​​After Karijini we stocked up at Tom Price (another BHP mining town). Tom Price is famous for : being the highest town above sea level in ​​Western Australia, and is consequently dubbed “Top Town in WA”. 

Traveling in the Pilbara is fairly challenging if you are towing a caravan. The roads are busy 24/7 with huge road trains loaded with iron ore barreling along at 100kmph while we travel at about 90kmph . These behemoths suddenly loom in the rear view camera and ‘monster’ us until we can safely pull over to let them pass. Mostly they are quite polite but we have had a few nail-biting moments. Another thing we have learned to take seriously is when a pilot vehicle with a ‘wide load’  sign and flashing lights comes along. Sometimes this actually means the load takes up one and a half lanes! For us this means we pull right off the road and wait.

We stayed a couple of nights in Newman, another mining town. They have a great visitor centre with free overnight parking for self contained vans where we spent the night. The next morning we were able to do the Whaleback Mine Tour – 2 hours on a minibus with commentary and plenty of photo opportunities. The mine is 1.5 kilometres wide, more than five kilometres long and is approximately half a kilometre deep. Development of the mine beginning in the early 1960’s leading to the construction of the town of Newman as well as a 426 kilometre railway line to transport the ore to the port facilities at Port Hedland.