Karratha to Onslow

While we were in Karratha went out to the Burrup Peninsula to check out some of the ancient aboriginal petroglyphs (rock carvings). The Burrup Peninsula and Murujuga National Park were amazing. Both of us were completely blown away at the sheer number of art pieces scattered all over the mountains of loose rock. It is believed that there is between 50,000 and 100,000 individual petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula. Some of these art pieces are believed to be between 25,000 and 30,000 years old dating all the way up to about the 1860's.

Some sort of small animal, probably now extinct.  

I believe these are Emu footprints, but I am most likely incorrect.

 One of our marsupial friends. Because the petroglyphs are so old, some of the animals that are depicted in them are now extinct. The best case of this is the thylacine or "Tasmanian Tiger" that is clearly drawn in petroglyphs at Burrup. We will be going back to try to find one of the tigers as we don't believe we found any today.

Lizard... Crocodile... it is open to interpretation I guess. 

While spending some time in the Karratha Library doing this blog we found a book about the petroglyphs of Burrup Peninsula. Within the book we discovered that that this particular petroglyph is the "Rainbow Man". There are many different drawings of the rainbow man at Burrup but this is one we found and Deep Gorge.

 These were listed in the same book as "unknown" but are believed to be among the oldest petroglyphs in the park.

Once again and unknown petroglyph, but could be as much as 30,000 years old. 

 Red Dog statue at Dampier.

Port of Dampier. Rio Tinto loading bulk carriers with Iron Ore.

The next morning we went back to Burrup for a second crack at finding a Thylacine carving. Spoiler alert, we didn't. Here are some more interesting pieces of Burrup Peninsula rock art though.

Gentleman Kangaroo 

Some sort of Possum like rodent. 

 My bet is these are either a clutch of Turtle eggs or Emu eggs.

A Red Kangaroo makes navigating the deadly rocky outcrop look easy. It was actually really impressive to see how quick they can move across such rough terrain. they must be able to plan their landing spots 4 or 5 hops in advance, they never seemed to come unstuck. They can navigate this minefield with ease but not a strained ring-lock fence. 

Something else worth checking out while out on the Burrup Peninsula is the North West Shelf LNG onshore plant. This thing is HUGE. I wont bother explaining where it is other then at Burrup because you literally can not miss it. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo.

In Karratha we stayed at the Discovery Parks Caravan Park in town. The park was nice. Only complaint was lots of noisy traffic going over a speed hump at 5-530 each morning. A lot of the onsite cabins in the park are used for worker accommodation for mining/gas projects, the workers all file out of the park one noisy clunk over the speed humps after another. Apart from that the park was fine.
We used some free wifi at the Karratha Visitors Centre to help with some blogging, we found out lots of information regarding the art at Burrup while doing so, they have a great selection of books about the local area that we found really interesting.

Onslow

In Onslow we stayed at the Beachfont Caravan Park. This park is owned and run by the Shire of Ashburton, it has recently been renovated and rebuilt, presumably with some cash the shire stumbled across when approving the construction of the Wheatstone oil and gas plants. These plants are HUGE. The park is currently managed by a very friendly couple who we shared stories of life in Hedland with as they had also lived there at one stage.

Our camp at the caravan park in Onslow. Was a great spot, for a caravan park. 

The view from our campsite at Onslow Beachfront Caravan Park. Its low tide but you get the picture, it was pretty nice. 

 This is the view from our campsite at Onslow on dusk.

 Onslow Memorial Park is right next to the Caravan Park. I got up early to snap a sunrise photo at their impressive new memorial shrine. It was pretty bloody good. On ANZAC day the sun rises perfectly centred, I had to stand off to one side to make it look centred. It is a very nice park. 

This is the current jetty at Onslow. It is not for public use, it is owned by and for the sole use of loading Onslow Salt ships. They dock the salt carrier ships perpendicular to the jetty at the far end and load the ships with a single ship loader. 

Old Onslow

The town of Old Onslow was abandoned and a lot of it relocated to the site of the current township on Beadon Bay. The original town was on the banks of the Ashburton River and was built there because the river mouth was decided was a good spot to build a jetty and give the region a port facility for the transport of wool and sheep. The jetty and port in the Ashburton were a failure because cyclones would flood the Ashburton and the jetty and the whole mouth of the river would quickly silt up and become unusable. They decided a "deep water jetty" was required and the best site for that was Beadon Point at Beadon Bay, this was also a failure. Not because of the location, other then it being in a cyclone prone area and their failure to accommodate for that. The new jetty was successful enough and was even used as a re-fuelling station for the Australian Navy in WWII. There is still a bunker visible today, it was used to store the array of fuel hoses needed to re-fuel different ships and subs. The jetty was destroyed in a cyclone in the 90s. 

The police station and gaol at Old Onslow.

 The gaol building at Old Onslow.

Inside the gaol building at old Onslow. Note the ring cemented into the floor to chain prisoners to. This was the "exercise yard".

 This is one of the old cells. even when locked in the cell you were chained to the floor. I couldn't bare to think how hot these cells would have been in a hot Pilbara summer... Tin roof and stone walls... 

I am no expert but I reckon this might of been a toilet... I hope not.