The Pilbara Project by FORM WA

Field Notes

THE PILBARA and Photographs

PROJECT Collected over 2010

WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 2010

Lead photographers

Field note authors

Christian Fletcher

Anne Sibosado

Dr. Les Walkling

Ben Graham

Introduction 9

Peter Eastway

Carolyn Karnovsky

Lynda Dorrington, Executive Director, FORM

Tony Hewitt

Chris Fox

Foreword 7 Ian Ashby, President, Iron Ore BHP Billiton

Christian Fletcher

Photographers

Map of the Pilbara 10

Douglas Muir Elisha Buttler

Field Notes and Photographs 2010 Part I Essay by William L. Fox: Pilbara Diaries

115

Andy Taylor

Esther Quintal

Bewley Shaylor

Gabrielle Sullivan

Brendan Moelands

Jane Taylor

Chris Fox

Jim Ziegler

Christine Villanti

Joyce Kelly

Elaine Argaet

Kate Antonas

Field Notes and Photographs 2010 Part II

126

Faye Harris

Kay Warrie

John Elliott

Dr. Les Walkling

Pilbara Project lead biographies

212

Judith Hunt

Lesley Jean Kelly

Justin McKirdy

Linda Lyons

Christian Fletcher

Nathan Heatley

Mags Webster

Dr. Les Walkling

Nicole Yardley

Mandy Martin

Peter Eastway

Paul Parin

Mantarrar Rosie Williams

Tony Hewitt

Renee Currie

Maureen Allert

Michael Fletcher

Richard Moody

Max George

William L. Fox

Scott Roberts

Mollie Hewitt

Simon Phelps

Monique La Fontaine

Tim Acker

Mulyatingki Marney

Tom Stephens

Phoebe Glasfurd

Acknowledgments References

214 216

Sharon Jack Susan Duncan Tim Acker Violet Samson Wendy Warrie Winnie Sampi

4 5

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Salt flats, Karratha, 2010

Foreword by Ian Ashby President, Iron Ore

developing a creative range of projects including the impressive refurbishment of the Courthouse

BHP Billiton

Gallery, the opening of the Silver Star Train Café, the formation of the Hedland Art Awards and the

Peter Eastway, ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

A celebration of the Pilbara

Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route Project. The vast Pilbara region is awe-inspiring, from its incredible size of more than 500,000 square

The impact of the partnership on the Pilbara

kilometres, to its isolated and rugged beauty. It is

communities has been profound, with thousands

also home to the heart of Western Australia’s iron

of people, including BHP Billiton employees,

ore mining industry.

participating in creative programs, budding artists accessing professional development and local art

How do these unique but co-existing identities

centres receiving guidance and support.

impact on each other? What it is like for the people who live there? How does the extraordinary

At BHP Billiton we seek to inspire and deliver

landscape work on the mind of the artist, the

positive change in the communities in which we

writer or the photographer?

operate. It is through innovative partnerships with committed organisations like FORM that we are

The Pilbara Project seeks to answer some of

able to achieve this.

these questions as it captures the reality of contemporary life, the rhythms of large-scale

Whether you live in the Pilbara, or have yet to

industry and the enduring Pilbara landscape. It is

experience it, I’m sure you will enjoy this unique

also a celebration of the long-term, award-winning

insight into an incredible region of Australia.

partnership between BHP Billiton and FORM. From improving the built environment to inspiring more socially inclusive and creative communities, the partnership is formed around a common vision: to encourage people and places to reach their full potential. For over seven years the partnership has extended activities from Newman and Port Hedland to Roebourne, Karratha and the Western Desert,

development of a touring Indigenous art exhibition

Introduction by Lynda Dorrington Executive Director FORM

and history in order to begin to craft a stronger

The calibre of the people involved in the Project to

vision for its future. It is all too easy to posit the

date is essential to realising this. Travelling throughout

region’s burgeoning resources industry and the

the Pilbara in exploratory trips – from the far reaches

preservation of its rich environment as opposites

of Western Desert country to the small coastal town

As I write this, The Pilbara Project is still in its

always in conflict, when in fact we should be asking

of Onslow – The Pilbara Project has welcomed the

infancy as a project but is about to reveal its first

how the two elements can come together more

likes of curator William L. Fox, writer Barry Lopez,

two public outcomes: this book, and the first Pilbara

synergistically and sustainably.

artist Larry Mitchell, and all of the contributors to this publication.

Project exhibition, 52 Weeks On - an exhibition of photographs and film by some of Australia’s most

The opportunity for the Pilbara lies in adopting

respected artists.

a systemic approach when thinking of future

Also essential is the support of FORM’s principal

developments: an approach which embeds

partner, BHP Billiton. Working with BHP Billiton

The Pilbara Project is hard to define in many ways.

innovation and creativity into new initiatives and

over many years has provided FORM with the

On paper, it is a long-term cultural project which

within communities to aid in sustainability and

rare privilege of being able to explore the regions

seeks to gather multiple artistic and community

future competitiveness. The unique opportunity

while delivering cultural programming that has built

perspectives of the Pilbara via in-country camps

that has arisen through the substantial financial

confidence.

and trips, then present the ‘findings’ in a series of

investment through Royalties for Regions enables

exhibitions, a curated website, publications and other

a leveraged approach to regional investment, lifting

This book is just the first instalment of many Pilbara

public forums.

the burden that in the past has fallen on the resource

Project initiatives. Mirroring the very nature of the

sector while empowering communities to actively

Pilbara – full of distinct narratives yet decidedly non-

participate in scoping a new shared vision.

linear – this book presents many experiences and

This in itself is important because the Pilbara is

many voices in a sensory, un-chaptered catalogue of

unexpectedly breathtaking and diverse, yet has But the challenge for the Pilbara, in accepting the

sister-regions such as the Kimberley and Central

drivers of investment and growth, will be to forge

Australia. As Pilbara Project photographer Les

distinctive niches in its economy to ensure the social

I think I can safely say that nobody ever visits

Walkling commented: ‘One thing my research has

and cultural fabric of its communities are marked by

the Pilbara without being profoundly moved by

turned up is how relatively ‘unknown’ the Pilbara is

their distinctiveness and capacity to foster innovation

the experience. Not everybody falls in love with

to curators and other friends over here on the east

and provide access to opportunity at every level

it immediately, but over time this region, in all its

coast. There is a blind-spot on this side (east) of the

within a community.

millennia of history, culture and biodiversity, never fails to make an impression. I hope the work being

country, to most of the rest of Australia.’

Peter Eastway

---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

words and images.

escaped the attention of its arguably more renowned

The Pilbara Project will provide multiple opportunities

done today enriches the experience for tomorrow’s

On one level what we want to achieve with The

to discover and present multiple voices. Through this

visitor.

Pilbara Project is to celebrate and illustrate how

it will engage in a broader ongoing dialogue around

unique and wonderful this place is – from the people

the growth of strong Pilbara communities. Places

to their communities and the natural environment

where the need for investment in environmental

that sustains them. But The Pilbara Project over

quality, regional leadership, cultural vibrancy and

time also seeks to dig deeper, to examine its

innovation, are all seen as integral parts of economic

particular confluxes of culture, industry, environment

development activity.

Field Notes and Photographs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2010 The field notes and images in this book represent the different Pilbara experiences of many people. Although they are dated, they are not chronologically ordered. This is because the Pilbara, while encompassing its own intrinsic seasons and cycles, is not a place which can be conventionally ordered and understood. The Pilbara sings its own song. This book seeks to capture some of its notes.

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- on the road to Hedland, 2010

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Nicole Yardley ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Parnngurr Hills, 2010 October 21, 2009 Gabrielle Sullivan, Art Centre Manager Martumili Artists We had a lot of paintings ready to send off and they (the artists) asked us to unroll them. They had to say goodbye to the paintings; it was a serious thing. We unrolled the paintings and they did a little dance for them ... A painting is an important thing; it is part of their lives: The paintings are on the floor and dogs sit on them, people touch them. They go from this to hanging on a wall somewhere.

18 19 19

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Newman, 2010

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Salt flats, Karratha, 2010

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Burrup Peninsula, 2010

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

March 11, 2010, Port Hedland, Maureen Allert, photographer and ‘Heddy girl at heart’

My first experience of Port Hedland was in 1966, when I garden bar at the Esplanade Hotel. There were two hotels, Pool was an adventure, following a rough track through miles out, so walked along the sand and then had to hurry day. Some things haven’t changed though. There were 100 everywhere I went. My mother was paranoid about letting was very friendly and eager for me to have a good time in my husband and I caravanned up to Broome for a holiday, hooked, the colours, the ranges, the dingo call, the feeling remember telling Bob I had to come back here and two the chance to turn our lives upside down. Our family and change at our age. We were apprehensive but determined moment of the Pilbara and the vast richness it has to offer, secrets all around us. My job sees me travelling through to keep me company. I never tire of the landscapes, the the weather. I have travelled through fire, rain, dust storms, Cyclone George and enjoy every minute of it. I feel safe to my rescue. Staying in accommodation that is far from who just want to chat with someone who maybe reminds 24

came up for a holiday with my mother who was running the Elders and an outdoor picture theatre. A trip out to Pretty the bush. I was looking forward to a swim but the tide was back as the tide came in. I still have a shell I collected on that men to every woman in town and I had to be chaperoned her very naïve daughter out on her own. Everyone I met the dry and very hot dusty town. Fast forward to 2004 and stopping at Karinjini for a couple of days. That was it! I was it evoked in me, and the swimming in Fortescue Falls. I years later a job opportunity came up and we jumped at friends were gobsmacked that we could make such a life to give it a go. And so here we are, loving and living every taking every opportunity we can to explore the hidden the Warlu Way on my own with just my CDs and camera changing light and the not knowing what is in store with lightning strikes and incredible heat, cowered through and know that if have a breakdown, a truckie will come luxurious, sometimes a donga, I have met a lot of blokes them of their mum and home. 25

Justin McKirdy ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2009

Nathan Heatley ---------------------------- Karijini National Park, 2009

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

June 15, 2010 Hedland Joyce Kelly, Spinifex Hill Artist

March 8, 2010 Cossack and Point Samson Mags Webster, writer

February 4, 2010 Hedland Kate Antonas, former Hedland resident

October 6, 2010 Thinking about Pilbara Country Max George, Spinifex Hill Artist

When we were small, it happened almost every

By Monday we had farewelled the Burrup and

Pilbara evenings are never dull. Amidst the

It is good to sit down sometimes in the still-

night, we’d spread a big canvas, and all the kids

were starting to make our way towards Port

humidity is the constant undercurrent of adventure

ness and quiet and watch the sunset – time

would come from the streets and we’d have

Hedland, taking in Cossack, Point Samson and

and the lure of the unknown. Once the sun sinks

just seems to pass – the cockatoo calls slowly

a sing-along, every night, and storytelling. My

Roebourne along the way. But first, a mandatory

beneath the red earth the moonlight holds court,

fading and the kangaroos jumping in the distance

grandmother played the piano accordion, my dad

stop at the Pilbara Perk in Wickham. This cafe

your surroundings melt away and the possibilities

thump, thump, thump just brings back memories

had the guitar, then we had the spoons, there

provides the best cup of coffee and blueberry

seem endless.

of times when there were not too many cars or

would also be singing. We’d have all the little ones

muffin in the whole region – official!

sitting with their pillows, as the singing would go

people – just you and the bush and the sound of Throw your arms around some of the most

the trees rustling – it makes you wonder where it’s all gone.

on they would just go to sleep, I was one of them

The ideal place to work off the subsequent buzz

amazing people you will ever meet. The air is

that feel asleep!

proved to be Cossack, a place which invites

thick with heat and the scent of the sea. Mix up

contemplation, so literally does it spirit the visitor

a Finucane Island Ice Tea, potent lovechild of too

When we were lying down, looking at the

into another age with its gracious buildings and

much fun and whatever’s in the kitchen. Clear

constellations, they even told us about that, going

solid masonry. Established in 1872 at the mouth

some space for a makeshift dance floor. Let your

back to their culture, because we moved away

of the Harding River, Cossack was the birthplace

hair stick to your skin. Pile in for a midnight road

from Beagle Bay, they’d say you know what used

for the West Australian pearling industry and was

trip out bush. Swim in dark waters. A stubbie

to happen when people travelled at night, and we

a bustling port for some years, gradually declining

holder is essential.

didn’t know what happened because we were

over the turn of the last century until it was

moving into temporary times, they’d say we’d

abandoned in the 1940s.

look at the stars and go in this direction and that direction, they followed the constellations. That’s

Lunch was in the lovely coastal village of Point

when we started to become aware of our culture.

