We’ve been anchored off Dampier for about three weeks and we are ready to go, but need to wait just a little longer. Our cruising permit for Indonesia isn’t valid until Aug 19 and of course we will time things so that we sail in favourable weather.
So what does one do in Dampier?? Dampier is a tiny town with a small and expensive grocer, no post office, no banks, one pub, a bowling club and the sailing club. Wednesday and Friday nights we can go to the sailing club for happy hour and we generally have dinner there on Fridays. Sundays we go to the ‘all you can eat’ BBQ at the pub and then, having exhausted the entertainment options in Dampier we look forward to our weekly shopping excursions to Karratha. Having no car, one of the weekly highlights is the Tuesday bus to Karratha.
Karratha is pretty remote, about 1000 miles from Perth and it is a town of about 16,000. The prices are pretty outrageous. Fuel (gas or petrol) is about $1.66 per liter or about $6.30 per gallon. Stopped at McDonalds in Karratha one day to use the free wifi for some computer downloads and saw an Angus burger for just over $12.00 and a cheeseburger for over $5.00. Beer wasn't too bad...here in Dampier we could get a 30 can block for $55.00 but over in Karratha the same thing was $37.00, and they had 24 can packs of coke at 2 for $33.00. Nice cheeses are a few dollars more than in Perth too (and yes…we thought the prices in Perth were high after 14 months in the USA). We saw ears of corn and zucchini for $1.98 each (yes, each ear, each little zucchini) and we are so grateful to the plantation owner in Carnarvon who loaded us up with so many beautiful (and free!) fruits and veggies which have lasted well and we are still eating. I don't think anything is grown up here...it all comes from Perth. Oddly, even though most things are grown up near Carnarvon, it is all trucked to Perth and then back on trucks to the grocery stores around the state…including Carnarvon. How weird is that?!
Karratha is all about the mining...no other reason for it's existence. There is a big north west shelf oil and gas project (one of the world's largest LNG producers), and salt mining in addition to the HUGE iron ore mining. They can load 10,000 tons an hour per ship and fill a ship in 24 to 36 hrs with iron ore, and they load about 4 ships at a time on one jetty. There is also the largest privately owned rail system in Australia up here, and it is exclusively for hauling the iron ore to the ports.
We’ve (primarily Phil) recently been engaged in the installation of some new batteries. Long story, but we ordered 3 new 165 amp deep cycle batteries for our house bank...two 220's are coming out and we have another two 80's in there. Chris and I have to help...those things are really heavy!! The 165's weigh 46 kg each, and we are barely able to lift the 220's. We managed to get them out without messing up our backs. Bears really don’t do manual labor.
When not engaged in boat maintenance, eating seems to preoccupy Phil and Chris. Phil's been testing a variety of bread recipes. Yum.
As I mentioned, we had a visitor on the weekend. Every Friday night, since we left Fremantle, Jean, Jerry, Phil and Chris get together in some pub or sailing club and take our photo and send it to John saying, "here we are...where are you?" I guess it finally got to him. John flew up on Friday and turned up at the sailing club with his rental car. He lives on a boat so staying with us wasn’t a new or unusual drama for him (aside from having to share a cabin with a bear). We visited the nearby sights and enjoyed his stay.
Here we are in checking out some of the old buildings and the old harbour in Cossack.
We ran across this sailing club out here too. Looked pretty desolate but it must get busy on other weekends. There were three vessels out the back on the hard.
One final note...WHO has been drinking my RUM??!!!
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