When ever possible everyone should take some time at Port Hedland to go for one of the tours which are very well advertised. The BHP tour was not available because the visitor center has a change in management, it would be a tour about mining and finally shipping the iron ore of Pillbara all over the world. At the Seafarers Center may be booked a lot of tours. We decided to go for the ECO Salt tour.
These salt tour is an eco tour and has been developed in collaboration with the Aboriginals – Ngara peoples, who are the onwer of the land, were the natural seawater grows to nearly pure saltwater. Rio Tinto with it‘s company “Dampier Salt“ is one of the world‘s largest producers of seaborn salt. They work together with the Aboriginal people and made for the seaborn salt a perfect sustainable production working in harmony with the environment. The seawater is beeing pumped in 8 different ponds where it is increasing in salinity thorugh each step of the system from 17% to 90%. During these steps, the natural way to remove the pollution and bacteria is beeing used. Therefore fishes are placed in the ponds, approx 20 to 30 species of Pillbara. The wetlands is contemporaneous a perfect habitat for birds, reptiles, mammals and 1 turtle species.
The hyper saline water of pond 8 is then channelled into Port Hedland where the final stages on the process takes place and the salt is washed before drying, stockpilled and the shipped to its final destinations. The whole process from the start in pond 0 to the shipping takes 24 months.
