Pt Samson, Karratha & Dampier

Point Samson didn’t improve really. Apart from an historic jetty inside a chain-wire fence and obscured from view by overgrown grass, and a beach no good at low tide (when we were there) there was little to interest us. We did manage to see a dolphin cruising by as we left.

So the interest for the morning was to see if we could get up to the ore-loading facility up at Lambert. Well, as usual it didn’t take long to get to the very unfriendly sign, so that was looking dull until we took an insignificant little dirt track which just kept doing and going. It headed in the right direction for a long time until it took a dive for the local yacht club. Unperturbed we tried again, winding up at a telecommunications facility on top of a mound of rocks with a superb view over the train holding yard enroute to the port not too far away. It seems I may have turned my children into birdwatching trainspotters, and anyone wanting a four minute video of an ore train rolling past need only ask…

Next stop was Cossack, an historic town that only really made a go of it for about 30 years around the turn of the century. There were a number of well preserved buildings constructed from local basalt after a series of nasty cyclones wiped out the wooden buildings through the 1870’s to 1890’s. The town was a harbour for the local pearl industry (pre Broome) before stocks were exhausted and also for wool exports. Most industry was gone before the 2nd WW and the last inhabitant left in the 1950’s. Restoration commenced in the 1970’s. It was a town that never quite made it. The pearling was ok, but ran out. The harbour was good for a start, but once bigger ships got interested, they had to go elsewhere for deeper water, as transhipping with the big tidal run was treacherous. The cyclones were a constant threat, and a leprosarium is not exactly an attraction.

After that it was into Roeburne for a loaf of bread and to climb the local hill for lunch and a view. The town makes a big thing of the first European woman settler in the North West, and parts of this town were named for her.

We needed to head to Karratha in an attempt to stay on the right side of the electoral commission and for some stocks. That turned out to be very easy, as the AEC had set up a booth in the local information centre, and that was our first port of call for Elliot’s hat-pin fetish. Karratha turned out to be not very interesting. Very much a service town, and the beach is behind a large sand dune and covered in mangroves. We headed out to Dampier, going past a huge column of cars heading back into town in an early peak hour.

Dampier has one tiny camp ground, and we lobbed into it in the middle of a barney between booked campers and the manager, but somehow in all of that we managed to get the last site in the corner. A great location overlooking the ore loading port and plenty of action in the setting sun.