Catching up with Tom and Jerry.

Ahh… that would be the town of Tom Price, and our mate Jerry from home. From Exmouth we left the coast and headed inland – East for the first time in a loooooong time, which made for a lovely afternoon drive with no sun shining in our eyes. We had been told by so many people that there is really not much worth seeing along the coast road from Exmouth to Port Headland, and that cutting in to see Karajini NP is a much better drive. We sooooo agree! AND we got to catch up with a very good friend of ours who works FIFO in the mining town of Tom Price, right on the edge of Karajini. Win win! The drive from Exmouth to Tom Price is about 650km so we cut that in half with a free camp along the way. We were thinking of staying at Nanatarra Roadhouse, which is apparently lovely and VERY reasonably priced (our friends stayed there) but Dunc felt happy to drive further and I wanted to save a few $$ and Bertha was fully charged and a free camp it was. There are any number of roadside stops, but a we made it to a lovely camp called ‘House Creek’ which is well off the road and tucked in under the trees. Just gorgeous! Dunc sweet-talked our way into squeezing Bertha behind all the caravans already there. I’m not sure it was a site, as such, more like the access road, but everyone was parked facing the other way and it worked out perfectly in the end.

We arrived in the town of Tom Price early enough to get settled, go shopping and check out the Visitor’s Centre, where we had to be by 8.30am the next morning. Jerry and Katie had organized a mine tour for us all. Lucky us, as they are dependent on numbers and this was the only confirmed tour for some time! The Coles supermarket in town shares its freight with Rio Tinto, so the prices are the same as in Melbourne. After the prices in Exmouth, this was WONDERFUL! Other friends are travelling about 10 days ahead of us and thanks to Facebook, I am getting a heads-up on all the cool things to do – including save money on groceries. LOL.

Jerry works incredibly long hours, but we were lucky enough to have him to dinner both nights we were there. It was so lovely to see someone from home and for Dunc and I to have some ‘proper’ conversations. We have a LOT of conversations with the children, and a lot of ‘travel talk’ with the lovely Grey Nomads we meet, but its all light and fluffy and it was lovely to spend time with a friend ‘our age’. And it was nice to have a little touch of ‘our old home’. We did miss Katie and the children though. It was a bit funny to have only one member of the family to dinner. And usually it is the opposite way – we would have Katie and the children when Jerry was away at work. But it was a lovely and well-timed touch of home.

Our tour of the open cut mine at Tom Price was wonderful. The town and a mountain are named after the American man who was instrumental in finding the ore and lobbying the govt. to be able to mine here. Ironically, half the mountain is gone now – mined away. We were picked up by coach and driven through the mine site, so we could see the massive machinery at work. The mid-point of the tour was a large lookout over one of the enormous open-cut pits. The vehicles that are required are tremendously HUGE and the roads likewise. My favourite vehicle was the incredibly manoeuvrable one with a bulldozer blade at the front. They are responsible for keeping the roadways and just trundle along tidying things up as they go. (Can you tell I’ve forgotten the name of it? Someone will tell me soon, I’m sure!)

After the tour we headed off to find the 4WD track to the top of 'Mount Nameless', the highest peak in the area. It’s only still there to hold the antennas and phone communications up. Otherwise, it also would have been mined away by now! The view from the top was amazing, and Dunc very much enjoyed the 4WD challenge – though it was nothing compared to Steep Point.

We had Jerry over for dinner a second time. Dunc cooked his delicious ‘roo burgers’ as we get the meat from Coles. Once he constructs a ‘hamburger the lot’ around the kangaroo meat, you really can’t taste any difference from a normal burger. It’s apparently a leaner, healthier meat so we have them a fair bit.

We stayed at the Tom Price Tourist Park and I was overjoyed to see that they had a children’s section in their bookswap! In all our travels, this is the first one I have found to do so. Lexie and I swapped some books and we were on our way once more.