Samson. And it was very good. If blue bone groper is on the menu, order it. A final detour in the area took us to inspect The Claypans Project just outside Roebourne, a massive earth/art project designed and executed in the middle of 2009 by artists Arif Satar and Audrey Fernandes-Satar and around 400 local schoolchildren. Now beginning to degrade and disintegrate back into the landscape as originally planned, this bas-relief sculpture still has the power, even in the bleaching light of the afternoon, to cast shadows which trick and intrigue.

31 31

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Salt flats, Port Hedland, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- salt, Port Hedland, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

Les Walkling ---------------------------- between Burrup Peninsula and Karratha, 2010

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Mistaken Island, Burrup Peninsula, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010 41

June 27, 2010 Hedland Anne Sibosado, Spinifex Hill Artist We shared everything, we lived off the sea. Mum’s mob used to go on the reefs, we always had to wear sandshoes, not good leather shoes – we never had them anyway. All my mum’s family used to fish. A lot of our family ties come from Beagle Bay Mission (north of Broome). My grandfather, eight or nine families settled in old Port Hedland. None of those families come from Port Hedland, they were taken away. But those old people, they used to get the salt from the marsh and bag it, used to get six pence for a bag. That was one of the things they did. They also cut wood, we used to have wood stoves I suppose, whoever had a truck would go. We used to spend a lot of time at the beach, swimming all the time, swimming all day. We used to get in a lot of trouble for that. My auntie lived down from us, she had a big poinciana tree, we used to play around that, hide in the branches. We had a very sheltered life in a lot of ways. It was only when the mining came in that we had to monitor the kids. Nothing ever happened, that was when the town started moving in another direction. It was just starting off the social impact. It was good, the money side, but a lot more problems, the social impact.

February 25, 2010, Hedland, Kate Antonas, former Hedland resident

I first arrived in the Pilbara after spending most of the a leisurely three weeks sunning myself on the Greek Seeking instant change and Vitamin D, I migrated and a career in journalism. I touched down on the late sunset - those in the know will tell you this is prime translates to ethereal in-flight views as twisted creeks meet with rough red earth. Following a brief stop at my – all orange and steel capped – at the local pub, perched perfectly. With drink in hand (the house white in a plastic vital statistics assessed: How long have you been here? a little out of my depth in my new surrounds, and when to cool my drink the look on my face must have said it one particularly loud orange man. A challenge: ‘Oh I’m Politely accepting, I slipped my plastic cup o’ wine into to prove to myself I could ‘make it through the summer’

year traipsing the globe, my most recent sojourn being Islands. Returning to winter in Perth left me restless. north to Port Hedland in search of warmer weather afternoon flight, met by my manager and an exquisite landing time in Hedland. What we see at ground level snake through mangroves and the stillness of salt lakes new office I found myself largely outnumbered by men on the waterfront and catching the cool sea breeze cup) I was introduced to ‘the cricket boys’ and had my How long are you staying? Got a boyfriend? I was feeling somebody handed me a grubby looking stubby holder all. ‘Ah she’ll never make it through the summer’ said pretty sure I can handle a couple of hot days thank you.’ the stubby holder. It was right then, with a determination in this dusty red town, that my Pilbara adventure began.

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March 18, 2010 Pilbara Susan Duncan, writer Landing in the Pilbara feels like plunging into a new, wild and exaggerated world. Blood red soil. Hard blue skies. Turquoise leaves. Silver white trees. Everything stark, hard-edged and almost violently dramatic, etched by a sharp light that seems to peel your eyeballs. I remember the thump of rain drops the size of golf-balls. Evening skies coloured red, purple, black, blue and white at the same time. Gorges filled with milky green water and yet so clear, you could see the white bodies of swimmers from far, far above. I remember a roaring waterfall in the middle of a desert. So loud, I looked for racing traffic on the horizon. And rocks like staircases that rambled deep into canyons lush with bullrushes, birds and frogs. There was the constant companion, too, of clean, dry, withering heat that hits you with the force of a mallet the moment you step out of an air-conditioned car. And dust. Yeah. The dust. It stays with you, that fine red dust. Comes at you in the speeding red cloud of a willi-willi that flys over the landscape like a rampaging spectre. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all so ancient, timeless. If you look at it for long enough, you begin to rethink the way you see the world. And the way you treat it. You never forget the Pilbara. Because it changes you.

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Round Hill, Newman, 2010

48 49 49

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- old drive-in cinema, Karratha, 2010

Elaine Argaet ---------------------------- Pardoo Station mudflats, 2008

June 1, 2010 Pardoo Station Jane Taylor, former station manager I lived and worked at Pardoo station back in 2008. I had the time of my life while there. I wish I could tell you every little detail about it, as every day was the most amazing adventure, but I’m gonna have to just pick a few of my favourites … At the station we had a small shop which sold just the essentials i.e. milk, bread, fishing tackle, soap. Every day we had Aboriginal communities come in to buy goods. The little children would run into the store with the biggest smiles on their faces! My partner and I became quite friendly with one particular community who were in every day. They taught us what we could make out of every tree we pointed to, which goanna to eat, and how to hunt and track. I learnt a lot about the Aussie outback, and myself, with all of their visits. Each day at the station was always completely different. When I tell someone I worked at a cattle station their first reaction almost all of the time is: what could you have possibly done there to make you love it so much, it’s a big dry patch of land, in the middle of nowhere … But it was the most amazing thing I have ever done. We had many different people coming in every day and who we would sit and talk to all night, and hear their amazing stories. The weather was mostly hot and humid, but on the odd occasion we’d be treated to a storm, or an amazing sunset, or rain in amongst the clouds that would never reach us. We went fishing pretty much every day, at Pardoo River or Baningarra River. One day while at Pardoo River I saw a huge stingray jump out of the water! And at Baningarra I saw my first sea turtle and jabiru! When it was low tide we would take some new friends down to Pardoo River and show them how to ‘mud crab’. Running through the clay mud and having to climb and jump over big splits made from (I guess) the mangroves and mud crabs. Where there was one of these big splits in the mud, there would be a mud crab hole at the end in amongst the mangroves. Tiny little bright red crabs with one little claw and one giant one would scatter into their holes when they saw us coming, and all the little mudskippers would jump their way into the water, or into crevices in the mud.

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Martumili Artists studios, Parnngurr, 2010

52 53

John Elliott ---------------------------- Glenda and Jenni-Lee Green, South Hedland, 2010

September 25, 2009 Varanus Island Elisha Buttler, writer

In equal parts we were shown various operations of the gas plant and native marine and animal life (the circumference of the island is a strictly protected environmental zone). Sea birds glided above water so pristine it looked like Tiffany blue

Varanus Island floats in the far reaches of the

cellophane. We explored rocks which cupped pools

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Varanus Island, 2010

Dampier Archipelago, one of a handful of flour -

of salt crystallised from the sun. The men splashed

coloured islands scattered like biscuit crumbs

in the water with their cameras and I picked up

through this part of the Indian ocean. I was

shells with fleshy pink insides and sea sponges

travelling with a group of photographers and an

with long, netted fingers.

artist to this special place, 75 kilometres from the mainland. A helicopter scooped us up from Karratha

At midday we were escorted to the workers’

airport and carried us there via nearby Barrow Island:

mess hall for lunch. I expected the mess hall to

I felt like we were in a bubble caught in a gust of

be just that: messy, rough, a sprawling, masculine

wind, all lightness and air, peering down at an infinite

cafeteria. But this particular mess hall was airy

expanse of water in enamelled hues of jade, teal and

and warm, the walls painted schoolyard blue and

swimming pool blue.

yellow and with picturesque views over a calm bay. Inside, men in full industrial regalia (canvas

When we touched down on Varanus and began

overalls with fluorescent bands of yellow and

our tour of the island, courtesy of Apache Energy,

orange) wandered about with icecream cones

I had an Alice in Wonderland moment, realising I

and fruit cups. Outside, women sunbathed

had happened upon a fantastical configuration of

on eggshell sand in bikinis, or swam in the

island paradise and industrial work zone. Several

warm water, before changing back into safety

perplexing sights confronted me: because the

gear and returning to work. I began seriously

island is home to Apache Energy’s gas operations,

contemplating a career change.

use of flammable fuels like petrol is limited. Thus the workers don’t drive but cycle around the island, steel-capped boots pedalling leisurely along the bitumen, childlike baskets affixed to chrome handlebars. Similarly, the workers’ camp was more akin to a holiday park: dongas, threaded together with pretty sandstone footpaths, were equipped with cosy verandas and salty air shifted lazily through the landscaped trees.

