Dampier/Karratha/Samson Peninsula

We initially planned our next stop to be Karratha, but we heard this is very industrial, and that there was a nice caravan park at Point Samson, about 60 km away. Point Samson is a quiet beach resort and fishing port, although judging by the application to build a 112 room resort displayed next door to the caravan park, it is set to become a bit less quiet. Not far from Point Samson is the ghost town of Cossack, you can see by the photo here that there isn't much there, although some of the major buildings such as the old courthouse, schoolhouse and customs store have been restored. The rest has basically disappeared into the sand dunes, a sad fate for a town that in the late 1800's was a bustling port serving the pearl industry and the Pilbara gold boom. However the end of the gold rush and the building of a better deep water port at Point Samson saw the rapid decline of the town. We had an interesting half day wandering around the restored buildings and the ruins of the rest of the town.

The rest of the area is typical Pilbara mining and industrial support. Dampier hosts the landside operations of the massive North West Shelf natural gas production, as well as iron ore and salt exporting, while Karratha is the dormitory town for all of this activity. The natural gas processing plant is huge, and although you don't get to actually go inside they have a very interesting visitor centre and lookout over the plant, as well as the memorial sculpture pictured.

Late August signals the start of the famous Western Australia wildflower season, and although the heart of the wildflower area is further south, the Pilbara coast also provides a surprisingly colourful and varied display. Not being much up with flowers and plants, we tend to call them names such as 'purple ones', 'small white ones' and 'fluffy yellow ones', however we can identify the spectacular Sturt's Desert Pea, which pop up all along the road verges and paddocks. There is a patch of them in the bottom right of the mining memorial picture above. Their brilliant red flowers with glossy dark centres are unmistakable and a real treat in the barren Pilbara landscape.