Mt Whale Back Mine Tour - Newman

It's 34 degrees in Newman today (36 tomorrow) and I am here until Sunday morning. Why? HAWTHORN are in the grand final and my next stop will be 2-3 days exporing the Pilbaras, with no phone (except Sat phone), no TV etc - ie bush camping. So I have had to extend my stay in Newman so I can visit the Newman Hotel, known as the Purple Pub and hopefully watch the Hawks come home with the silverware. Looking fwd to the atmosphere in such a remote place.

So why is Newman a town in the middle of nowhere? In the late 1950's Stan Hilditch discovered a mountain which was 68.8% pure iron ore (highest grades in the world). Long story short, BHP Billiton now run the largest open cut mine of iron ore in the world, called the Mt Whale Back mine. It's been in full operation for +40 years and there is at least another 60 years of resources to harvest. They have estimated 1.6 billion tonnes of high grade iron ore at Mt Whale Back.

200 Tonne Wabco Ore Truck

• The trucks in the pictures carry 200 tonne of dirt. There have only been 30 made and Mt Whale Back has 22 of them. Fully loaded, the truck weighs 75 tonne more than the take off weight of a 747 jumbo. 
• Ore trucks, made by Catepillar, automatic, mechanically driven on the left, with 6 fwd gears and 1 reverse. 

Railway Facts - The railroad network is impressive.

• BHP have the longest privately owned rail network in the sthrn hemisphere from Newman to Port Hedland with a distance of 426 km's.
• First train load left Newman in 1969
• Average train measures 3.75 km's consisting of 6 locomotives, 212 - 336 ore cars and 1 driver. 
• Each ore car carries 25 tonnes of ore and the entire train carries 42,000 tonnes of ore
• Fully loaded, 65 km's per hr / breaking distance 3 km's
• One way takes about 8 hours

Tyre Store

• Holds approx $2 mill of tyres at any given time
• Tyre can measure up to 3.5 metres in diametre and weigh about 5 tonne (with rims)
• Each tyre costs $40,000 and lasts between 9-12 months. 

Other facts

• 80 million litres of water is pumped out of the pit each week
• Water carts carry 104,000 ltrs water and takes about 3 hrs to empty, surpressing dust
• FIFO employees - 2 weeks on 1 week off - 1st week 12 hrs during the day / 2nd week 12 hrs during the night (mine operates 24/7) and 3rd week home.

The Newman caravan park is very empty at this time of year. As iron ore prices have gone down, BHP has laid off people plus it is end of tourist season as it is starting to get hot. So I;m here all alone in the grassed area of the camp ground. To be honest the park is 95% dongas for the miners and the rest is for tourists. According to a worker here - 90% of the dongas are empty.

This sign struck fear into me. Please click on it - to enlarge and read.
What I took away is that they have soooo many snakes here - they have snake wranglers here... Did I mention I hate snakes!!! Day 2 and no snakes. Phew!!

LOL - as I am publishing this - a guy came up to the sign and rang the phone number. Snake in the area! Yes, a snake wrangler came and conquered with a snake in his bag.