Karratha, Dampier, Roebourne, Cossack, Pt Samson – 28 to 31 May 2010

Karratha, named for the original Station that had the lease before the town was built, is an aboriginal word meaning 'soft earth'. For us it was a pit stop, where we washed out the red dust of Karajini and John got some replacement bolts from the excellent Atom bolt shop.
It is a bedroom town for the port of Dampier, named for the English buccaneer William Dampier, and the main port of Hamersley Iron [a Rio Tinto subsidiary] for export of its Pilbara iron ore. 
It also exports salt and is the service point for the vast North West Shelf Natural Gas Project and the new  Pluto liquid natural gas project.  The scale of the onshore facilities are very impressive.
Driving through Roebourne, once the administrative capital of the North West, and Wickham, a mining service town for Cape Lambert, another Rio Tinto iron ore port, we came to Point Samson a small, very up market holiday town.   It was the principal Port of the area but traffic declined when the mining companies set up modern shipping facilities at Dampier and Cape Lambert. We stayed at the Cove Camping Park, a nice modern park within easy walk of Honeymoon Cove an idyllic swimming beach. There is a nice resort with a first rate restaurant Ta Ta's.   This was the time for seeing “The Staircase to the Moon” but we think the published times were somewhat inaccurate.



 
 
Point Samson is close to Cossack, originally known as Tien Tsin, and established in 1863 as the North West’s first port for the pastoral and pearling industries. Miners heading to the Pilbara Gold Rush also passed through here. There was a large population of pearlers operating from Cossack mostly getting mother of pearl for buttons and inlays. The pearlers fished out the area and moved to Broome.

Cossack has a difficult harbour, ships could only come and go on the high tide. The harbour silted up and wasn't big enough to take the larger ships being built at the turn of the century and in 1904 a jetty was built at Point Samson and all shipping movements relocated there. Cossack is now a ghost town although it does have a cafe courtesy of the shire. The buildings remaining have been renovated and there is a historical interpretation trail.   It was fascinating to read that the ships delivering mail would bury it near the rocks  on Settler’s Beach,  carving a mark on the rock so the residents knew where to dig for their mail.