Tom Price

Went to Tom Price. There's a haul truck for the tourists (photo left).

Had a lazy arvo. Swam in the caravan park pool.

 Next day went to the massive Tom Price mine. The mine uses up a bomb load of diesel. They pay 50 cents a litre. Drivers are being replaced by driverless tech on the haul trucks and trains. The haul trucks weigh about 250 tonnes and can carry 260 tonnes. They use electric drives, with a diesel generator. Braking, they use electric braking, regenerative maybe? Not sure if they have batteries but it'd make a lot of sense. Then they use their brakes for the last 5 to 10km/h to come to a halt. Otherwise they'd burn their brakes out.

The mine is about 1.5km long. It's been running since the 1960s and will not ever run out of ore it seems.

Left: quite pure iron ore.

Anything below about 60% pure is not economically viable to recover, but there is a heap of stuff that's 50% iron, so they will always be able to recover more, just when the price goes up enough. There's enough to cover the whole world in 1km of iron apparently across the different mines. The iron has come up from the earth's core about 3500 million years ago with volcanic activity. This is amoung the oldest surface areas on earth.

There is stacks of iron ore in the Pilbara.

After the tour with our spoils - a lump of haematite.

Mount Nameless - aka Jarndurmunha for the last 40,000 odd years - was near the camp, but we didn't climb due to a lack of time, and the kids don't really go for that kind of thing.