This is Australia’s busiest Seaman’s Mission with 70,000 seamen visiting the port annually. The chaplain conducts the tour and after learning about their work and what our tour cost gets used for we board their harbour boat and pick up and deliver crew all over the harbour. This is not a conventional port with piers and walkways so the Mission boat acts like a water taxi.

In typical Pilbara fashion the statistics were mind boggling. It is Australia’s 2nd largest port. The world’s largest iron ore port and there are usually about 35 ships waiting out at sea to enter. There are seventeen berths including the new one being built for Gina (Reinhardt that is). But the best of all, each ore loader loads the steel equivalent of one Toyota Landcruiser per second! Sitting behind us, Doug from Bendigo says “I told you they were all plastic.”