Hello from Port Hedland

On the west coast of Australia, a little way up from the uppermost sticky-outy bit, there’s a small coastal town called Port Hedland. It’s basically an iron ore port, which takes all the iron ore from the Pilbara region to other parts of the world.

Everything here is brown. The ore and the dust make everything look rusty!

I wasn’t expecting much here, but the welcome for the township has been very warm.

We met the mayor, Kelly, who seems to be popular with everyone and is obviously doing a great job in the town. (Kelly is on the left.)

Buses shuttled us from the ship into town, where we were met by people handing out free bottles of ice cold water (very appreciated when it was 40 degrees celcius at 9am!). They also had fans for anyone who wanted to cool off that way. There were markets which locals had set up, and a great art gallery with really excellent quality art work.

The buses also took anyone who wanted to, to the local shopping centre, where we rectified the very obvious lack of hot cross buns for Easter on this ship. (Hey, Royal Caribbean! You might not be interested in celebrating Easter, but we are!)

I met a couple who go to our church in the visitors information centre – they’re also on the cruise!

This afternoon we will head off to Bangkok. We have five sailing days before we get there. So far it has been very smooth sailing.

The classes are going well, and continue over the next few sailing days.

If I find wifi in Bangkok, or in Ho Chi Minh city after that, you might hear from me, otherwise it will be when I get back. (I have scheduled a few pre-written posts for my likely absence though.)

In the meantime, you might like to check out the new Pinterest board on Elizabethan embroidery which I’ve created for the sake of my students in my Elizabethan Strawberries class which I’ve been teaching on the ship.