was a bit scruffy. Now and again someone would take him home and give him a bit of a scrub up.”

Dave’s work at that time involved taking crib meals around to mine sites. Red Dog took to accompanying him and then scrambling through to sit on top of the box holding the food packs.

“Someone spotted him and starting yelling to ‘get that mangy thing away from our food’. There was a bit of a fuss with the union so I just had to refuse to let the dog into the vehicle. He seemed to understand and wandered off again.”

Stories of Red Dog’s wanderings blend myth and reality. “Truckies used to pick him up a lot. He went to Perth a couple of times and possibly Darwin. There was that rumour that he went on a trip to Japan and back on one of the ore boats but….” Dave rolled his eyes.

“He did seem to be looking for something though.”

As in the film, Red Dog took up his wanderings in earnest after John was killed. Other episodes in the movie have their fact in the book Red Dog by Nancy Gillespie but serious romantic latitude has been taken in the later book and film about the legend.

John Stazzonelli, it seems, was a bit of a legend in his own right. At Point Sampson we parked Isabel in the driveway of John and Debbie Potten, identities in the Pilbara since the early 1970s. They reminisced about the legend over a beer.

“About 50 women – mainly married woman – in the area were weeping when John was killed,” said Debbie Potten. “I know of at least two married women who sobbed all the way to his funeral in Perth.”

No one was sure if Stazzonelli was Polish, Hungarian or Yugoslav. “He was definitely East European and quite a nice looker,” said Debbie. “Short and dark. I obviously didn’t know him as well as some women did.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said her husband John, who was a service manager in the good old days of Hamersley Iron (pre-Rio Tinto). Red Dog would turn up at the workshop now and again.

“He would let you know if he wanted a drink or anything and then he would hop in the ute and come for rides wherever I went. After about three weeks he would disappear again.

“He seemed to be looking for something but he was a wanderer long before John arrived.”

Debbie said the Red Dog film had been popular in the Pilbara, even though parts were fictionalised. “They did the role of the vet Rick Fenny very well. I could have sworn it was him.”

Debbie and John love the history and character of the Pilbara towns. They have run their own businesses, are semi-retired and heavily involved in the community. John was president of the chamber of commerce and is busy as master of the Freemasons lodge.

We dined in their elegantly restored 1930s home at Point Sampson, decorated inside and out with fascinating antiques and memorabilia assembled from throughout Australia. Around the interlinked towns of Tom Price-Dampier-Karratha-Roebourne-Wickham-Cossack, the old interlaces with the new.

Just down the road from Debbie and John’s home, Cape Lambert is on the brink of becoming the biggest port in Australia, pushing more than a million tonnes of iron ore through every day, 40 trains, one passing through every 40 minjutes. It’s a chaotic economy of ups and downs as frenetic building projects evolve into operational phases, then new projects surface.

Roebourne, with its picturesque port of Cossack, is the north’s oldest town, says Michele Heymans who volunteers on weekends at the quaint visitors' centre built from the town’s historic old jail. She used to babysit for Rick Fenny, who still owns the vet clinic in Karratha after moving south.

Rick put Red Dog down after he was baited, left demented and in pain. He buried him somewhere in the bush around Roebourne. “I never actually saw the dog but loved the film. So many people are now coming here wanting anything to do with Red Dog.”

She sells them T-shirts, caps, mugs, stubby holders, CDs, books …… Red Dog post mortem is good for the tourism business here.

Michele’s been in the Pilbara since 1965. Her husband was a railway contractor, moving from Mt Isa and Townsville to build the Perth-Kalgoorlie line and then north to the Dampier-Tom Price railway.

“We were in Dampier before it was Dampier,” she said. “It used to be King Bay then. Ding Bay we called it.”

The port was opening up. She lived out on the construction site by the water, separated from the “Yankee village where all the bosses’ wives lived”.

“We got to know how to get food if you went to the side of the mess and waited in line for ages. The Yankee women always got served first. There were some massive steaks in those stores.”

Michele, with (now-ex) husband Peter and her small children lived in the railway camps as the Tom Price line was built. She loved the atmosphere of the old days. They moved to Kununurra for the Argyle Dam project. That was before the famous pink diamonds were discovered.

“When they drained the river we used to pick out all the brightly coloured agates from gravel. We used to throw away lumps of smoky looking stuff. We now realise they were probably diamonds.”

