Western Australia For Everyone: Newman

Newman

A mining town housing employees of Mt. Newman Mining Company, which works the iron ore deposits of Mt. Whaleback.

A privately-owned railway, the Mount Newman railway, links Newman to Port Hedland. The ore trains are typically over 2 km long.

Mt Whaleback Mine Tours

BHP Billiton's Mt Whaleback Mine is the largest open cut mine in the world. 90 minute mine tours depart from the Visitor Centre on weekdaysand on weekends May to September.

About the Mt Whaleback mine

The Mount Whaleback seam is believed to contain 1.6 billion tonnes, though it was originally estimated at 2.6 billion tonnes. The Mount Whaleback mine, established in 1968, is the biggest single-pit open-cut iron ore mine in the world being more than five kilometres long and nearly 1.5km wide. The mine is expected to eventually reach a depth of 0.5km.

The ore at Whaleback ore is mostly 'Brockman Hematite', which is 68.8 % iron, blue grey in colour and one of the highest grades on the world. There is another ore called Goethite Limonite, which is yellow ochre in colour and exceedingly fine, and which requires blending with hematite to be saleable. Aboriginal Australians used to turn this ore into paint.

The life of the Whaleback mines is expected to be 30 to 60 years, and if the latter time is achieved it will have been a major mine for 100 years. When remediation is completed, water will fill the mine up to the level of the '18th bench' and Mount Whaleback will have become Lake Whaleback. (Currently the lowest 'bench' is number 42), and all those below 18 are below the water table.

Iron Ore Trains

Ore from the mines is transported by rail to Port Hedland through two independent railways. The Mount Newman railway carries ore from Mount Whaleback, Orebodies 18, 23 and 25, Jimblebar, Yandi and Area C. The Yarrie mine is serviced by the separate, shorter Goldsworthy railway. Ore from the Mount Whaleback and the other Newman mines, as well as the Yandi mine is transported to the port at Nelson Point, while ore from Area C and Yarrie goes to Finucane Island. Ore is transported through an 1.16 kilometre long tunnel from Nelson Point to the port at Finucane Island. The average loading time for a ship is 30 hours and 800 ships are loaded annually at Port Hedland.

In 2001 a BHP train from Newman set a new world record for the longest train, 7.3 km long – one driver, 8 locomotives, 682 (fully laden ore trucks), the whole thing weighed almost 100,000 million tonnes, about the weight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A normal train is 3.75 km long, with 6 locomatives (spread throughout the train and controlled by radio link) and 212 to 336 Us-built ore trucks. Each truck can carry a 60 tonne load and has wheels 3.5 metres in diameter and weighing up to 5 tonnes with rims inserted.

Darlsen Pinnacle, Karlamilyi National Park

Karlamilyi National Park

Karlamilyi National Park (formerly Rudall River National Park) is Western Australia's largest and most remote park. Two-and-a-half times as large as the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, it is a world of desert dunes, salt lakes and mountain ranges. The Rudall River is unique in the region, being a major watercourse with reliable water sources and permanent pools. This, together with the abundant wildlife it attracts, makes it an oasis for desert dwellers.

The banks of the Rudall River are lined with tall stands of collibah, river gum and yulbah – the bats wing coral tree. Hardy acacias and hakeas occupy smaller watercourses, while paperbarks, bloodwoods and quandongs are in the valleys where there is sufficient ground water. Desert oaks may occure on sandplains, with spinifex and other grasses and small shrubs.

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Where is it?

1,186 kms north of Perth; 450 km south of Port Hedland, 9 km north of the Tropic of Capricorn on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. Altitude: 1,053 m above sea level. It is the highest town in Western Australia.

Karijini National Park

For sheer rugged beauty and a diversity of gorges, waterfalls, rockpools and canyons, few areas of Australia come near this region. International tourists are unanimous in naming their visit to Karijini National Park as a highlight of their trip to Australia. Stretching for more than 400 km through the Pilbara region of Western Australia, the Hamersley Ranges contain many spectacular gorges have been carved by the waters of the Fortescue and other rivers. Karijini is less than 2 hours drive North from Newman along the sealed Great Northern Highway.

Brief history

In 1957 A.S. 'Star' Hilditch discovered a huge iron ore deposit 15 km from Mt. Newman which was named Mt. Whaleback, as the hill looked like the shape of a humpback whale. The find was not but not publicised until 1960, when the Australian Government lifted the embargo on iron ore exports it had put in place because of concerns the mineral was in short supply. The first mine to develop in the Pilbara rehion was the Goldsworthy mine in 1965 and a railway line, the Goldsworthy railway, as well as port facilities at Finucane Island were constructed. On 1 June 1966, the first shipment of iron ore from the Pilbara left for Japan on board of the Harvey S. Mudd.

BHP's operations in Newman date back to 1968, when the Mount Whaleback mine was opened, the biggest single-pit Open-pit iron ore mine in the world, developed originally by United States company Bechtel Pacific. The mine is 1.5 kilometres wide, more than five kilometres long and is scheduled to eventually reach a depth of 0.5 kilometres. A new town, Newman, was constructed, as well as a 426 kilometre railway line, the Mount Newman railway. The first train left Newman on 1 January 1969 and the first shipment of Newman ore left port on 1 April 1969 on board of the Osumi Maru. Newman remained a "closed" company town until 1981.

The town of Newman was established in 1969 by the Mt. Newman Mining Company to house the workforce from the nearby Mt. Whaleback iron ore mine, the population has fluctuated from more than 6,000 to an estimated 4,500 residents in 2004. The town is named after Mount Newman. It was named in 1896 by surveyor WF Rundell after Aubrey Woodward Newman, a member of his survey team who died of typhoid fever on reaching the area during a mapping expedition in that year.