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Onslow, 2010

November 25, 2010 Dirt road, somewhere in the Pilbara Monique La Fontaine, traveller and artist As my sister and I set off on an adventure into the unknown, the Pilbara and Kimberley country ahead of us seemed like the last frontier in our city-dwelling imaginations. It was late 1997 and we were heading for Darwin – a destination we would never arrive at – and set out from Perth in a 1978 Holden panel-van named ‘Cielo’ who was as blue as the sky. She was built like a tank with steering to match, and her side was emblazoned with the yellow gypsy graffito: Krisna ma vardi – Bless our travels. I was only three weeks in possession of a driver’s license so it seemed like a sensible idea. It was over 40 degrees as we flew through the iron red Pilbara heat after leaving Karijini National Park, where we had marvelled at the intense beauty of the gorge, been inspired by the stories of the Aboriginal ranger and his young trainee from Sydney whom we’d befriended, and dreamt of mysterious goanna men at night. As the country rushed passed us at 80 kilometres an hour, clouds of red dust flying up from the dirt road, horizon shimmering in the heat, the colours of the landscape were jewel-like and surprisingly sharp. Purple mulla-mullas fringed the road, rust red hills turned amethyst in the distance, and the white trunks of snappy gums were startlingly beautiful against the red and purple of the country, their leafy halos inconceivably, brightly green in the baking heat. As dusk gathered around us, the amethyst hue that seemed to infuse the landscape intensified to the point of saturation. It was so beautiful that we kept driving through it until it was well and truly dark. When we decided to stop for the night a designated rest stop serendipitously appeared – we were surprised to find one on a single lane dirt road. Although it was pitch dark the car lights revealed a circular grove of white-trunked snappy gums whose canopy afforded glimpses of the sparkling universe beyond. It was hemmed in by soft mulla-mullas and its floor was strewn with gravel, but under every tree in the camp there was a pretty place to roll out a swag and hang a mosquito net —they offered no protection against ants but they added to the romance! After dinner we settled down in our swags under adjacent trees and counted our blessings until we fell asleep. We discovered that we’d invaded the territory of ants though and we slept badly. But once it was light enough to see we were rewarded for every minute of our discomfort. The spot was even more beautiful than we’d thought but we were amazed to discover that the amethyst hue of the landscape which had so entranced us on our drive, was literally manifest at our feet: scattered all around our swags were pale mauve crystals, some as long as our fingers but gnarlier and crusted with dirt. We couldn’t believe our eyes. And as we bent down greedily searching for the prettiest ones — there were so many to choose from — we realised then that the rough gravel under our feet was made of amethyst too. We could have dreamed it but we’re sure we didn’t, and to this day I can’t quite remember which road we were actually travelling on. I’ve never met anyone else who’s come across our magical campsite – the holy grail of designated rest spots — somewhere in the Pilbara. 59

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

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Les Walkling ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

Les Walkling ---------------------------- Karratha, 2010

Les Walkling ---------------------------- Baynton West, Karratha, 2010

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Peter Eastway --------------------------- Western Desert, Martu Country, 2010

Elaine Argaet ---------------------------- Millstream Chichester National Park, 2010 68

March 5, 2010 Tom Price and Millstream Chichester National Park Carolyn Karnovsky, traveller

October 12, 2010 Roebourne Wendy Warrie, Roebourne Art Group artist

What met us when we finally reached Millstream was

I always paint about the river. My tribe from the top end

a lush wetland oasis, springing from an underground

Yindjibarndi, Millstream side. The water comes from that

aquifer and fringed with date palms and paperbarks. The

end and comes down to the sea. When there’s a flood it

water, which is fed from the Fortescue River through

comes down from Millstream and it comes out from the

porous dolomite rock, is crystal clear and luminous,

sea (at high tide). Sometimes when there is a high tide,

shimmering shades of turquoise and vivid green.

you can’t go to the fishing spot. Sometime the land gets dry, the top end, can’t go anywhere. Reminds me of the country, where the water come from, the top end. Flows

November 19, 2010 Millstream Chichester National Park Phoebe Glasfurd , designer

down the river and into the sea. When the flood comes from that end and the tide came from the sea side it’s like they have a fight in the middle, you see all the rough water there, all the dark clouds and thunder, the two

Millstream … is like an Australian Monet painting.

snakes fighting. Dry times it stops flowing, forms pools until the next cyclone or rain.

September 26, 2010 Over the Indian Ocean Elisha Buttler, writer We take the long way back from Varanus Island, our helicopter stopping part way to land aboard the helipad of mammoth freight ship and pick up workers who have been out at sea for god knows how many months. I have always adored the ocean, gravitated towards any coastline, but right here, on this mercurial looking ship with nothing but water all around me, I suddenly feel vulnerable and lonely. Back on the mainland I am inexplicably obsessed with all shades of blue. I cannot pull my gaze away from anything blue, turquoise or aqua green. I want to scoop it up, drink it hungrily. Later, when I think about the trip to Varanus Island I am lulled by the memory of such exquisite light dancing atop cellophane blue ocean shallows. But I admonish myself. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fixate on the colours or the physicality. Push your thoughts beyond the landscape. Then I realise it is impossible, and perhaps unwise, to not acknowledge this. Every time I visit the Pilbara, no matter where I go, I am transfixed by its physicality. It casts a spell. It is like drinking colour, full strength, in shot glasses. Not the obvious colours but all of them, loud and gentle like a Pantone swatch book. This changes the way I think when I am there, even the way I act. My mind is on high alert, sparks flying. My skin is breathing and prickling, acutely sensitive. You read, in books, words like empty and vast and undiscovered. But this place is not like that. I keep thinking, it is alive and active, it breathes and talks and hides and reveals. I am reminded of our place in the universe, floating among many in a sea of stars.

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Varanus Island, 2010

December 28, 2010 Inside a World War II submarine fuel tank, Onslow Elisha Buttler, writer Places like the Pilbara hold secrets and surprises, mysterious stories about which are shared and exchanged like echoes. Often, there are stories inside stories, secrets inside secrets. This is one of my favourite stories, tucked carefully inside the little coastal town of Onslow, inside a big old tank. This may not surprise many people, but I was surprised to learn one day that Onslow has four massive wartime marine fuel tanks, built during World War II, and that the former naval base was bombed in 1943. I was even more surprised to hear that one of these fuel tanks hides a chalk-box world of make believe, its curving walls home to an intricate network of glowing drawings depicting fairytale and cartoon characters – from Sesame Street’s Big Bird to Alice in Wonderland, Blinky Bill and Bambi. The former submarine fuel tank sits on private property owned by Onslow local Robert ‘Buster’ McDonald and his brother, and has also served as a cyclone shelter. These days all the locals know about the floorto-ceiling drawings, which are decidedly playful and bright, especially when considered in contrast to their mammoth concrete home, which Buster says is has an 80-metre circumference, is 25 metres across and nine metres high. But for a while, this place was a secret, locked-up and empty, the fairytale characters left to dance in the dark. The drawings are, according to local myth, courtesy of the German mother of a young family who moved into the tank sometime in the 20th Century. A caravan was set-up beside the tank but the family lived the inside, lighting the tank with candles. Mysteriously, while nobody seems to know exactly when the family moved in, or when the drawings were created, Buster does know that the family moved out in 1987 and that the fantastical drawings, unusually vibrant and clear despite their old though indeterminate age, were created using ‘special’ chalks imported from Germany. Buster says he has heard the family has since returned, and that the husband (at the time cited as a

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- outside a World War II submarine fuel tank, Onslow, 2010

refrigeration mechanic) now works on a salt flat somewhere nearby. It makes me wonder, how many other secret stories are hidden but right in front of my eyes? *Special thanks to Rachel Fountain for ABC North West WA and Ben Graham for this information. See page 216 for references.

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Robert ‘Buster’ McDonald inside the World War II submarine fuel tank on his property, Onslow, 2010

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Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Karratha, 2010

October 11, 2010, Roebourne, Violet Samson, Roebourne Art Group artist

This is what I paint about, on the banks of the river you see all the bush-tucker; wild beans, wild melons, all the vines flowering on the banks of the rivers. Bush tucker, plenty vines, grass. When our ancestors used to live off the bush, they used to go down the river picking it all up. I just go down the river, right here, eat all the bush foods, melons, beans. When you have a good rain all that bush tucker comes up on the riverside. The wildflowers are different. Everywhere you go around the bush, you know, you see all the flowers, it’s beautiful. Now it’s all dried up, nothing. But when it rains all the beautiful mulla-mulla, wattle trees, sturt desert peas. All the wattles have beautiful yellow flowers. I also paint about seeds, all different seeds and different colours, all those different colours, all the beautiful colours. I like the colours that’s why it gave me a headache, my sister was picking, she only wants four colours, but I want all the colours. I love colours. It all comes out. 78

May 3, 2010 Newman Mandy Martin, visual artist In 1993 I was offered a commission by BHP Billiton to paint any of their mines anywhere and having ruled out South America and New Guinea(!) I chose Mount Newman in the Pilbara. I really wanted to see that part of the world. I was delighted when the PR person who met me at Port Hedland looked exactly like Robert Louis Stephenson and did not bat an eyelid when I said I wanted to retrace E.C Warburton’s near death retreat on camel back, out of the Great Sandy Desert to the coast. My ‘man’ took this on with gusto, taking me initially canoeing in the mangroves at Port Hedland and then arranging to meet me later in the week at Mount Newman to take me out to the Great Sandy Desert. My arrival in Mount Newman was sensational, a woman alone on a Sunday night walking into the bar at the motel looking for a meal and encountering about 400 men and another woman who came to my rescue! As I took my boots off at the motel door, (a necessity because the deep purple soil stains the carpets) many hours and an unbelievable party later, I fell in love with Mount Newman hematite, which I still use to paint with ‘til today, literally. I ran out a few years ago and an archaeologist friend of mine arranged to have a few Cottee’s cordial bottles of the stuff sent down by a boiler maker friend of his to keep me in colour! I painted every morning and afternoon. I painted the panorama from a distance and from the Aboriginal camp out of town. In between painting sessions, when the light was flat and the temperatures scorching, I drove many kilometres up rocky creek beds searching out amazing rock art sites. I also visited and talked with the last few desultory inhabitants of Wittenoom and looked with dismay at the asbestos paths around town. My man arrived and as promised we headed out into the Great Sandy Desert to meet the traditional owners of a particular tribal group he was negotiating a gift of buildings to. There were carpets of flowering sturt desert pea and everywhere was lush from rains two seasons before. We drove along seismic survey lines between fields of rock outcrops engraved with larger than life figures. It was a bit like the moment in the film Japanese Story when the car becomes bogged and the mobile phone doesn’t work. A beer at Marble Bar, the longest and hottest bar in the world, did marvels, although my man ordered a shandy from which I have never recovered. I had arrived at the moment in time when BHP, unlike some of its counterparts, was entering into Mabo agreements with the local Traditional Owners. My painting was of the No Go Zone at Yarrrie Ridge, the area negotiated with the Traditional Owners as not being available for mining.

Christine Villanti ---------------------------- Max George, Spinifex Hill Artist, South Hedland, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Wokka Taylor, Martumili Artist, Parnngurr, 2010

May 08, 2010 Writing from Melbourne Les Walkling, photographer

inheritance). For all I know some of my photographs of the Pilbara could be of places of great Aboriginal significance, yet also be highly offensive to Aboriginal cultures. As I rush through the Pilbara consuming it as

One thing my research has turned up is how relatively

an image or entertainment, though not indifferent to its

‘unknown’ the Pilbara is to curators and other friends over

authenticity, I nevertheless impose myself, my values,

here on the east coast. There is a blind-spot on this side

my stories and my displacement everywhere I venture.

(east) of the country, to most of the rest of Australia. We collect signs of significance, and through them reflect our

If my work in some way acknowledges this dislocation,

prejudices and innocence. Over here I live in a crowded

or sense of displacement, and my fascination with ‘this

city that I call home, while dreaming of far flung origins

problem’, while not trying to come up with answers or

few of us know or understand. Yet the land pervades my

other simplistic notions, but instead allowing myself to

consciousness through literature, music, film, poetry and

become entangled in these complexities, as evidence of

other cultural mythologies. But in photography, the most

such complexities and their cultural significance, then I

visual of all media (but not necessarily the most intelligent),

think I might be able to make a worthwhile contribution.

we have a mighty gap or absence. Where in our photographic

Not only to my (white) understanding of the complexity

histories is the treatise on the history of Australian landscape

of the Pilbara, the conflicts and contradictions, and

photography? It doesn’t exist. And in particular, where do

the sensitivities, but also my acknowledgement and

the sensitive photographs we render belong in our cultural

experience that I am in a strange land, not my country,

myopia. This blindness of course can’t be helped. But I see

and what it means to engage with such strangeness ‘in

only what I know. I also respect only what I understand.

my own back yard’. To be both at home (inside my head) but also lost in this land.

