Day 41 - Weipa

It was a more relaxing pace today with nothing formally booked other than the mine tour at 2:30 in the afternoon.  Perfect spot for a bit of fishing, and we had quite a few spots that are potentials.  We opted to go to the longest single lane bridge in the Southern Hemisphere at over 800 metres, it bridges Weipa to Mapoon.

 The bridge

As per normal for this time of year, the south easter breeze was well and truely picked up and blowing a stiff breeze consistently.  If only I had a dinghy for a spot of sailing, the crocs wouldn't have a chance! We put a few baited lines in off the bridge but no luck.  There were others that had caught small things like brim so they were there!

After losing a rig to the rocks we packed it in.  The wind seemed to pick up speed compared to when we had arrived. Not sure how that is possible but it happened.

We got back just before lunch empty handed and our usual meal of flat bread was chewed down with extra gusto.

We met the mine tour at the caravan park's front office.  Even though we were only 10 minutes early, it seemed that the driver was a little miffed that we were "late".   But never mind we hopped in the bus (back seat boomers!) and headed out to the mine site.

Throughout the tour a lot of information was communicated quickly.  The key summary points are Weipa is a Rio town.  They own the mine and this includes most of the accommodation in the town, being for the mining staff.  The Weipa town council is made up of 8 members, 4 Rio's, three other town folk and two aborigines, seems to work, talking to the locals.

 Bauxite being loaded onto ships.  They range for 75 - 90 tons of cart capacity.

The tour went for about 2:30 hours, all in a rather chilly air conditioned bus.  The infrastructure and scale of the operation is impressive.  The bauxite is simply scraped and loaded into 100, 200 or 500 ton trucks with 20 ton bucket loaders and then transported to a train to be shipped out to Gladstone.  It's there that the alimunium process is completed.

Scraping and loading bauxite into a 200 ton hauler.

 The sorting and initial cleaning station of the bauxite, then pumped onto waiting trains at 6,500 tons per hour.

 A water tanker to dampen the roads that are between 5 - 8 metres thick.  He holds 72,500 litres per load.

After we got back the boys were hanging for a swim in the park's pool. After yesterday's brief swim, the deep end was out of bounds till an adult was present. Dad volunteered to take them.  He reports it was one step from spanner water.  He only lasted about 10 minutes before escaping and chatting with other campers heading north, sharing our experiences.  The boys however had no problem swimming till their lips were blue!  No sense no feeling!