Tom Price is another Top Town. Not the most northern, but Western Australia’s highest town at 747m above sea level. It began life as a company town, owned by Hamersley Iron, to house the people mining the vast deposits of nearby iron ore.

In the early days, the population was mainly single men, living in small rooms, with a central cafeteria in the middle of the town where meals were served. Nowadays, it’s a town managed by the shire and Rio Tinto has bought out Hamersley Iron. The residents now bring their families to live here, and there is also a large FIFO (fly in fly out) contingent of workers.
We took a tour of the mine to see it close up.

It’s one whopping big hole – so a bit hard to get close up! There’s actually one of those mega trucks right down at the bottom of the big hole in the picture above.
We stopped by the workshop, which is big, and saw some of the big trucks getting serviced. These trucks cost over $4 million each (even the bills are big) and they need another special truck just to lift the tyres on.
They’re big on safety – even the bus driver was breath tested as we entered the mine. The boys looked good in their hard hats and safety glasses.

Harry wanted to stay till 1pm because they would be blasting. He big on explosives. We weren’t allowed to get very close to the big trucks, but it was very impressive to see them working, even from a distance.

They’re building a new conveyor belt that will mean they don’t have to use these big trucks to move the ore around. It costs $100,000 a day to hire the crane they are using to build it. I reckon there’s a market for a Coates Hire franchise here.
We saw the crushing plant (big) and the stockpiles of iron ore (also big). Then there’s the trains that take the ore to Dampier. Rio Tinto owns the largest private rail network in Australia with 1500km of tracks. They mine iron ore at 14 different sites in the Pilbara region of WA. These trains are big – and long! They usually have 236 carriages, making them almost 3km long. The mine works non-stop around the clock, and anyone who says the industry is in decline should come and visit. I won’t be selling my Rio shares this week.
Next to the mine is Mount Nameless (wins the prize for least imaginative name of a mountain) which is the highest mountain accessible by vehicle in WA – 1128m. Four wheel drive only (they’re not kidding about that) and no trailers or vans allowed (also fair dinkum), it’s a short, rocky and steep 3km straight up to the top. Wow – what a view!

Big John and Little John look out over the Tom Price Township (above). You can also see over the mine and the surrounding ranges.

We drove on towards the coast. The salt air is calling us.