I am fascinated by the Pilbara in the broadest sense that I can describe, but also appalled by my ignorance and insensitivity to it. What do I really know about the Pilbara - very little except that it is a remote and ancient place of extremes, both climate and distance, and cultural affinities. I would therefore argue that I should be working from the ‘bottom

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Onslow, 2010

up’ rather than imposing from the top down (as is my cultural

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Clockwise from top left: John Elliott ---------------------------- Faye Coburn and Beryl Adamson, Port Hedland, 2010; Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Michael Fletcher, Jamie Paterson and Larry Mitchell, Varanus Island, 2010; Andy Taylor ---------------------------- Eric Galliers, Port Hedland Airport, 2008

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Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Salt flats, Karratha, 2010

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- salt, Port Hedland, 2010

Renee Currie ---------------------------- Eighty Mile Beach, 2009

Faye Harris ---------------------------- Salt flats, Port Hedland, 2010

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Tony Hewitt---------------------------- Onslow, 2010

February 11, 2010 Near Marble Bar Les Walkling, photographer On Landscape: Inherited expectations are reduced to no more than a hindrance against the vast spaces that belittle my concept of time and distance. Work dominates this landscape but doesn’t define it. Vast projects shrink beside the land they try to possess, while everything is overpowered by the magnificent skies. Gold mines, both literal and imagined leave their mark,

Les Walkling ---------------------------- Salt flats, Karratha, 2010

in both the landscape, and our dealings with it. The lie of the land can be deafening out here. On Photography: The colour palette I’m working with encompasses the entire visible spectrum: from purple, blue-cyan, green-yellow, to orange-red. A palette as broad and as muted as the land that reflects it. Even the most beautiful lenses fall short of seeing everything there is. How can a single plane of critical focus capture the complexity and sheer majestic presence of the Pilbara? I’m finding I need to combine numerous optical layers to even reach its surface. On editing images: I find myself needing to reduce the dominance of red. This washes clean the magenta-purples of distant ranges, clarifies the yellows in the Spinifex, releases the vastness of the sky, adds vibrance to green foliage, and highlights the orange of the rocks and soil. This simple act shifts the land (orange) and the sky (cyan-blue) onto the colorimetric colour temperature curve. Light then appears to emanate from the land, and the land in turn lights up the sky. On weather: A massive dust storm erupted, sucking vast quantities of soil into the sky. Between the lightening flashes and the spot fires they created, the sky had challenged the earth, and inherited the land. Later as the storms raged ahead of us, the storm clouds reflecting the land below shifted to purple. This dialectic between land and sky upstages our pictorial expectations. Yet another welcome surprise in a land full of surprises, both ancient and new. On art: What I’m doing here comes from personal necessity. We all collect the richness of human significance in the best ways we know how. I’m no different. I’m just trying to visualize and analyse those ideas that don’t make sense to me, and hopefully this material thinking will be of some delight for others. Its genealogy is what delights me. Though ultimately my opinion is less interesting than what it might mean for someone to hold such an opinion. Like the land, I’m so happy to just be here.

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Brendan Moelands ---------------------------- Yandi, 2010

Nicole Yardley ---------------------------- camping outside Karijini National Park, 2009

November 16, 2010 Newman and surrounds Elisha Buttler, writer I remember my very first moment in the Pilbara, clearly. I think it was 2004. I’d flown across from the bluestone shades of Melbourne, via Perth, and sunset was looming by the time the small plane skimmed the plains around Newman. I had a bad cold; my head felt lolling and heavy and I couldn’t hear properly because my middle ear was imbalanced. Peering through my little airplane window, with the horizon drawing nearer, it seemed as though the whole world was on fire: the retreating sun threw waves of intense, opaque orange across the sky and the earth itself was blackened in the shadows. We had to disembark the plan via a rickety staircase and when I got to the open door the heat hit me, full on, like a smack in the face. It was such a solid heat – tough and doughy like I could hold it in my hands. Walking across the tarmac, cockatoos flapping, I thought I was on another planet. Sounds were vague and echoey, the sky and the earth were the colour of Mars and the heat … the heat! It was pressing me from all sides, like ghosts. Yet strangely, this is not what I think of most often when I think about moving through the Pilbara. At first glance, first fleeting feeling, this place can seem harsh, aggressively bright. But what comes to my mind now is something subtler. Frogs singing at night, palm trees sighing, human skin glowing coral pink at twilight. I remember a gentle colour palette, between the reds and oranges. One of lilac, lavender, blanched mint green ... I keep thinking, who would expect such cottonsoft colours in the outback?

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- between Port Hedland and Karratha, 2010

September 24, 2010 Dampier Mollie Hewitt, curator It takes an interested eye but you can find endless amounts of life all over the Pilbara â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which is so comforting.

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- entrance to the old drive-in cinema, Karratha, 2010

July 16, 2010, on the Indian Ocean, Max George, Spinifex Hill Artist

A job out on the sea was a move that gave me the strength to see life on the other side. It was like looking at my whole life living a scarecrow’s life on a boat two weeks on two weeks off. Life sprang into action when the net was full and up in the air ready to empty out on deck: it was like learning to hop, skip, jump, shark bait. On the prawning boat was a time to think and meditate about my landscape painting. The waves were fences kangaroos hopped over. The islands were homesteads. The sharks were dingo traps. I was thinking of my life when I saw a fin in the water. There was nowhere to run nowhere to hide. So I stuck to the boat and the job. It gave me the feeling of painting the country I had made up from my imagination from the mind and the heart on the sea. I became an artist to this day.

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March 8, 2010 Out on the harbour at Port Hedland. Mags Webster, writer

March, 2009 Punmu. Mantarrar Rosie Williams Canning Stock Route Project artist

Port Hedland, 6.30pm My family used to keep women and kids away We are out on the harbour at Port Hedland.

from the Canning Stock Route. Frightened of

Getting dark. We’re back in the gorges but this

walypala (whitefellas) for taking women and kids.

time the cliff walls are the towering hulls of the

Only men used to go to Canning Stock Route for

bulk carriers, their anchors angled like gargoyles

kuka (meat)…

off a cathedral. They are the icebergs of the cargo industry. When fully loaded with close on 200,000

(When our Dad went away on law business) we

tonnes of ore, most of their hulk lies below the

walked around with our mothers. They used to

surface.

walk and go off, and drinking from rockhole and lake. Karlamilyi river used to be full with water. And after rain season, when seed fall and time to get feed, (we were) collecting seed from trees. They grow around side of the river. And we used to roast it on hot coals and grind it to make it into a paste and eat it like that. Kalara (seed). Yinta (spring) country. Jamal seed and lungkurr seed.

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March 4, 2010 Road to Tom Price

Mags Webster, writer

November 4, 2010 Crossing the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer Elisha Buttler, writer

Russet. Plum. Cocoa. Lavender. Silver-sage.

Almost sunset. The Fortescue River is in flood.

Shadows of purple. Out into a landscape of Albert

We stop near the bridge and walk over it. The river

Namatjira colours. We’ve landed at Paraburdoo,

is touching the top, we can feel the bridge puls-

welcomed by a massive goanna, which looks

ing underneath us. My hands, pressed over a rail,

almost as ancient as the land itself. There’s a giant

tickle from the sensation. I think, this bridge is a

grasshopper. As we drive to Tom Price, the size

silly thing, it does not belong here. But I feel safe.

of everything about this place hits me, as it does every time I come here. Everything is scaled up

Back in the car we pass a lone sign which reads

in the Pilbara: the land, the horizon, its age, even

‘Tropic of Capricorn’. I am surprised to see some-

the insects.

thing invisible, intangible, stated so simply on a road sign. This is a magical line. A place between two places, a thin crease gently holding the two together. We cross the Tropic; for just a second we are in a whole different world.

Justin McKirdy ---------------------------- Great Northern Highway, 2009

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Nelson Point, Port Hedland, 2010

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Salt flats, Port Hedland, 2010

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Nelson Point, Port Hedland, 2010

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Salt flats, Port Hedland, 2010 114

Pilbara Diaries William L. Fox Between March and September 2010 writer and curator William L. Fox visited the Pilbara three times as part of The Pilbara Project; travelling from the outback of Nevada, across the Pacific Ocean and the Nullarbor, to the outback of Western Australia. Three visits, three seasons, three different journeys. Each time Fox travelled with a different group of artists and curious minds, photographing, thinking about and trying to understand the interlinking nuances of this intriguing region. This is an edited excerpt of his diaries (the full diaries can be found at www.thepilbaraproject.com). Fox is Director, Center for Art and Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art.

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Elaine Argaet ---------------------------- Kalamina Gorge on the edge of Karijini National Park, 2010

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First Journey

connected to the functions of the world above,

March 4: The gorges of Karijini National Park

and what’s flowing where. Up top it’s semi-arid

The system-reticulum of Australia, the continental

although the air is uncommonly hazy, we can still

mallee scrub and gum trees with intermittent

network of Aboriginal songlines, has been

see both the Hamersley and Chichester Ranges -

After a fitful air-conditioned sleep we had driven

streams; down here the deciduous trees are green,

described as the most sophisticated non-

where we’ve come from and where we’re going

out of Tom Price early this morning and into Karijini

the water flow continual. Up above in 1861 the

mechanical technology in history, an encoding of

today, following the railway, the mining road, and

the water just one of the things flowing from the

March 3-4: Perth-Paraburdoo-Tom Price

Hamersley Ranges to the Indian Ocean.