Great people and colorful stories are part of the wealth of the Pilbara.

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By George, Graeme's got it

5/23/2014

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He was easily spotted as a bird-spotter. A pair of shorts, no-nonsense boots and socks, grey-haired and 70ish with a serious pair of binoculars around his neck, Graeme George had that alert manner and focus that distinguishes avid bird watchers.

He was more than that. A permaculture ecologist from Victoria, he studies habitats as well as noting species of birds. He likes to figure out why certain birds are found in some areas and not others; what food, fauna and climate they need to survive. He also has some pretty strong views on how the human species is going to survive in its habitat.

We found Graeme prowling around the homestead campsite in the Pilbara’s Millstream Chichester national park. He was in good spirits, buoyed by a refreshing plunge in the nearby Deep Reach pool and well pleased with his first sighting of star finches.

Tony and I had had a grumpy introduction to the park, being given the runaround because the first two campsites we wanted were closed without much notice but, as can happen, it didn’t work out too badly.

We had more time to explore the cool, airy Millstream homestead (above) and its surrounds. The pastoral lease was taken up about 1866 for the station along spring-fed pools rising from the plains and forming a tributary for the Fortescue River. Explorer F. T. Gregory noted in 1861 that the stream was “running strong enough to supply a large mill”, giving the station its name.

At its peak Millstream covered a million acres and carried 55,000 sheep. It once held the Australian record for the highest price paid for a fleece.

The second homestead was built in 1914 with wide verandahs and altered only minimally when turned into a visitor centre in 1990. A detached corrugated iron kitchen with a high curved roof still contains an impressive wood stove with ovens.

A rambling walk goes past what was once an ant bed tennis court, beside what was once an expansive vegetable garden (rice and cotton were among plants grown but apparently no one knew how to harvest them) and wanders through a grove of hundreds of date palms to the water-lilied lagoon. Scattered along the paths were plaques peeking into the past with slightly haphazard first person quotes.

Millstream is a rare haven in the ancient, parched landscape of the red-rocked Pilbara. Rare too was the camp kitchen which almost made up for our disappointment at not being able to have a campfire when we became reluctant overnighters.

Possibly one of the finest national parks kitchens created to date, Millstream’s offering to campers has been built on the same design as the detached kitchen at the homestead, with a curved corrugated iron roof, verandah and clean tiles.

A long tiled central bench separated the gas stove with barbecue at one end and the washing up area with Graeme at the other.

He had hit the road in his trusty ute for a two-month break from busy rounds of meetings back home in Victoria. Semi-retired and still lecturing, he explained that permaculture had evolved because the heady growth of everything in the world was believed to be leading to a global collapse.

Transport, communication, food production and energy supplies could fail dramatically so those who had the means to be self-sufficient would survive. Permaculture had broadened beyond its initial grow-vegies-spin-wool base sustainability to encompass much more of mankind’s activity.

I had to ask the question. “What do you consider to be the greatest threat to mankind and the planet.” The answer came without hesitation. I nearly hugged him. Here was an educated, environmentally aware Victorian with a clear focus on the root cause of our problems but one that never seems to get air in the subjective, emotional and sneakily financially self-serving debates about carbon, climate change and rising sea levels.

“Overpopulation – and over-consumption,” said Graeme firmly. Unless we fix those two things civilisation as we know it will collapse. Yes! Here’s a bare-chested Victorian environmentalist singing my song.

We agreed that education of women was critical to saving the planet. Not higher education in developed countries so well-heeled females could spend, spend and spend but basic education for women in developing countries that would lead to them controlling their fertility. We also need corporate success to be measured in regenerational growth, not exponential growth.

I slept soundly. Maybe it was the wine. As we watched Graeme stalking birds the next morning I wondered if I should start growing grapes. Then I remembered my mother’s vintner foray with a potent poison that was supposed to be nectarine wine.

We drove off to admire the dramatic landscape in the park of almost 240,000 hectares, heading for the Python Pool that had been our initial destination. It was not at its most spectacular, a little stagnant but with prettily green algae on the surface around the edges. A sign said not to swim if the algae were in bloom.

A procession of work-like vehicles arrived and disgorged occupants who plunged into the pool. Apparently after driving a few hundred kilometres to get there from anywhere else you are not going to be deterred by a fluffy bit of algae bloom.

