After a rather noisy night in a free campsite 60kms south of Port Headland (noise coming from road trains steaming past and noisy generators!) we were up and on the road by 7:30am to head towards Karratha and to poke around in some little towns along the way.

First stop was Roebourne a small aboriginal town with absolutely nothing going for it but a visitor’s centre in their old gaol and some historic stone buildings. Unfortunately the visitor’s centre was still closed when we got there (to early still) so we had a quick drive around the town to check out the old buildings and headed further on. It seemed strange that the major highway that goes down the coast goes straight through Roebourne and not around it.

We decided to go straight to Point Samson and work our way back towards Karratha, and what a find Point Samson was. It is a beautiful little seaside village with a couple of very nice caravan parks and some really nice looking resort style accommodation. There was a gorgeous beach that is sheltered by a reef just off shore so it’s perfect for swimming and snorkeling but the tide was along way out so there wasn’t much water to play in, I will get a swim one day I hope. The really funny thing about Point Samson is that just across it’s bay is a massive iron ore port owned by Rio Tinto that had 6 ships being loaded and another 6 out waiting to be loaded. You couldn’t hear the port and we didn’t notice any red dust like you get in Port Headland so if you didn’t actually look to your right you would never know it was there. When we were driving around we noticed a huge birds nest on top of a light pole in the car park at the boa tramp, I think they were Ospreys they weren’t big enough for a sea eagle. There was a set of parents and a fledgling and they weren’t that worried about cars and people moving around underneath them although they did make a little noise when Col walked directly under the pole. We have been so lucky to have spotted some amazing birdlife in our travels.

More iron ore.

Big baby bird!

Next stop was Wickham a funny little place that was built in 1970 for iron ore processing. It is basically a miners camp for the FIFOs (fly in, fly out) workers. There was one of those humungos dump trucks parked at the entrance to the town which I was really keen to climb up but the ladder had been removed and a sign saying I couldn’t climb it. Col had a chat with some other travellers who said they had met lots of Tasmanians and that we were all lovely friendly people. This guy had also actually caught fish at Point Samson so apparently there are fish in the sea big enough to eat!

You can’t tell just how big these were!

Our final stop before pulling up for the day was Cossack, an abandoned town with the most lovely old stone buildings that are being restored. Cossack was built in 1882 as a port town for the the pearling, mining and pastoral industries. The pearling industry became over fished and moved to Broome at the turn of the century and then the town was basically destroyed by a cyclone in 1925 but dragged on until it was abandoned in 1950. It also had a couple of nice swimming beaches and fishing spots.

View from lookout in Cossack

Our campsite for tonight is the Big Four Caravan Park in Karratha where for the pricely sum of $54 you get a powered spot of concrete. They don’t have any unpowered sites so we are stuck with the price although we did have a 10% off voucher in a tourist info book thank goodness. This is officially the most expensive camp spot ever! I hate to think what the rent and cost of living is in these mining towns. I did get to have a nice shower and do a load of washing and we have had the last two nights free………think I have justified it now?

PS. I got very excited today because I found Sturt Desert Peas growing wild on the side of the road. We are heading into wildflower territory in a few days and I can’t wait!