Industrial landscapes

Salt ponds and stockpile 

Port Hedland is a fantastic industrial landscape that dominates any sense of suburbanality. It is all trucks and trains and steel structures and flashing lights and dark ores piles and ships and salt and workers and hums twenty four hours a day.

Part of BHP Billiton's facilities at the port with mangroves in foreground 

This structure and movement rises out of spinifex, samphire and mangrove flats, and is bordered by the sea that creeps in and out of the mangroves with the tides. Red dust infiltrates and stains everything.

Tanks and truck in town

On the road out to Finucane Island

The port is the destination for the inland disappearing hills that reappear as red brown or black stockpiles before disappearing into the bowels of ships that sink lower and lower into the sea, down to the top of the red plimsoll line. The reshaped hills then disappear over the horizon disguised as long low slung ships.

Part of the port that is accessible to the public - ore ships in the background being loaded

We camped at the Port Hedland Golf Club, as all the caravan parks were full and the golf club kindly takes all the overflow. At least there are clean toilets and showers and it is surrounded by low scrub. The hum of industry is interspersed with the unlikely sound of trotting horses training in early hours of the morning well before sunrise. In my photograph you can just see the industrial lights in the background.

Training horses beside the golf club

While in Hedland we visited the Courthouse Gallery, an arm of Form Gallery based in Perth. We particularly enjoyed the works by Futureshelter that were on display.

 The reclaimed reclaimer by Futureshelter

My photograph of reclaimers - they are used to move bulk materials from a stockpile

The works are a series of limited edition multi screen prints which engaged with the industrial landscape and the tradition of engineering drawings. They were created following on from a trip up there from Perth in February where Adam Coffey and Jane King were inspired by the 'extremes in landscape from the raw nature to the giant machines'. Being up there in February would truly be experiencing the extremes of the place, being so hot and humid at that time of the year. I thought the prints beautifully captured the sense of place of Port Hedland. Their website can be found here and the images came from their blog.

Mirror image by Futureshelter

You have to love this cheeky take on the occupational health safety message - beware the chair! Any one who has been on an industrial site these days would understand, compared to the old days when safety was not regulated like it is today. But it does save lives and reduce injuries.

Beware of the chair by Futureshelter