Ships loading at AUKOI., page-117

I totally agree with you. More ships will have to start arriving soon.
I think last quarter was a mixed operation. There are only so many big yellow machines on the island and there was both stripping going on in the main pit and ore extraction from a satellite pit to keep some revenue coming in.
My guess is that they might have switched all the machines to the main pit now to get moving on the higher grade ore down there and build up a good stockpile of the higher grade stuff. Also somebody said the crushing plant was due for an upgrade so that could be happening now also. I did wonder whether they might be thinking about shipping lumps rather than fines but there is no real price premium between the two, I've found, so probably better to just keep producing fines.
As usual I don't know what Rocket is on about. "No bulk carriers on the horizon" will have nothing to do with the quarterly report due in a few days or the Annual Report. That's all past history. By counting the ships, we know the tonnage shipped in the June quarter just gone was approx 400,000.
As for the quarter we are now in, we are not even three weeks into the quarter yet so plenty of time for things to change. Also, the Zheng Run counts in the current quarter so our current score is 1 for 80,000.
A few words about Pratique. Prior to Covid, ships and aircraft used to come and go based on an international convention. The Master [or Captain] would radio ahead with a declaration of any illness on board and if there was none, then the ship / aircraft usually would automatically be given Free Pratique to proceed to dock or land. Cargo ships would just unload and load and depart.
When Covid came along this system quickly reversed. After the Ruby Princess two things happened. This long running convention flipped around and it sort of became "infected until proven not". Also individual States started to take a much greater interest in border quarantine than previously. WA has a pretty hard line border policy and they also got 'stung' earlier on with a couple of very visible freighters with Covid infections in Fremantle The current McGowan Govt policy seems to be to keep Covid out of WA, regardless of the cost to the WA economy and regardless of the cost to individuals. We don't know for sure that's the reason for shipping delays at Koolan, just that it lines up fairly well with down times in the anchorage.