We go on a Visitor Centre organized tour of the surrounds. Our first stop is at Australia's largest solar salt fields owned by Dampier Salt which has a total operating area of 10,000 hectares with a current production capability of 4.2 million tonnes / year. Harvested salt is mainly used for chemicals, industrial and road de-icing in Europe.
We then had to don our protective Rio Tinto "gear" for our tour of theParker Point production facilities. Two types of iron ore are exported from here - Lump and Fines. Operations are 24/7, 7 days per week. It is here that the ore trains from Tom Price are unloaded, stock-piled by Stackers (stockpile capacity of 18 X 210,000 tonnes) and scooped up by the Reclaimers to load onto the ships. These ship loaders load 10,000 tonnes per hour and takes approx. 24-36 hours for 1 export carrier. Interesting, but BHP Billiton & Port Headland have the better facilities.
The next part of the tour takes us to the North West Shelf Venture Visitors' Centre which overlooks he Woodside operated Gas Plant at Karratha and learn about Australia's largest oil and gas resource development.
Following the tour, we make our way around and find Red Dog's Memorial and observe the workings of another FIFO mining town.
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