Two hundred feet above me morning sunlight skims

The Pilbara Craton is one of the oldest surviving

National Park, nothing else on the road except

surveyor Francis Gregory came through looking

laws in story, dance, song, and art governing the

the subsurface water, everything flowing northeast

along the rim of Weano Gorge, bouncing from wall

bits of continental crust on Earth, formed some 3.5

mining vehicles labelled ‘patrol’ and ‘emergency

for rivers flowing east to an inland sea - when in

use of terrain and resources that up until the mid-

to the Indian Ocean.

to wall until it reaches the water in the pool at my

billion years earlier. I’m looking into rocks formed

unit.’ We came up parallel to an iron ore train,

fact the water was underground and flowing west

twentieth-century would have governed how the

feet. The gorge is carved into the sedimentary

almost 2.5 billion years ago, back more than halfway

roughly 200 small cars heaped neatly and identically

to the ocean. Up top it’s all about looking down

conjunction of water and land here was perceived,

At Millstream - named by Francis Gregory, who

banded iron and silicates of Western Australia’s

to when our planet coalesced out of a cloud of

with $80,000 worth of ore in each one, on the way

for water and iron ore, said ore transported from

used, and conserved. The songlines are part of

noted its prospects for grazing on his surveying

Karijini National Park, and in places is only shoulder-

dust. Australia has the distinction of being the

to China. Barry, whose brother is a model train

the mine in nine trains a day, each at least three

a highly evolved set of social tools encoding the

trip - we eat a picnic lunch, then walk amongst the

wide. By the time the light reaches this deep

flattest, hottest, and most ancient continent, and

enthusiast, reminded us that the world’s longest

kilometres long. Even the gods here, the ancestors

environmental knowledge necessary to survive

pools and streams of the artesian waters welling

it’s a saturated orange glow. I’m stopped at a

the oldest exposed rocks in the world are found in

train was assembled here, a monster more than

of Dreamtime, don’t come from above, but arise

in a harsh land, the stories mnemonic devices

up, part of the complex surface and subsurface river

millrace - a circular bowl carved out of the rock

Western Australia, zircon crystals 4.4 billion years

seven kilometres long.

from and disappear back into the underground.

transmitting behavioural laws from generation to

system running down to the ocean. The waters are

by flash floods - and across from me water

old. 300 million years ago the Pilbara was part of

I can’t help but wonder if it’s because so much

generation through dance, song, and rock art. The

startlingly clear, the aquifer beneath us an estimated

flows briskly from between two layers of rock.

the Gondwana supercontinent and sat close to the

The first place in the Park that Paul takes us is

water in the interior of Australia is subsurface - and

rocks in Australia have been used by humans as

2,000 square kilometres holding as much as 1.7

It’s not seeping, but actually pouring out of the

South Pole; about 170 million years ago Australia

Oxers Lookout, which stands three hundred feet

that it springs up seemingly out of nowhere - and

a resource for millennia, and not just in forms as

billion cubic metres of water. This part of Australia

side of the gorge into the stream that continues

started to drift away and it’s been floating northward

above the meeting place of the Red, Weano, Joffre,

thus below ground is where traditional beliefs

crude as ore.

is a sponge that’s been soaking up water for

downward to meet Junction Pool, where four of

ever since. These facts are relevant to the collision

and Hancock gorges at Junction Pool. It’s a major

would reside. Life needs water, and if the water is

the park’s gorges meet.

I’m here to write about, the one among the

scenic climax in WA, the steel viewing platform

underground, surely there would be a living world

landscapes, industries, and cultures of the Pilbara.

hanging over gorges where flocks of bright green

beneath us.

The Pilbara is one of nine districts in Western

budgerigars wheeled in synchronized formations

Australia (WA), a 500,000-square-kilometre region

Seven of us had flown north out of Perth the

below us. A rappel, or abseil anchor point was set

At the end of the day we go for a swim in the

that contains the hottest place on the continent, a

afternoon before, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn

off to one side for rescue crews hauling unfortunate

Hamersley Gorge. This time I give into the heat,

semi-arid to arid tropical desert that’s currently in

just before landing at the Paraburdoo airport. It’s a

hikers up from the pool. The gorge walls were

take off my shirt and jump in the cool waters. I float

the grip of yet another recurring drought, this one

one-and-a-half hour flight into what my colleague

stained with numerous seep springs, underground

down the gorge on my back, Barry ahead of me,

exacerbated by the global heating that’s been

Barry Lopez noted was a landscape remarkably

water from precipitation in the Hamersley Range

Carolyn behind, and watch the cliff tops and gum

accelerated by human activity since the 1950s.

devoid of anthropic sorting. In addition to Barry and

percolating between the sharply delineated bands

trees and clouds go by. I wonder what this all meant

It’s a relief to be out of the 40ºC temperatures up

myself were poet Mark Tredinnick, painter Larry

of iron.

to the traditional owners. We’re swimming between

on the rim, and down here where it’s at least ten

Mitchell, and photographer Paul Parin. That’s about

degrees cooler. Some of the trees in the gorge

the range of talent you want when approaching a

And now I’m sitting in Weano Gorge, the others

as well as to either side, cleaved by the water.

are volunteers whose airborne seeds have wafted

region you’ve never before visited, much less tried

having proceeded to Handrail Pool, the next stop

Barry wonders how the three major groups who

in from the much wetter Kimberly region far to

to write about. Mags Webster, herself a writer, and

downstream and the home of the olive python. I’m

have lived in Karijini for at least 20,000 years - the

the north. Last year in the next pool downstream

Carolyn Karnovsky - both from our sponsor, the non-

looking at a layer of blue material and wondering if

Banjima, Yinhawangka, and Kurrama - negotiated

a tourist captured a series of pictures of an

profit FORM organisation in Perth - had flown the

it’s asbestos, and at the subsurface water running

the shared use of such places as Oxer Point and

enormous olive python swallowing a wallaby. It’s

1000 kilometres with us, and would make sure we

out of the rock wall, and thinking about what’s on

Junction Pool.

a different world in the gorges, but one intimately

got to meet local people at each juncture of the trip.

top of the earth here, and what’s below ground,

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primal strata, bands of rock above and below us,

March 5: In transit with water and ore: Millstream Chichester National Park Yesterday I’d ridden with Paul, a commercial and fine art photographer from Perth who’s been working in the Pilbara for years. Today I ride with Larry, a painter born in Northampton just outside of Geraldton. The body of his work I’ve seen reproduced include a series of smallish works done from hotel windows of large cities, and large works done on small islands that are disappearing, either culturally or physically: ‘Even before I knew about global change. I could see it for myself.’ In the late morning we top Mount Sheila at the former site of a telecommunications facility, one of the steeper improved tracks I’ve ever driven on. Barry’s GPS reads 3290 feet - 1002 metres - and

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millions of years from the cyclones and other rain events, and the coastal towns and mines have been increasingly wringing water from it for decades. In the historic homestead we find a laminated picture or story map on the wall made in the 1930s by then 12-year-old Doug Gordon. It outlines the fenced property, the outbuildings and work areas, and events such as where a cart lost a wheel, and where two men had a fistfight. In the upper right-hand corner is the largest figure on the map, a huge brown cow that says everything about the importance of livestock. In the opposite corner is the other major icon, the only trees on the yellowed ground and where birds are shown flying over the ponds. This place was a source of water and wonder for the pastoralists and the Yindjibarndi and Ngarluma people alike. There are no constant rivers in this part of the world, and very few permanent

pools even. In the Yindjibarndi language, a river

that is the legacy of the mixed gases breathed in

I come from a culture in which 97 per cent of all art

which makes the image a spectacular record of

making seen in much acrylic work by Aboriginal

operations is so large that, as hard as I look, I can’t

doesn’t mean a flowing water feature, but a dry

helmets. He’s been in Karratha for 35 years, is of

disappears within a hundred years of its making.

change over time.

artists, dots and strokes in hypnotic patterns layered

spot a single person, save one crew member on

bed that caries water only during cyclone season.

indeterminate percentage of Aboriginal blood, and

We don’t know what the best Greek statuary was

in sombre earth colours on a black background.

deck of a tanker who watches us from above as we

One of the foundational stories about the creation

runs a tour guide business that feeds his passion

because even though it’s referenced in literature,

By mid-morning we’re on our way to Roebourne

of the pools is the ‘Story of the Warlu, Barrimirndi

for the Aboriginal rock art of the Burrup. Barry and

the specific works are long lost. There’s an entire

and Roebourne Art Group, one of two Aboriginal art

Travelling up the Fortescue River (Yarnda Nyirranha),’

I ride with Shane as we head back over the saddle,

century of Dutch painting that’s gone from wars in

centres there, but we detour first to Cossack, an

which involves a great sea serpent who came inland

turn left before we reach the salt flats, and pass

the Low Countries, and more recently the largest

historical town that was the birthplace of pearling in

It takes us most of the rest of the afternoon to drive

suggests to me that we’re going to need a new

searching for two young miscreants. The serpent’s

by a huge desalinisation facility that also functions

statues of Buddha in the world, the giant cliff

WA during the 1860s. By the beginning of the 20th

the two-lane road from Roebourne to Port Hedland,

category of story to assimilate what we ourselves

passage dragged a long trench in the land - the river

as a chemical plant, processing from the salt as

dwellers of Bamyan in Afghanistan, were dynamited

century the town was virtually abandoned; the thick-

at 15,000 or so people now the largest town in

are doing to the country. We need stories to match

- and as he rose out of and fell back into the earth,

a by-product the ammonium nitrate used in both

almost to smithereens by religious fundamentalists.

walls of the stone buildings betray the fact that the

the Pilbara, and the most active port by tonnage in

the size of the open pit mines, the length of the

he left behind the pools. The connection between

fertiliser for farms and explosives in the mines.

The loss of the Burrup images from so long ago,

site is ideally suited to catching the full fury of the

Australia. We pass through low scrubby land that

trains, the keels of the carriers. We call such big

the inland water and the sea is encoded in multiple

Ahead of us is what’s left of Mount Burrup, a large

however, isn’t just one of the world’s great lodes of

cyclones that come down from the north, storms

transitions from spinifex into saltbush, a landscape

stories myths, epics with the metaphorical reach

narratives as old as the traditional owners and as

hill that’s been levelled and is now occupied by a

art being destroyed, but evidence into the evolution

that have repeatedly taken the place apart.

that Paul says stretches from here to Broome

to encompass the girth of the world. Port Hedland,

recent as what I’m writing.

half dozen towering cranes, the construction site

of the human mind and culture itself. We all know

more than 600km to the north. At three-thirty in

known as Marrapikurrinya to the Nyamal, was a

of the Pluto Liquid Natural Gas plant that will soon

there are better ways to preserve this complex of

Shane had told us that most of the elders near

the afternoon we see lightning strikes ahead of us

place of reliable fresh water. According to the elder

open. It’s the second such facility to be built here,

sites, which includes the nearby standing stones

Dampier wouldn’t even come out onto the Burrup

in the distance, and at four o’clock spot brushfire

and lawman Peter Coppin, an enormous blind

a massive and potentially dangerous operation that

erected to memorialize the massacre of traditional

Peninsula anymore. It makes them fatally sad and

smoke rising black and thick to our right. Australia is

water snake lived in the largest of the three local

Dampier is an active port but only a small town,

will freeze the gas brought in pipelines from 60

owners as they were pursued by colonists in the

they see ghosts everywhere in the land. The rock art

ever the land of fire and water.

soaks, which is now the turning basin for the bulk

fewer than 1,800 people living in it; that includes

kilometres offshore. We turn left again, this time

1860s along the archipelago until they reached the

cemetery is well-named, and the consequent split

the transient workers sharing the motel with

up a faint stony track to what Shane calls a ‘rock art

end and had nowhere to flee.

between the generations is intense. I wouldn’t say

As we come into town, the stacks always on our

the harbour, the snake was forced to leave by

us, like the pair of deckhands next door from

cemetery.’

the elders or kids are deliberately abandoning their

horizon, we pass multiple trains of more than 300

the churning of the propellers. Coppin tells in his

traditional culture, but that the two groups don’t

cars waiting to unload their ore, or return to the

memoir of negotiating with BHP Billiton Iron Ore

have a lot of respect for each other in many cases,

mines. Even the road trains here are the largest

in the 1990s for a trade-off of sacred places to be

and everything is just falling between the cracks.

we’ve seen, semis pulling three-and-a-half trailers

left untouched, while other parcels of land could be

with more than 90 wheels on the ground.

mined. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but one based

March 6: Dampier and the Burrup Peninsula

Shanghai who are here to work out on the North West Shelf natural gas development offshore. The

The Burrup contains somewhere between 500,000

town sits at the base of the Dampier Archipelago,

and a million individual petroglpyhs, some perhaps

42 rocky uninhabited islands threaded around the Burrup Peninsula, a finger of islands now connected artificially that is the largest rock art site in the world. And it’s also here where the waters flowing out of the rocks of the Karijini Gorges finally meet the Indian Ocean. So we’ve connected the park and the mines, and the water from the interior to the sea. We meet Shane Peters in the parking lot early the next morning, a former deep sea commercial diver who moves in that slightly stiff and off-centre canter

March 8: Stories replacing stories: Deep GorgeRoebourne-Port Hedland

chug slowly past.

