The town that Santa forgot.....

That's Weipa- a dead and alive hole that features a boat landing, a supermarket and a campsite. And that's all!
Nuff said.Maybe I shouldn't be so cruel, but it has little to reccomend it ( maybe the golf club- but where is it?).

Anyway we are here. and after a very bad start to the day! Ou rdream camp site at Captain Billy's Landing turned out to be a nightmare- during the night a storm arose, half a gale and lashing rain. I slept through most of it, but Anne was up all night. I awoke this morning feeling a very cold shoulder- no it wasn't Anne- it was water creeping under my pillow into the bed. A very rude awakening!.

It turned out that we had put the roof tent cover in a position that diverted all the rain water into the tent ( a very silly thing to do) and as a result every thing including us was soaked.

So the morning was spent trying to dry out, fortunately the sun came up to help us. No photos for you- too busy!

Eventually we left for Weipa, some 250k south, starting with a 30k trek along a narrow track, with many water splashes as a result of the rain. The car is filthy!

Anyway, a fairly uneventful travel brought us to the outskirts of Weipa, where we encountered a set of trafic lights and a road barrier!  ( Did I say outskirts? Where are the inskirts?) A huge truck passed across in front of us full of dirt, the barriers opened and we were in.
It happens that there is a huge bauxite mine here, very rich and run by Rio Tinto. For every four tons of bauxite mined they extract one ton of Aluminium.And it is very easy to mine- it lies just one metre below the top soil, so they scrape it of and take the loot. They have a huge area here, and thousands of miners working, a lot living in this town.

Weipa is the biggest missed opportunity in the world for commerce!

But it does have one thing to reccomend it- the sunsets here are wonderful, and we went down to the water to see it. Well- every cloud has a silver lining.........