THURSDAY 5 OCTOBER     KARRATHA

Hot.

After breakfast, we went back to the Burrup Peninsula to have a look at the infrastructure of the NW Shelf Gas Project. This was developed in the 1980’s, extracts gas from offshore wells, processes it onshore and both exports it overseas in special tankers, and sends it south via pipeline.

The Visitors Centre  was a very interesting place to visit, and free. We saw a good video about the Project.

Display tanks show how marine life colonizes the legs of the offshore structures, rather like some sort of reef – I think this display was designed to give the idea that they benefit the environment.

There was a feature sculpture outside the administration area – a memorial to workers injured in the Project. It was created by the lady who became Head of Art at my school – she lived here before moving over to us in Melbourne.

We then drove further out on the Peninsula, to Withnell Bay. Then we explored a side track,  where the construction camp was when the plant was being built. Went up to a lookout. I was surprised to see how extensive the salt flats are.

After cruising around the area for a while, we decided that, in fact, Dampier was a nicer place to live than Karratha.

Tea was a beef stir fry, with rice – from a new stir fry recipe book I bought.