Tom Price.

Tom Price. A small mining town that’s named after a geologist who discovered the rich iron ore in this area.

We hopped onto a bus and headed off to Rio Tinto, where there’s big money and even bigger trucks.  We donned our safety glasses and helmets before leaving the visitor center in town out to a large iron ore mine.

These trucks were HUGE to say the least.  As you can see by comparison to a normal 4WD ute.

The views from the mine are great.  Approximately nine hundred people are employed here.

 

 

This was the result when one of those large trucks ran over this ute.

 

 

These engines total 12,000 hp. which tows ore filled cars to Dampier on the coast.  The length of the average train is about 2.5 to 3 KILOMETRES long!!!

These cars are waiting to be filled.  It takes roughly 3 hours to fill all of the cars.

 

 

The ore gets crushed and sorted here.

 

 

Once we returned to the visitor center, we stopped here at a display truck.  As you can see, these trucks are huge. I feel positively little here!

 

 

The mine tour was an interesting tour, filled with lots of facts and figures.  But lets just suffice it to say, it’s big business and it’s one of our top exports to other countries.

And this morning, we’re up at 5:30 again getting ready for the next tour which leaves at 7:30.