March 8: Port Hedland: Issues of scale All this gigantism on our last evening in the Pilbara

carriers. When the first large cargo vessel entered

as old as 25,000 years. An estimated twenty

First thing the next day we hike up a hill in

five per cent of them have been destroyed or

Deep Gorge to see the petroglyphs of the now-

A huge difference in Australia for the future of

damaged by the building and operation of resource

vanished fat-tailed kangaroo, an image executed on

Indigenous culture is that the local women make

At 6.15 in the evening we drive down to the port

facilities, such as the Dampier Port and the original

a large flat boulder face hanging over the valley, and

art, and a fine example is Loreen Samson, a 37-year-

to take a look around the harbour aboard one of

I’d not thought, when starting out on this trip, that

Woodside LNG plant. In an attempt to limit the

that of a thylacine (also known as the Tasmanian

old Ngarluma speaker from Roebourne. The law

the pilot boats used to bring in the tankers, several

I’d find this renewed sense of purpose for older

damage during the early 1980s, more than 1800

tiger, the world’s largest known carnivorous

system of the traditional owners is inseparable

of which are being loaded as we cast off. Iron ore

stories. I had envisioned a narrative about our

rocks engraved with petroglyphs were moved

marsupial). The outline of the legendary animal

from the land and its stories of creation, and the

pours from conveyors that travel down the piers to

travels and the contemporary collisions between

from their original sites and dumped behind

with its distinctive stripped torso is about four feet

Dreaming here is called Ngurra Nyujunggaamu,

dump a constant stream of material into the holds. I

culture and nature, for example the competing

a tall chainlink fence. When we start to walk

long, about life-sized. It’s a picture of a species

which might be translated as ‘when the world was

clamber up to the flying bridge to get a better view.

needs between the mining pits and the national

around the exclosure, Shane tells us repeatedly

that’s been extinct or nearly so for perhaps two

soft.’ Its story says that when the spirits created the

The ships can take up to 200,000 tonnes of ore, and

parks. I’d thought about art as a way of representing

to watch where he put our feet, as he’s seen

thousand years on the mainland, and the last known

world, they lifted the sky and ground out of the sea.

the conveyors can fill one every 18-24 hours. A ship

those conflicting uses, not as a way of bridging

death adders here.

specimen from Tasmania died in captivity in 1936,

Loreen works in a style using the incessant mark-

per day leaves the harbour on high tide. The scale of

them, of helping us envision the responsibility of

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on those big stories from Dreamtime.

120

May 23: On the roads

one to another anchored in the old ways. But that’s

nearby Mount Whaleback, which used to rise 457

a virtue of travel, that moving through space will

metres above the desert, but is now a hole more

invariably take you through time. The landscape

than 300 metres deep. Whaleback is the largest

It’s 5.50 before we get out onto the Marble Bar road

and the timescape are inextricable from one

single-pit open-cut iron ore mine in the world and

and not until 11.15 that we join the road to Jigalong,

another. Travel allows us to see and assess how

measures more than five kilometres long by two

a community made famous by Phillip Noyce’s 2002

human actions upon the land will partner with

kilometres wide.

film The Rabbit-Proof Fence.

old and new, stories holding it all together in our

In the afternoon Tim takes us over to visit Gabrielle

At Walgun instead of turning south to Jigalong we

minds. And, if we’re lucky and clever, the stories will

Sullivan and her staff at the local Aboriginal art

bear north to Billinooka Station. Its eight houses

help us to sustain a life in the land.

centre, Martumili Artists. Formed in late 2006,

and outbuildings are sun blasted and wind beaten,

it is among the youngest of the sixty-five art

boards creaking. A wire fence with a gate surrounds

centres in Australia (twenty of which are in WA).

each house, and next to one weathered structure a

Martumili draws work from six communities -

couple of bougainvillea bushes are flourishing, their

Parnpajinya (as Newman is known), Jigalong,

pink and orange blossoms the only vivid colours in

Parnngurr, Kunawarritji, Punmu, and Irrungadji. The

the small settlement. It’s a spooky set of ruins that’s

Martu were the last Aboriginal people to come

been scoured for anything truly useful.

geomorphology to make landscape, the land both

Second Journey May 22: Newman Two months later and I’m back in the Pilbara with Larry Mitchell. This time Tim Acker is our guide, a photographer and consultant in Aboriginal art to FORM. We’ve flown 1200 kilometres north of Perth to Newman, a town once again almost atop the Tropic of Capricorn, and we’ve been joined by four other photographers and a filmmaker. Peter Eastway from Sydney and Les Walkling from Melbourne have teamed up with the twin brothers Christian and Michael Fletcher, both from WA. Michael’s the filmmaker. Tony Hewitt, a portrait photographer from WA, rounds out the crew. Our first task upon arrival is to drive up Radio Hill with its small antennae farm and get oriented. Newman is one of the hottest towns in Australia, at times ratcheting clear up to 47ºC, but today it’s merely warm and swarming with flies. Out come the cameras, everyone scattering to the edges of the hill to document the 360º view. Newman was constructed in two years from 1967-1969 to house workers for the Mount Newman Mining Company, the sole purpose of its residents to take apart

in from the country, giving up their nomadic life only during an extended drought. Sitting on the

In the afternoon we hit the one of Len Bedell’s

deck connecting the two prefab units of the

famous roads, the Talawanna Track, and head east.

centre, a covered space used as an open-air

Bedell carved the road in 1963 with his Gunbarrel

painting studio, and looking at the work, it’s

Crew, and it’s a veritable highway that threads

immediately obvious that something different

its way through the long stabilized dunes of the

here is going on. The artists sometimes use

Little Sandy Desert. We’re near its confluence

dots, sometimes not; the work is at times

with the Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, driving

schematic and map-like - but often not, and is

over Quaternary sand dunes. It hasn’t burned

more directly representational than much other

here recently, and the overgrown spinifex closes

desert painting. An example is a painting of a

off much of the land. Divots in the road made by

dry lake, a salt pan, where the painters have

sleeping camels indicate that we’re getting close

used several kinds of white acrylic - antique

to the Rudall National Park, the largest in Australia.

white and titanium white among others - to

Stands of Desert Oak appear, the causarina native

recreate the shimmering luminescence of the

to Australia, but an invasive species in the United

ground itself. The middle of the painting is a void

States and other countries. Here it is a treat for the

surrounded by bands of coloured dots, and your eye

eyes, an evergreen growing in the desert. In Florida,

roves around the outer panel until inevitably it falls

where it’s known as Australian Pine and considered

into the dry lake as surely as water spiralling down

an invader, the species has quadrupled its spread

a drain.

from just 1993 to 2005. The point is that it’s not

121

just that the endemic species of Australia fall prey

battle against invaders, and I’m sympathetic, but it’s

see another dingo watching us from atop a small

watercourses into the smaller canyons. Overhead

representing trails and streams and waterholes and

Hema Desert Tracks guide knows better, listing the

to intruders from other countries, but that Australia

still tough to witness the remains. I trudge over to

rise. As soon as I look directly at it, the animal slinks

we’re accompanied by blue and green birds with

plant communities. Sometimes they sing quietly to

Dog Fence at about three times longer. Regardless,

exports invaders as well.

see the carcasses and scare off a dozen large crows

back into the scenery and we three continue. About

russet heads and long straight beaks. They’re bee

themselves as they bring up country, remembering

the modern fences of Australia, which invariably cut

feasting on bloated and blackened remains. Two

fifteen minutes from the first pair of dead camels,

eaters that migrate from Vladiovostok to as far

what place follows next along this route, or what kind

across the Songlines, demand their own narrative.

tawny dingoes are orbiting the scene and I keep an

they stop. I stop. Staying here? I ask. They blink.

south as Perth, and a reminder that no matter

of plant was found there. The songs, the dances,

The Dog Fence, on the other side of the country,

May 24: Walking with dingoes

eye on them. They’re thin but not scrawny, alert,

I give thanks and continue on. A couple seconds

how remotely we think we’re camped, we’re

the paintings, and country are all one to them,

is actually the longest continuous human made

Monday morning at 5.45, laying on my back in my

and their paws seem hardly to touch the ground, so

later I turn to catch a last glimpse, but they’ve

embedded in a web of movement around the

and I wonder how our pictures and writings are

structure on the planet, and I’m unsure why the

swag, I watch the International Space Station soar

lightly do they walk.

already melted invisibly into the bush. The dingoes,

planet, be it birds or art or ore.

also part of country, even when we’re unaware of

Rabbit Fences of Western Australia are allowed to

that profound connection. You can’t write about,

claim the honour.

overhead, trailed by a NASA shuttle, the two dots

an iconic symbol of the continent, aren’t exactly

brilliant in the sunlight that down here has yet to

The head of the first camel is pulled back on its

natives either, but immigrants brought here some

Mid-morning we drive back out of the valley and

or take a picture or make a painting of a place

rise. Butcher birds are calling much more closely

long neck in a harsh rictus, lips shrunken back, jaws

4,000 years ago by seafarers from Southeast Asia.

head south to Parnngurr, an Aboriginal community

without it constructing our understanding of it.

overhead. Their name is derived from the fact that

spread wide apart and twisted impossibly. The

Thought to be distant descendants of the Asian

of about 150 people. In Parnngurr we meet up

That’s what culture is, whether it’s Aboriginal or

they will catch and impale insects, lizards, and

extreme heat out here explodes quartz boulders;

Gray Wolf, it’s theorised that they are responsible

with Gabrielle Sullivan, who’s driven out to meet

Euro-Australian. How we use the images diverges,

even smaller birds upside down on thorns of small

what it does to a carcass is surreal. I take notes,

for the disappearance of the Thylacine on the

us, and after she helps us check into the dongas

but the baseline is the same.

branches and then peel the flesh from them. It’s

the dingoes watching. Clumps of coarse camel

mainland, among other large fauna. The world is

where we’re staying, we head over to the nearby

a truism that the desert breeds innovative survival

hair are caught in bushes at ground level. I crouch

a constant turmoil of displacement, replacement,

painting shed, a corrugated metal building about 18

techniques all up and down the evolutionary

down to look, finger the long bristles, still keeping

emplacement.

x 24 paces with a high ceiling. A half dozen women

spectrum, whether it’s stripping the carcasses of

the dingoes in view. They’ve moved in a little closer,

road kill, automobiles, failed settlements, or your

and as I stand they stop about three metres away,

live prey.

Third Journey September 21: Return to the Burrup Painter Larry Mitchell wasn’t going to join us for

May 27: Lines above and below ground

this third and final photographic foray into the Pilbara, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to once

sit on the floor painting while three kids run around.

