THE PILBARA - RED ROCKS BLOOMING

The Pilbara is like a land of giants – high red escarpments bitten into by monster machinery, the rocks transported by huge trains to the coast and shipped to Japan and China. Each 225 carriage train load is worth $3mill. It’s easy to understand why the larger than life individuals who developed this region such as the Hancocks and Twiggy Forrest and the mega  resources companies really reflect the scale of this place.

The Pit at Mt Tom Price...with a Mulla Mulla managing to survive at the cliff edge

An ancient ore shovel - which is the more ancient?

A modern ore extractor

Women are sometimes preferred drivers...they are gentler on expensive machinery.
Note human figure! Capacity: 260 tonnes

When Len Hancock began his mining operations with Kaiser Steel in the 60’s the town and mine at Tom Price, the port at Dampier and the connecting 220km rail link were completed in 18 months – it took energy, vision and very deep pockets to get the industry started.

Two engines on private Rio Tinto track. We needed permit to travel service dirt road. Trains are 2.5 km long and transport 30 000 tonnes each load. Train spotting was fun!

Our VW handled the rail service road well!

Tom Price mine from summit of Jarndunmunaha/Mt Nameless, tallest peak in WA.
This was a challenging 4WD trip to summit.

Even the white Corellas can't help being covered with Pilbara dirt!But despite the monster cuts into the iron-rich lands, stand on top of Mt Nameless over Tom Price and look away from the mining operations and the Pilbara wilderness stretches to the horizon with not a sign of human occupation. It wasn’t always this way. Mt Nameless was well known to the local Eastern Gurumu Aboriginal people who called this highest peak in Western Australia Jarndunmunha, meaning that wallabies live close by. The Geographic Names Board now gives it a joint name. 

Despite mining operations, most of the Pilbara consists of dramatic wilderness.

On the Burrup Peninsula near Karratha, near where Woodside liquefies offshore natural gas for export in giant spherical containers to China and Japan, Aboriginal people have left engravings which are older than any others in Australia…some say up to 30-40,000 years BP.

A midden tells of millenia of Aboriginal occupancy

Pecked fish figure is typical of the estimated million or so engravings on ironstone boulders on Burrup Peninsula

Emu footprint engravings

Replica of some of most important engavings. Note the tree climbing figures and abstract symbols.

Kangaroo engraving

Kangaroo in hidden valley we discovered when "temporarily disoriented" on walk back to the track head

The spirit of the land, though, lives on in the way that the poor soils derived from these red and black rocks, when mixed with occasional water, cause a floral blossoming in ways that overwhelm the senses. From around Karratha, and throughout Millstream-Chichester National Park right through to the Coral Coast, Sturts Desert Pea and a multitude of other flowers paint the red soil with every hue.

Billabong campsite in Millstream-Chichester National Park

Millstream Palm at campsite - remnant of past more tropical climate

Pilbara blooming...

Ashburton Pea

Bachelor buttons

Tall Mulla-Mulla and Sturt's Desert Pea

Sturt's Desert Pea flowered widely over the Pilbara

See!

Fertilise me! Showmanship has a purpose.

A very "showy" Cassia

One of many Eremophilas (Emu bushes) in bloom in Pilbara

Holly-leafed Grevillea (Spider flower)

Native Hibiscus

Yellow native pea

Many-leaved Petalostylis!!

Typical Pilbara sand dune. Snappy gums and spinifex

 A 50 km dirt road from our billabong retreat in Millstream-Chichester National Park to Python Pool was fringed with carpets of dramatic Sturt's Desert pea. Add to this, a textbook vista of desert landscapes and a swim in the pool with not a tourist (or python)  in sight and one could be forgiven for feeling that you have found heaven on earth…in case you wondered where it was! There is no doubt that the original people who trod the sands of this magic place felt a different, but equally strong spirit.

Sturt's Desert Pea dominated the floral displays towards Python Pool

Mesas and buttes and Pilbara Ironstone: One of most dramatic landscapes we can recall in our wide Australian travels.

Python Pool: A refreshing finale to our 4WD journey to the heart of a Pilbara National Park

After two nights camping and a cleansing plunge into the Millstream billabong, we headed for Karijini National Park, where we explored one of its deep canyons to revel in the fig-cooled calmness of Fern Pool. Banded ironstone on the pathway and ripplemarks in two billion year old ironstone told of a giant shallow sea where iron deposits were oxidized into brown/red haematite alternating with lighter silica. And this was the first oxygen that built up in our primitive atmosphere from plant-like bacteria, stromatolites, whose living relatives we will see at Shark Bay down the Coral Coast. The rocks CAN talk.

Karijini National Park campsite at sunset

Above-gorge landscape, Karijini National Park...and termite nest

The four of us at Dale's Gorge, Karijini National Park

Banded Ironstone formation...a rocky record of oxygen's addition to earth's atmosphere

Jillian walks down into Dale's Gorge and Fern Pool

Gary cools off in Fern Pool

And still the desert bloomed. Unseasonal rain in June had swept in a band from the Western Australian coast to the “dead” heart of Australia. The dormant seeds of ephemeral plants germinated providing the observant traveller with many challenges in working out what plants had been resuscitated from the dust. A flash of red here; a little purple plant there; just stop-a-while, photograph and check out the native plant guides and the kilometers just zoom by. Boring? The desert? Never!

Royal Mulla Mullas

This emu bush dominated the drive out from the Pilbara

The surrounding sepals of this emu bush were bigger than the petals
...so much better to attract a pollinating bird or insect

In between flower and bird spotting there was time for fishing in places like the untouched estuary at Cossack near Karratha. And time too to reflect on the sorry history of places like Roeburn where the gaol was once full of Aboriginal people accused of cattle stealing after their hunting grounds were turned to stock production. And Cossack was built on slave Aboriginal labour and Asian divers who risked all for a pearl shell industry which later relocated to Broome when the shell beds were exhausted.

Gary hooks a nice bream by casting beside the mangroves at Cossack

...and the other Gary (my brother in law) snares a snoek

Clamorous Reed-Warbler in reeds of Tom Price sewage farm...one of 60 Pilbara birds identified

The Pilbara has captured our imagination and delighted our senses more than many regions of Australia. It is a harsh hard country of natural and economic riches creating many challenges for both the original and contemporary inhabitants.

Parabardoo at the junction of the Pilbara and Coral Coast had one last show for us
as the Pilbara peaks gave way to low hills.