Beasley River 16 October 2006

Drove onto Tom Price (pop 2500) early in the morning and although it was a typical mining town, they had gone to a bit of trouble to make it attractive. It was green and tidy and because of its elevation of over 1000 metres, it was so much cooler than you would expect for a town so close to Marble Bar, the hottest town in Australia. Did a big shop in Coles and was amazed how fresh the shop was compared to many others in such remote places. Caught up with Robyn and John, and readied the Swiss bikes on the roof for a fast take off after our afternoon tour of the Rio Tinto’s iron ore mine. It is one of the largest mines in Oz and like all the mining areas we visited, is set for a dramatic expansion. We were in awe of the large trucks they use to carry the iron ore from the mine to the trains. They can carry 250 tonnes of ore, cost $3 million and each tyre costs $100,000! We then picked up our Swiss bike riders, Alamo and Moema, again and set off 650 km for the coast.
Settled in to a bush camp site and had a lovely evening listening to the travel stories of our companions.