Meeting the Indian Ocean

Friday 29th MayToday we covered a few more km's through Road Train territory after we left Mt Magnet. We were even lucky enough to pull in behind a road train (photo above) on a road side stop and have a chat to the driver during his prescribed 20min break. The road train had 3 trailers, was 53.5mt long, and had a gross weight of 147,000kg. It normally travels at 100km/h and is fitted with a speed limiter for 102km/h. The truck has 3 large LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) tanks in addition to the normal Diesel tanks. Most of the trip is done purely on the 500lt LNG, and only the last 100km is done on Diesel. The Road Train was carrying about 90t of Iron Ore from a mine to the port of Geraldton, where the Ore is loaded onto a ship and exported. The company has over 40 such trucks which run 24/7 on this 900km round trip. The driver told us that one of the other transport companies has permit for a gross weight of 170,000kg, which allows for 4 trailers. We'd seen 3 road trains that were slowed down by tourists in a Motor Home going the other way. The Road Trains leave a save stopping distance of around 1km between each other, and when push comes to shove they'll need every meter of it. I was certainly fascinated by the Road Trains.
Around 150km out of Geraldton the first signs of civilisation appeared in form of large farms and as we got closer to Geraldton the landscape changed from flat to hilly and we could get our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean. We only stopped for fuel on our way through Geraldton which is quite a large city. We pulled into Northampton, stopped for lunch and rang ahead to book a caravan park in Kalbarri where we arrived at 14:30hrs and set up our caravan for a longer stay.
We have now been on the road for 11 days, 2 of which were rest days, the remaining 9 days were spent driving. In these 11 days We put nearly 5000km on the car.
However, now that we have arrived on the west coast and finally shaken the Victorian winter (27° today in Kalbarri), we will start the "real" holiday, spend a few days at every location, and keep travel distances to a minimum.