Another day at the port 11/9/15

An awesome nights sleep , not waking till 7am ! We eat and get organised for today's activities , off
to South Hedland to check out a few things .
 First stop is beside the road & railway bridge , overlooking the Rio Tinto Salt Farm . It's hard to describe the area , with triple trailer semi's coming and going , non stop to the port . There's a bulldozer pushing the salt down from the top of the pile - it's one of the bigger bulldozers , but looks small up on the pile , then there's the front end loader that's got a bucket the size of a truck - it only took a couple of buckets to fill the trailers up . There was a grader working in the next salt pan? pulling a very large scraping device about 30m across . The other 8 or 10 salt pans stretched into the distance , each one would be about 500m x 500m or more!
  The railway was interesting , one empty train was heading out , and had two engines , approx 140 carriages , two more engines , then another 140 carriages . Each carriage can carry 138.2 tonnes of iron ore - that adds up to a lot of iron ore per train load !!!! The train disappeared into the distance , but the tail end was still going past us !!!
 Off to South Hedland , we pull into the car park and wander over to the post office to get some info on registration changes , license changes etc. we walk away with a handful of paperwork !!
  We wandered into the shopping centre and into Kmart , it would have to be one of the worst organised stores we've been in , we bought a few clothes and headed out . Walking through the mall , we found an OPSM having a 25% off sale on sunglasses , so bought a pair , saving $50 - bargain!!
 Back to the ute , we decided to go for a drive to Finucane Island - across the harbour from Port Hedland . It was like driving into Port Kembla , with conveyors running everywhere, being fed by rotating diggers , train lines running near all of them , delivering more & more ore to the sites .  We checked out the beach and the boat ramp . The beach is like the town side , with the limestone cliffs about 3m tall , very little sand and salt crystallising in the holes in the rock .
 Back to the park for a late lunch , before getting some diesel and then food shopping . Back again and time for a swim & a chat , before a beer & salsa .
 Our neighbours had been fishing and had caught a few , and were gracious enough to give us a fillet of giant  trevally , which was really good !!
  No photos tonight as my computer refused to play ball and won't turn on - not happy Jan !!!! We'll catch up on them later .