We slipped the swim and headed for the coast. I wondered what effect the algae had on Pilbara swimmers and whether gentle permaculturalists had extended their preparations for doomsday to include defence strategies.

How would they protect their pockets of self-sufficiency from invasions from hungry hordes clutching high heels, pushing Ferraris that had run out of fuel and fanning themselves with dead tablets? You would have to have a hidden cellar for the wine.

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Some days are not diamonds in iron ore country

5/20/2014

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ABOVE: A potentially hazardous encounter in a gully of paprika custard. Thank God his wide load sign was nearly falling off. Tony supplied large zip ties for repairs.

As we rolled back into the Pilbara, Pannawonica’s pies, a fright with firewood and frustration over fire put stones into a day that should have been all diamonds.

It sparkled in brilliant sunshine. Rain had speckled and splashed the reds and oranges of iron ore country with emerald grass and a buff frosting from flowering spinifex.

We popped into the mining town of Pannawonica in the morning with our favourite travelling indulgences, pies and coffee, on our mind. We are suckers for flat whites and local bakery pies in small towns, rating them out of 10 when we succumb. The pie evaluation scale has as a 1 the lumpy Scottish lady on the microwave-heated cellophane pack around cardboard pastry and stew.

Pannawonica lets you know what it’s about with its welcome sign: “Please drive carefully. Let our minors become miners.” And like all mining towns, it is neatly laid out with no garish advertising signs. So subtle is its signage that is it bloody frustrating trying to find something like a supermarket.

Find it we did. We picked up a minimum of supplies (think about double your usual cost for most goods; the meat on sale coyly did not display any prices apparently on the assumption that you commit to buying before you faint at the expense). We asked about pies. At the delicatessen next door, we were told.

Even “next door” it was difficult to find but we were pleased to learn the pies were just coming out of the oven. Happily we ordered flat whites that turned out to be passable and settled down to munch our local pies. Aaaargh. The lumpy Scottish lady beamed on us from the cellophane.

A little less cheerily we headed for our destination, the Millstream Chichester National Park on the edge of the Hammersley Ranges. All our pamphlets and maps showed the park had three camp sites and we had decided we would camp at the Python Pool, a little further on than the others but apparently a salubrious spot.

First we had to stop on the dirt road to gather firewood, which took an hour in the flood debris of a gully. As Tony hitched the wood on to Isabel’s bum, I climbed into the passenger seat. My eyes widened as a semi loaded with a grader sailed around the corner towards us.

Robust dust swirls and billows. What flowed from the semi’s wheels did better than that. It rippled and rose like slops of velvety paprika custard. Isabel was going to be engulfed. I squeaked at Tony to shut the driver’s door. He was on to it. Then I realised I couldn’t put up my window.

Isabel’s interior was saved from a russet snowstorm by a small miracle. The semi’s front wide load sign was falling off. Tony signalled to the driver; he slowed and the paprika custard subsided as he reached Isabel. Tony produced a couple of zip ties; the semi went west and we eased Isabel east.

Around Australia national parks compete to confuse visitors. Some say it’s a conspiracy because they really don’t want people in their parks. That was what we were figuring about Millstream after we arrived at the self-help entrance. We had an annual parks pass and couldn’t see where to note that or where to register for camp sites.

We drove 7km north to the visitors’ centre to talk to someone who could put us straight. The centre was in a wonderful old homestead but unmanned. We spotted an unobtrusive notice: the Python Pool camp was closed. Damn. Well, we would go back to the entrance, try again to register and stay at the Crossing Pool, our second choice for a campsite. We drove back 7km, studied all the confusing signage and spotted another modest notice saying the Crossing Pool was closed. That left only the homestead site open for camping. We found another discreet piece of advice saying camping fees were to be paid at the entrance to individual campsites, so we drove back 7km to the homestead and alighted at the entrance sign with a fee box. Another sign said fees were not to be paid there any more; they would be collected by a camp host.

As we drove around looking for a camp site, sad realisation dawned on us at the same time. Unlike the other sites, the Millstream homestead campsite does not allow campfires.Time for a beer. I flicked open the pamphlet I had picked up at the visitors’ centre. It said camping was available at the Python Pool, Crossing Pool and the homestead. Time for another beer.