Attractive and modern mining town in the heart of the Pilbara Tom Price is the jewel in Hamersley Iron¹s crown. The most attractive town in the Inland Pilbara with tree-lined streets, modern facilities and a relaxed country-town atmosphere.
Located 1553 km north of Perth via the North West Coastal Highway or 1577 km via the Great Northern Highway, it has been dubbed 'Top Town in Western Australia' because it is the highest town in Western Australia, located 747 m above sea level, at the base of Mount Nameless, which is the state's highest peak.
As early as 1952 Lang Hanc ock, the iron magnate, carried out aerial surveys over the Tom Price area and detected large iron ore deposits. His discoveries were of little value at the time because the Australian Government had an embargo on all iron and steel exports. This was a result of World War II. After the lifting of the embargo in 1961 the area began to open up.
Tom Price (both the town, the mine and the mountain) was named after Thomas Moore Price, the vice-president of the giant United States steel company Kaiser Steel. Price was one of the main supporters of the opening of the Pilbara region.
The whole operation came into existence after two geologists, Bill Burns [who died in 2004] and Ian Whitcher, landed on Mount Tom Price in 1962 and discovered that it was almost pure iron ore. In the 1960s Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto) built the railway from the town to the port of Dampier, and opened the mine. The town was constructed as a service centre and residential area for the miners.
The Hamersley Range is a flat-topped mass of Precambrian sediment which was deposited on the sea bed more than 500 million years ago. It is recognised as one of the oldest weathered surfaces on earth. The combination of millions of years of wind, rain and ice (during the Permian Ice Age) has eroded the whole area into a series of spectacular gorges. The end result is some of the most beautiful and dramatic landscapes in Australia. The gorges are notable for their distinctive horizontal bedding where layers of red, black and brown iron form bands of colour with conglomerates and sandstone. The area is denuded by the harshness of the summers with ghost gums, red river gums and wildflowers (including the Sturt Desert Pea) giving the landscape a special beauty.
Access to Tom Price is via sealed roads. One route is via the North West Coastal Highway and the Nanutarra/Wittenoom Road through Paraburdoo. Another is via the Great Northern Highway and Karajini Drive. An off-road route is from Roebourne via the Roebourne-Wittenoom Road and through the Chichester Ranges. An air service from Perth to Paraburdoo (with shuttle bus or hire car to Tom Price) operates daily.
Hamersley Iron Mine Site Tours The fascination of Tom Price itself lies principally in the mine which exploits one of the richest iron ore deposits in the world, exporting principally to China and Japan. It is possible to inspect the mine with Lestok Tours (minimum numbers apply). Interested parties can contact the business directly on (08) 9189 2032 or book through the Tom Price Visitor Centre, tel: (08) 9188 1112. They take in the lookout over the main pit area, the crushing and screening plants, the world's largest mining equipment, the train load-out area and the haul truck workshop area. The giant 200-tonne capacity haul trucks carry ore to the primary crushers where low grade ore is concentrated for export.
Also of interest are the mine's trains, which run along a single 288-km track to the port at Dampier. These trains are commonly 2 km long and have three diesel engines hauling 200 cars each of which carries 100 tonnes of ore. The analogy Hamersley Iron like to use is that one of these trains carries enough iron ore to construct about 15 000 family cars.
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