Hedland realignment on track despite weather hiccups

The realignment of Great Northern Highway is on time despite a tornado and Port Hedland’s unseasonable rain hampering work crews.

More than 5 million tonnes of landfill will be sourced from nearby mining tenements before the project’s targeted mid-2014 completion.

Main Roads senior project manager Andrew Pyke said 60 per cent of the 2.2 million cubic meters of earthworks had already been achieved.

However, Port Hedland’s wettest June on record meant production work – previously three months ahead of schedule – had become repair work.

“We’re still assessing the full impact of the rains that we’ve had, we’ve got a lot of scouring and a lot of damage,” Mr Pyke said. “We may be able to pick that back up, it depends how bad the upcoming wet season will be.”

To date, Main Roads and lead contractor John Holland have “topped off” the project’s two bridges, across BHP Billiton’s Goldsworthy rail line and the Broome turnoff, with decks to be laid in the next four weeks.

Mr Pyke said the 8.5km realignment, the second stage of a $262 million Port Hedland improvement program funded by the Federal and State Government, would throw up some world firsts.

“The Broome intersection itself has been a little challenging because we’ve had to design a half-clover leaf interchange for 53.5m road trains,” Mr Pyke said.

“No one can recall or knows of any other place in the world where that’s been done.”

Mr Pyke said all the on/off ramps at the Broome intersection would need to accommodate high-wide loads to specifications double the Perth standard.

He said the bypass, once finished, would alter Hedland’s landscape forever.

“Locals will certainly know the difference when this project is completed,” Mr Pyke said. “Anyone who has lived here for 10-15 years and has become used to a road train pulling out in front of them at the Broome turnoff and having to stop, simply because of the congestion on the roads, will never see that again.

“Light traffic can use the bypass. A person that doesn’t want to stop in Hedland, and has enough fuel to get right through to Pardoo or Broome, would travel straight through.

“With the interchange, there will be no stopping for any through movements. Freight traffic going to Broome will come straight through, there will be no right turns across traffic, there will be no stopping at intersections.”

One business destined to be affected by the realignment is the Shell Roadhouse, opposite Port Hedland cemetery, which will no longer be part of the Heavy Vehicle Operations network.

Main Roads said the owners of the roadhouse had been well informed of the new route and no compensation would be offered.

Entrepreneur Craig Mitchell is reportedly looking into developing a mega truck stop, including a 24-hour convenience store, toilet and shower facilities, accommodation and wi-fi access, near the realignment’s Utah Point exit road.

Mr Pyke said the bypass represented one of the biggest projects ever undertaken by Main Roads in the North West.

“On any given week we’ve got up to160 people working on the project,” he said. “We break it up into various areas; we have bridge construction crews, bulk earthwork crews and drainage crews. There are multiple activities going on at any one time.

“Certainly in Port Hedland we haven’t had anything like this for quite some time. The Dampier Highway project was a major improvement between Dampier and Karratha (but) in monetary terms this is a larger project with far more significant bridging. “When you add Wallwork Road Bridge in, the financial and physical difference is significant.”

Main Roads said the project could not have run as smoothly thus far without the cooperation of the Town of Port Hedland and a number of companies, including BHP, Process Minerals International, Polaris Metals and Bullbuck.