Early the next morning we go up Parnngurr Hill with

again wander the Burrup. Christian, along with Tony

Our forays into the Pilbara are part of an ongoing

A gaggle of dogs sit patiently by a metal gate in lieu

Curtis, a novice filmmaker from town. Uranium was

Hewitt, Les Walkling and I are all travelling under the

the male on one side, the female on the other.

and widespread movement to reclaim a place for

of a door. The physical settlement consists of forty or

first discovered here by CRA (now Rio Tinto) in the

helpful eye this time of Mollie Hewitt, a curator from

Alright, I think to myself. Let’s see how this goes.

art in the desert that Heysen and Albert Namatjura

so structures, including a school, medical clinic, and

1970s. Now there’s a four-year survey update period

FORM who’s shaping the photograph exhibition of

Turning north, we come over a low saddle between

I ask politely if they would care to accompany me.

popularized in the mid-20th century, along with

a tiny community store. The traditional owners, Tim

during which the company, the government, and

the work we’re doing. This time we’re all looking

two hills, and of course the guys have to stop to

They cock their heads. I walk toward the road. They

Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams, both of whom

tells me, chose to settle here because of Parnngurr

traditional owners will discuss everything. We’re

forward to a deeper exploration of how industry

climb the high ground to take photos. I clamber up

follow. OK, then.

worked in the Pilbara. More recently, John Olson,

Hill on the southeast edge of the town, which marks

standing on a hill that someday may no longer exist,

is shaping the more urban parts of the region, and

John Wolseley, and Mandy Martin are among other

a rich uranium deposit. When the people were offered

one of three local ore bodies. Curtis says that you

by 10.46 a.m. we’re at the Tank Hill Lookout and

I regain the dirt road, the two dingoes following

notable western artists working the playas and

a chance to return to their country, they chose this

can look at the hill on Google Earth and see the

the Jaburga Heritage trailhead atop the Karratha

at a steady three metres to either side. I have no idea

fencelines of the deserts here, while most of the

location because most of them didn’t want it mined,

outline of the head belonging to the Dreamtime

Hills. We brace ourselves against the wind and

Within five minutes I spot what at first looks like an

what they’re up to, but enjoy the company. As we walk, I

work of Aboriginal artists since the 1970s has arisen

and their proximity gave them political leverage.

figure of the old man who lives there. ‘If you fall

scope out the chain of civic pods below us, housing

abandoned and burned car off to right, then another,

realise that every hundred yards or so there is either a camel

from the desert.

Tim also warns us not to drink the tap water as the

asleep here, you have to be careful’, says Curtis. ‘You

developments strung in a line along the road and

but they turn out to be two dead camels. I stop to

carcass, or a skeleton, or a scatter of bones. And on

groundwater is contaminated with the uranium.

dream of that old man and he may steal your soul,

squeezed in between the tidal flats and the hills. It’s

look and literally at my feet are two brass cartridge

the other side of this grim avenue live camels are

and then you wake up dead.’

an oddly tidy version of sprawl with no urban centre

casings - two shots, two camels - the instrument

wandering in small packs, seemingly unconcerned

of their demise a .308 calibre rifle. Camels in the

with my passage and that of the dingoes.

the nearest one, then scramble down the other side to walk down the road ahead of the others.

park are culled because they compete with native

May 25-26: Parnngurr

other than the largest shopping mall in the Pilbara

The next morning we mostly watch the painters The photographers disperse early to take advantage

in the shed, the guys taking portraits of the artists

We leave town at 9.30, and at 12.15 we’re on the

of the slanting light while Larry and Tim and

at work. The half dozen or so senior women sit by

Balfour Downs Road and crossing a new intersection

and some Shire buildings.

animals for forage, and sometimes fall in and foul

At one point the two dingoes come to a stop and

I walk up the gorge past the first pool to the

various paintings of country, using the butt end of

at the Rabbit-Proof Fence, a sign nearby proclaiming

The shire plan calls for Karratha to grow beyond

waterholes. The culling is part of Australia’s constant

fix their gazes to our left. What is it, I ask. Then I

second and eventually into the fractal branching of

brushes as well as the bristles to make dot patterns

it the longest fence in the world at 1837km. Even the

the mining business and become a regional city of

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123

50,000 or so sometime in the 2020s. But living in

pass the Rio Tinto storage yards and locomotive

evaporative work. Dampier exports 4.2 million tonnes

getting to where it’s actually scenic in our minds,

digital images, Christian 112, and Les something

a small hermit crab just visible as he pulls himself

a place where your average four-bedroom house

workshops. At four pm we’re out on the salt flats.

of salt per year, mostly for industrial purposes in

a seduction of the industrial sublime where what

in between. Let’s say a thousand in total. So many

along. Then I see another shell moving. ‘They’re all

costs $900,000, most of the homes are owned

Mollie and I stand near the twin railroad tracks as an

China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

we’re contemplating is both awful and beautiful.

shots that both stun you with their beauty even as

moving,’ exclaims Mollie. And sure enough we see

by absentee landlords, and rent consumes about

ore train rumbles by with its high overtones of metal

they dismay you with their implications. The guys

that the entire bottom is in motion.

75 per cent of the normal household income isn’t

wheels rubbing on steel rails, iron dust blowing

Larry and I spend much of the rest of the day

exactly attractive to the middle class or conducive

off the heavy mounds of ore in the cars - part of

digesting what we’ve seen, and find ourselves in late

to raising families. ‘How to create longevity for

that radar return. White salt, red dirt, blue sky, blue

afternoon bouncing along the dirt roads of the Burrup

this community after the mines are played out?’

evaporation ponds mirroring everything. So many

ponders Larry. ‘How to make it a place where

September 23: When in doubt, go flying

have gotten it exactly right, how we have modified the environment from deliberately set fires in the

It’s the same lesson I’ve been given everywhere

That’s been my motto for several years: when the

spinifex to the culling of camels, from massive ore

I’ve gone. Slow down and look carefully. You’ll find

looking for the rock art cemetery. We remember the

view from the ground is so thick with associations

trains to the delicate harvesting of grasses. As big

life where you least expect it, from mosses in the

parallel lines are here: the highway, telephone lines,

topography, how the site sits in relationship to the

that it’s tough to sort out what fits where, get in an

and wild as the Pilbara is, we haven’t seen an inch

Antarctic to Arctic char in the far north to wizened

people want to stay?’ adds Tony, as we drive down

drainage ditches, culverts, power lines, railroad

ammonia plant and Woodside, forming a shallow

airplane. And this morning at 6am we drive out to

untouched by humans no matter how far off the

sticks in Chile’s Atacama Desert that turn out to

the hill and prowl along streets planted with palm

tracks, vehicle tyre prints in mud, strand lines of

triangle with the two facilities, but it takes us some

Karratha Flying Services to meet our pilot, Alex, and

roads we’ve carried our notebooks and cameras and

be viable shrubs. The world never sits still, and as

trees. Karratha sits only about 20-30 metres above

evaporative levels in the ponds, our footsteps. It’s a

to and fro before we arrive just as the moon is rising.

to take turns squeezing into a Cessna 172 with its

sketchpads.

the botanist Melissa Iszard told me one day on a

sea level, and every couple of years cyclones blow

photographer’s paradise of colour and form.

through with winds exceeding 300kph, conditions that flood the surrounding plain, a situation that will

September 22: The future displacement

right door removed for the cameras. What Larry and I and the photographers are looking

volcanic island at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, At one o’clock this afternoon Mollie and Larry

‘Life wants to live.’ It occurs to me that humans

at isn’t so much what’s happened in the past, but

We make three flights, Tony and Les and Christian

and I again meet up with Shane Peters to wander

aren’t so different from the hermit crabs dragging

the beginning of the future. What we’ve been asked

taking turns in the right-hand front seat while Mollie

about the Burrup. Today he’s wearing a blue field

around their houses and finding a niche to occupy.

the issue of fresh water, which is supplied from the

Early the next morning the photographers go off

to do while in the Pilbara is to look at how nature

and I sit in the back taking notes and observing.

shirt, nylon field pants with lots of pockets, and a

We carry our society with us, all of us, housed in

Harding Dam and the Millstream aquifer that we’d

to take a tour of the new natural gas-fired power

and culture and industry affect one another in a

At this altitude, 300 metres, we’re high enough to

colourful tam o’shanter over his long greying hair.

our ideas about the nature of the world, bumping up

followed down to Dampier on our first trip. Those

plant at Cape Preston that’s almost completed, but

unique region of the world - where the remnants of

ascertain patterns and relationships, but still within

We pile into his familiar maroon Nissan SUV on

against other beliefs, other realities.

sources will be tapped out in 2013 and everyone’s

not yet open, while Larry and I take a tour of the

an advanced Palaeolithic social technology in one

the nap of the land. We can smell the iron ore as it

the road to Dampier. He says 10,000 workers daily

talking about building a desalinisation plant. Then

industrial infrastructure of the area. We meet our

of the harsher environments in the world morphs

falls into the open holds of the ships beneath us,

commute on it, which explains the hour-long traffic

I stand at the shore thinking how much I’d like to

there’s the new port planned for 30km east of

group at the Karratha visitor centre at 9.15, a dozen

along with Euro-Australian industry and society

and sniff the gas wafting out from Woodside. We

lines, and that it’s soon going to be widened to four

come back to see how these crabs fare during the

here, which is supposed to handle another 350

of us loading into on a small bus with our helmets

into something we haven’t seen before. The rock

trace the progress of the ore ships by the brown

lanes.

next few years. I’d like to know what happens to

tonnes of material every year, further straining the

and safety glasses. Janine, our guide, explains that

cemetery is part of the story, as is the funding of

wakes of sediment they churn up, the mud only

infrastructure.

the Dampier salt fields are the largest of three in

Aboriginal art centres, as are the hiring of design

inches beneath their keel, while out to sea I count

the Pilbara, 10,000 hectares through which water is

teams to assess how to turn towns such as Karratha

a half dozen ships waiting to be escorted into the

only worsen as sea levels rise globally. Then there’s

the boulders behind the fence, see what Loreen

September 24: Last day

and her friends will be painting, and whether or not Curtis will film the uranium hill being taken apart. I

harbour. On the farthest horizon I spy the faint

Before catching our plane back to Perth we drive

would value seeing the things that wouldn’t change,

outline of a gas platform over the North Shelf, and

into Dampier for a last look around. While the guys

too. The orange glow of the Weano Gorge, the

on the third flight, and most astonishingly, I spot a

photograph harbour operations that they’d flown

susurration of the desert oaks in the wind, and the

large dugong swimming serenely outside the dike

over the day before, Mollie and I go tide pooling. At

quick turn of a dingo’s head. But if nothing else, I’ll

of Pond Zero. It amazes me to see such a large

first I don’t think there’s much in the water, which

have the photographs to remind me.

