The Pilbara - a certain grandeur

The Pilbara coast has a rugged grandeur and an inhospitable remoteness that is both intoxicating and terrifying.

Here hard, jagged red hills meet a pale blue ocean, calm and inviting.

Further inland, there’s a sense of dreadful vulnerability to heat and desolation.

On the North West Coastal Highway in the Pilbara.

One cannot help but be both proud and aghast, as this resource-rich region has brought out the best and worst of humanity, as will be revealed shortly.

This 80-Mile Beach visitor was grateful for a carrot to munch on.

After leaving Broome, we drove 320km including 10km of corrugated red-dirt road to 80-mile Beach, location of one of the biggest and most spacious caravan parks we’ve seen, where we were greeted by a large brown snake and an old, and hungry kangaroo.

We stayed three nights, with TV but no mobile phone and no wireless Internet coverage. Rarely the hunter-gatherer, I managed to catch some salmon for dinner, otherwise we filled our day with reading, or long walks on the broad, white beach.

The salmon were 'on' at 80-Mile Beach.

Next we drove 550km southwest through desolate Pilbara landscape to Pt Samson, a remote and pretty beach hamlet about 60km from Karratha.

Sunrise at Pt Samson - by Carol. Sunrise over the water in the west? Yes, because we're located on a peninsular facing east.

Heads up at Port Hedland

On the way we stopped for a couple hours at Port Hedland, where we felt for the first time how iron ore is bringing wealth to the nation.

Giant Japanese ore carrier receiving its load at Port Hedland.

Port Hedland, a fairly ordinary looking town, is where iron ore from BHP Billiton’s Mt Whaleback mine in the Hamersley Range near Newman is loaded on to trains up to 7km long and railed 275km for export to China, Japan and elsewhere.

Even at a distance, the ships being loaded up looked enormous.

Downtown Port Hedland.

But it was only when we reached Pt Samson and were able to spend a week of day trips exploring Roebourne, Dampier, Burrup Peninsular, Cape Lambert and the ghost town of Cossack, that we could get a close-up look at the region’s history, and huge contribution to the Australian economy.

Rio Tinto salt mine.

At night we played cards and drank beer with some very neighbourly vannies whom we hope to meet up with again.

(For the record, industrial wealth from the Pilbara reaps more than $8 billion in taxes and royalties, of which more than $7 billion goes to Federal coffers).

Rio Tinto uses the ports of Dampier and Cape Lambert to export iron ore from its Mt Tom Price mine in the Robe River Valley.

Comparisons can be odious, but we found Dampier more attractive as far as port towns go than Port Hedland (perhaps because I got dyspepsia eating a greasy sausage and chips snack in a Port Hedland cafe).

We drove in the exhausting heat up the Burrup Peninsula, turned east to gorgeous Hearson’s Cove where we could only be but envious of a number of people swimming.

Hearson's Cove.

Petroglyphs and engineering behemoths

Our real purpose was to locate Aboriginal petroglyphs (rock engravings) in nearby Deep Gorge, a short distance away by dirt road.

Here we were amazed to see paintings and engravings everywhere on boulders to left and right of the little gorge, some dating back thousands of years.

Can you see the petroglyph of a kangaroo on the middle rock? At least I think it's a 'roo.

After that cultural fix, we drove on up the peninsula to the Woodside Visitors Centre, overlooking a natural gas liquefaction and storage complex of such dimensions it beggars the imagination.

Liquified natural gas in huge storage tanks on the Burrup Peninsula.

Woodside operates Australia’s two biggest resource projects, the North West Shelf Venture and the Pluto liquefied natural gas project (under construction and close to completion).

One of five 'trains' liquifying gas for storage. The complex is five times' bigger than the ConocoPhillips plant in Darwin.

Gas to the complex comes by undersea pipeline from the North West Shelf deposit and condensed to one six hundredth of its volume by cooling for use domestically and for export. The project contributes more than $3 billion a year in taxes and royalties to government.

Just to stand and observe one of five giant ‘trains’ (liquifaction plants) in operation, humming that deep hum of industrial might, I found an awesome experience.

Very fashionable, but we had to return the hard hats

As if we could not get enough of industrial activity, for $5 per head we took a Rio Tinto subsidised bus tour of Roebourne, Cossack and Cape Lambert.

This we found incredibly interesting, especially the Cape Lambert visit, as it gave us our first close up look at how iron ore comes in by rail, is graded, stacked and reclaimed for export.

Humungous reclaimer shovels ore on to a conveyor for ship loading.


A very long wharf

Port Lambert has the highest and at 3.53km, the second longest wharf in Australia (the longest being the sugar loading wharf at Lucinda in North Queensland, which is 5.76km long).

At 3.53km, the second longest loading wharf in Australia, built especially high for the conveyor to avoid big waves waves whipped up during cyclones.

Our visit to Roebourne (established 1866) and Cossack (1872) gave us an insight into the region’s history and the decorative architecture of George Temple Poole, who also designed the original stone jail at Roebourne.

Cossack, a gold mining and pearling industry port, faded and died when the gold and pearl ran out and pearlers headed north to Broome, but Roebourne continues to function, if at a more leisurely pace.

Restored 19th century courthouse at Cossack designed by George Temple Poole.

Its chief claim to fame seems to be a modern prison just out of town.

I mentioned earlier that this region brought out the best and worst of humanity.

The worst of humanity

It has indeed a dark and shameful past, as we discovered on a tour of Roebourne’s old stone jail.

Kidnapping of Aborigines to work as slaves for pearlers and pastoralists was common in the late 1890s. The light in the middle is a reflection from my camera's flash on the picture.

Britain had abolished slavery in 1833, but almost 50 years later the practice of ‘blackbirding’ – rounding up Aborigines including women and children and forcing them to work hundreds of kilometres away in pearling and pastoral industries was routine. When the Aborigines retaliated, many were massacred in punitive raids.

Blackbirding was finally outlawed but the law was heavily weighted on the side of employers under the Master and Servant Act. Aborigines who broke a contract (e.g. leaving the station) could be imprisoned with hard labour in chains. But if the boss broke the contract, all he got was a fine.

Cell at Roebourne's old stone jail for Aborigines, who were chained and clamped at night. Cells for white and Asian prisoners had no chains.

While the pastoralists shot kangaroos – the natives’ food source – out of hand and with impunity, an Aborigine who speared cattle would be incarcerated in Roebourne jail for up to 12 months.

Between 1893 and 1900 there were five hangings at Roebourne Jail – all Aboriginal.

After the Japanese bombed Broome in 1942, Aborigines were encouraged to enlist to help the war effort. But those who did were still not allowed into Port Hedland without a permit.

To redress this, a State Act was introduced setting out conditions under which Aboriginal people of mixed decent could attain citizenship in 1944.

Such people had to show that they had not associated with 'full blood' relatives for at least two years, were free of venereal disease and leprosy, could basically read and write and finally show that having citizenship would be to their advantage. Such was the extent of racist policies of assimilation.

It turns out 3,000 Aboriginal people of mixed decent served in the armed forces.

Back in the 19th century, Aborigines made up the bulk of the prison population at Roebourne’s old stone prison. Now Roebourne has a new modern prison with razor wire but the bulk of the prison population is still Aboriginal.

Old church on the hill at Roebourne. But where was God during the atrocities?

Although many Indigenous Australians are now employed in the mining industry, when you go shopping at Wickham, the nearest town to Pt Samson, you find steel grills and padlocks everywhere, indicating a night time lock-down.

It seems the sores of dispossession will be with us for a long time to come.

Our next port of call will be Onslow, 350 kilometres south-west.