We lived there in the late 70s early 80s and our daughter was born in The Dampier District Hospital while there was an active cyclone warning in place for that part of the coast, luckily for us it ended up making landfall a bit further north. I wasn't aware that Dampier actually needed reviving I thought that it was still being run by Hamersley Iron as a company town. When we left that area Karatha was expanding towards Dampier with new suburbs like Millers Well and Pegs Creek opening up to cope with the influx of Woodside Petroleum people. Every year Dampier used to hold a festival called FENACL (Iron and salt) - back in those days there was a fair bit of social and outdoor activity happening because there wasn't much else to do.
We left K in 92, before Maccas and quite a few other suburbs.
Regards.
Hetho.
Hetho that maybe what the festival celebrates these days but in the era that we lived over there the Woodside on shore facilities had only started being constructed at Hewsons Cove. They came up with the name FENACLE as it was derived from the chemical symbols for Iron - Fe and salt (sodium chloride) - NaCl.
Im sure that a lot has changed in the 37 years since we left and one day we hope to get back over that way and revisit some of our old haunts. I dont know about Maccas but our favourite place to eat was called Mobys which was a seafood restaurant on the beach up at Point Samson they only opened the new building not that long before we left. Up until then they had been selling the same seafood to people at the back of the Fishermans Coop where they had a few tables set up.
Cheers
BB
-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Monday 29th of October 2018 09:08:46 PM
