If you look at a map of Australia, on the upper left hand
side of the continent (the northwest corner), you may see a very very tiny dot
with little letters that say "Port Hedland." It is here where Celebrity felt the need to
dock and spend nine hours. It provided
good material for the comedian on board last night who simply asked, “Why?”
With a population of 15,000, Port Hedland is
known as "cyclone center" in Australia,
since more cyclones hit here (an average of one every two years) than anywhere
else in Australia. It is also the community where in the 1960s,
major iron ore deposits were discovered.
Combine cyclones and iron-ore mines and you get a pretty good idea of
the appeal of Port Hedland.
The ship docked in the middle of the bustling
cargo port where big freighters take off, laden with iron ore and salt. Port
Hedland handles more tonnage than any other port in Australia, and they are proud of
it. This is a true working class town
where the tallest two structures are the water tower and the control tower for
the port.
The town offered a shuttle from the port to the
center of town (about three minutes away
... we would have walked but they don't allow passengers to wander
through the port). In the center of
town, the major attraction is a Woolworth store ... where we bought a tube of
toothpaste. Now you're really getting a
feel for the excitement of Port Hedland.
OK, so sometimes I’m a little tough. The reality is, we have visited places with
much less appeal than Port Hedland.
One cool thing here, there is still a fairly good
aboriginal population, and we encountered an old aboriginal woman artist. She was as fascinated to hear that she was
talking to someone from "as far away as Mexico" as we were talking to
her about life, such as it is, in Port Hedland.
It is a simple existence. She
said they just got television here 20 years ago (she asked if we had good
television yet in Mexico!),
and Internet is a fairly new phenomenon as well. Only one little shack in town has Internet,
and the local residents were in awe of all the cruise ship passengers who
swamped their little building which provides the sole link to the cyber world
($1 for 30 minutes online, and it held up well under the crush of users …
actually very impressive).
Sailing out of Port Hedland, dozens of empty ships
were lined up to take on loads of iron ore (our departure was delayed by a half
hour because of the shipping traffic jam).
And the highlight of Port Hedland …. the sunset over the Indian Ocean. It
is already my new screen saver, and likely will be for a long time, reminding
me of the interesting day spent in Port Hedland.
Travel note:
We have now left the arid south of Australia and are entering the
tropical north. The temperature here
today is over 100F, 38C, with high humidity.
On the horizon, we can see large thunderstorms building over the vast
inland plains. It is much like Puerto Vallarta in the
summer ... climate and sunset-wise and that's about it. Also, while Starbucks has not yet invaded Australia (there are just a very few in Sydney,
Brisbane, and Melbourne), McDonalds is everywhere, actually more than you see
in the US and Mexico (we were
told there is a McDonald "near here," but not one in Port Hedland
.... "near here" could be 50 miles away). We haven't been to any of them (we don't go
there when we are home either), but some people on the ship say they are
"just as good as they are in Tulsa."
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