Driving west out of town after lunch, we cruise

pumped from the ocean into Pond Zero. From there

through the newest pods along the plumb line of

the water is gravity-fed through a series of five or

the town. The houses are wood, brick, and steel

so other ponds in a big circle over a period of 12-13

with steeply pitched, gutterless roofs raking low

months before reaching the final crystallisation

toward the ground. Metal fences surround the

pond and harvested. The size of the salt works is

houses on three sides, and metal grillwork is bolted

large enough that, from the ground, Pond Zero is

into town along the main road between Dampier and

and relatively uncommon creature, by some called

is what I would expect in an industrial harbour, but

over windows and doors. It’s all cyclone-proofing

indistinguishable from the ocean, a necessary scale

Karratha, we take in the giant stacks at the gas plant

a ‘sea camel’, so close to such massive industrial

Mollie beckons me over to her side and I squat

against wind and flying debris, and even the hospital

of economy: it takes 62 tonnes of seawater to

flaring off, the lights of the ore trains coming in from

activity.

down to see what she’s found. The bottom of the

is built part way into the ground to protect it. We

yield a tonne of salt. Salt ponds are usually found in

the mines, the orange glow of the locomotive sheds,

continue on the main road toward Dampier and

deserts because they need sun and wind to do the

the reflection of moonlight on the salt ponds. We’re

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into liveable, even desirable places. And all of it is funded, at least in part, but the mining companies, part of the price of doing business. It’s confounding, of course. As Larry and drive back

pool is littered with pebbles, which I then realize are By the time we land Tony has shot around 520

small snail shells. One of them moves, the claws of

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See page 216 for references.

Tim Acker ---------------------------- Rudall River National Park (Karlamilyi), 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Rudall River National Park (Karlamilyi), 2010

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Burrup Peninsula, 2010

March 7, 2010 Dampier Archipelago and Burrup Peninsula Carolyn Karnovsky, traveller

The Archipelago is considered to have the largest concentration of rock art in the world, estimated at perhaps a million petroglyphs. Our tour of the Dampier coast continued by boat taking us through the calm waters of Mermaid Sound to Malus Island, a barren place stripped bare of all its trees during its operation as whaling and pearling station in the 1870s. Many of the islands that we passed through Flying Foam Passage are stark in their beauty. Jagged rock faces tumble into the water, occasionally softened by mangroves or the white sands of a secluded bay.

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Dampier, 2010

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Scott Roberts ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- North West Coastal Highway, 2010

Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- East of Karratha, 2010

June 14, 2010 Karlamilyi National Park Christian Fletcher, Photographer Hanging out with a bunch of artists like Bill Fox, Larry Mitchell, Tony Hewitt, Michael Fletcher, Les Walkling and Peter Eastway has made a mark on how I see things. I am searching for a photo that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just a pretty snapshot anymore. The Pilbara is full of pretty snapshots, this is the challenge to go further and create an image of my feelings, not what was actually there at the time.

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Nelson Point, Port Hedland, 2010

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Paul Parin ---------------------------- shearing shed at De Grey Station, 2009

September 22, 2010 Cape Preston Mollie Hewitt, curator On the way we paused at a truck stop. Places like these seem to forecast a future full of haunting and dry nothings, while also seeming to be so full of hope, movement and potential – how is this possible? The natural environment of the Pilbara is harsh and arid, and in so many ways the industry reflects and repeats the land. I have seen this in the aerial photographs that Les (Walkling) took in Port Hedland – where the natural patterns of Cooke

Les Walkling ---------------------------- Cape Preston, 2010

Point waterways reflect the industrial developments of the harbour. It is the same here in Karratha; there are so many repeated patterns like the tidal flats mirrored by industrial salt pans. It is all part of the consideration of scale. Upon arriving at Cape Preston, after going through multiple, various and excessive site safety inductions, we were allowed to enter the largest scale diesel and gas combination power unit in Australia. This was a rare opportunity, although the plant is nearing completion it had not yet been commissioned. Darryl, the construction manager, offered to be our tour guide. Initially apprehensive he quickly warmed to the idea of spending an afternoon admiring the project that he has spent the last 18 months constructing. He took us immediately to high ground, scaling the silver scaffolding surrounding the high turret, so we could look out beyond the plant over the whole project that is transforming the Cape. You could see in the distance the row of white cylindrical plants where large balls will crush the magnetite into grit whilst adding water, turning it into slurry which will get pumped through pipes underground to boats coming in at the tip of the Cape. It will then be sent to China. It is estimated that there is one billion tonnes of magnetite at this site and the power plant we stood on has an expected life of 25 years. Nine weeks on and one week off, that is a standard swing for the key staff on this project at this stage of its construction. On this topic Darryl’s colleague comments: ‘That’s what I do, I build shit.’ Later another worker is asked, ‘So do you have a missus?’ to which he responds ‘Yeah, half-on, half -off.’ 142

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March, 2009 Punmu. Mantarrar Rosie Williams Canning Stock Route Project artist

April 2008, Kunawarritji Mulyatingki Marney Canning Stock Route Project artist

moved to Onslow where my father took up the position of Shire

When the dogs went off in mating season our

Hello, my name is Mulyatingki. I was born here on the Canning Stock Route

listen to the music of the land, we osmose into its soundscape.

Clerk with the Ashburton Shire Council. We lived in a fantastic old

mothers followed them because they couldn’t

(near Kunawarritji) ... I lived with my mother and father around Punmu and then

I’m standing under a gum tree which is humming with squad-

house right on the beach. It had patterned tin ceilings, a huge, wrap-

get kangaroo and emu without jarntu (dingos).

they took me to Karlamilyi (Rudall River). But I was born around here. I never

rons of bees. I hear a two-tone music, the sound of water rush

around veranda and a bath that had been sand blasted when the roof

We kept on walking north towards Telfer area,

came back to this place. I went one way from Punmu to Karlamilyi. We were

and also the sound of water fall. I write down words like stereo-

blew off the house in two mammoth cyclones a few years before we

past Karlamilyi, Wulpulpu (Dog Pool). We kept on

sitting down there and our father died there. From there we walked all the

phonic, surround sound, quadrophonic. How absurd, mechanical

arrived. Dad’s work took him all through the Shire area and he got to

walking north but we were getting homesick so

way to Balfour Downs (Station). Whitefellas came and got us and took us to

and inadequate they are to describe the mighty voice of this

know the station people and all the fantastic places in the region and

we travelled back south to Wulpulpu.

Jigalong mission.

place.

we went with him whenever we could.

March 5, 2010 On the way to Karijini National Park Mags Webster, writer

February 23, 2010 Onslow Linda Lyons, former Onslow resident

We go to Hancock Gorge, its cliffs tiled with bruise-coloured

My Pilbara experience was birthed in the early 1960s when my family

plates of stone and shale. Distant sound of water far below. We

We were afraid of the whitefellas but they were giving us food like oranges, Rivulets of ants traversing up and down the pallid trunk of the

We had tinned spaghetti and billy tea from a camp fire in the dry

honey, meat and sugar. We used to eat the sugar and the tealeaves. We threw

gum tree. I look at the ground for a moment and it is alive with

Cane River bed, camped in the open on the banks of the Ashburton

the food away. We thought it was rubbish. The only sugar we ate was from

movement. I look out from the tree, and the force of the colour

River listening to the dingoes howl and the donkeys bray in the still,

the tree (sugarbag honey and sweet sap). They gave us oranges to eat but we

in front of me make me think of a Fred Williams painting, Iron

pure air. We revelled when the king tides consumed the beach and

threw it away. We buried it and left it in the ground. We poured the honey on

Ore Landscape. Later I will discover that his last great series

swam in the luxuriance of the abundant, warm water. We explored

the ground and chucked it out. It took us a couple of weeks to get used to that

of paintings drew their inspiration from the Pilbara, a place that

the depths of Millstream, were at the opening of the original bridge

food because we didn’t know what it was.

reportedly ‘tired and excited him profoundly’.

at Nanutarra and travelled to Roebourne for the interschool sports carnivals where we camped at the school and competed against

When the whitefellas found us naked – no clothes – whitefellas gave us cloth-

the very first Dampier team. We were blessed to be able to spend

ing. From there we knew how to use clothing and what food to eat. All my

an idyllic week on Thevenard Island and swam with the fish and the

sisters, before they passed away, told me how to make a fire and put a billy

manta rays. Just us in an old tin hut with an outside dunny with a

next to the fire, then throw some tealeaves into the billy to make a cup of tea,

Land Rover door as a lid and a bungarra named Charlie.

and then add sugar and milk to make a cup of tea.

This magnificent region, saturated in the clear, brilliant majesty of

Then we stayed there in Jigalong then. I got married close to Hedland…

its skies, the incredible subtleties of its changing landscape, the kaleidoscope of changing colour, the magic of the light, the form, the hue, the silence and the brutal honesty of its magnificent heart absolutely pierced my soul.

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John Elliott ---------------------------- McConnell Dowell employees at Finucane Island, Port Hedland 2010

Les Walkling ---------------------------- Cape Preston, 2010

Clockwise from top left: John Elliott ---------------------------- Marble Bar, 2009; Debi Watt and Lenore Postans, South Hedland, 2010; Sharon Todd, South Hedland, 2010; Coles South Hedland, 2010

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February 17, 2010 Comet Gold Mine near Marble Bar

October 13, 2010 Roebourne

July 20, 2010 Spoilbank Port Hedland

Years ago my now-husband and I attended the

Some of these birds, when the old people were

In the early days we never had the Spoilbank, that’s just man made because they did all the dredging. That’s all the dirt from

famous Marble Bar Races where we were

out bush, if they can’t find water they got to

the bottom of the sea, water used to cover all that, our reefs used to be very healthy. We used to have all sorts of black

introduced to eminent Melbournite John Elliott (of

follow these birds, find them and follow them

sausages on the reef, we had little monkey fish – we’d throw a line down into the holes and we’d just catch a monkey fish,

Carlton Football Club and politically incorrect public

to water. Zebra Finch, he’s called Nyimayi. There

they’re like a blow fish, but more ugly! They’re poisonous, it was just for fun. They probably have another name but we used

comments fame). A colleague of Elliott owned the

always around water. Always big mob of them.

to call them monkey fish, they used to have rocks all around their holes, their holes were quite big, you used to let your line

nearby old Comet gold mine and a small party was

Emu, that’s Jarnkurna he can’t be with the turkey,

down a fair way. Oh it was good fun, we used to go spear fishing on the reef, there used to be lots of turtles around. We

staying in and around its original buildings. After

Bardurra, too much they fight. Everybody can eat

never used to have blue-ringed octopus, when we wanted bait we’d just go onto the reef and see an octopus and grab it

the races and the real-deal bush dance at the local

emu meat except pregnant ladies and babies.

with our hands, all its tentacles would wrap around your hand, you know; just cut its tentacles off for a bait, put it on a hook,

pub (akubras, cowboy boots and country music en

Babies can’t eat it otherwise it will make their

go down catch a bream, or a blue-bone or something; but you can’t do it today because of the blue-ringed octopus, we were

masse), we all traipsed to the Comet. My husband

legs weak so they won’t be able to work properly.

never afraid of jelly fish, things like that, the blue-ringed octopus they’ve just come in, we used to have brown octopus on

and I slept outside, in sleeping bags on the back

The turkey eats anything shiny, like bush gum,

the beach but not blue-rings. When we were down the beach, the boys would grab an octopus or these grey slug things

veranda of one of the original miner’s cottages, a

grasshoppers and insects. People check their

with spikes and throw them at us and we’d be screaming away, ohh, those boys! When the tide used to go out it used to

black cape of sky and stars around us. The night

stomachs to see if they have eaten gold, they

leave water in the holes and we’d just go fishing in there, get some nice spotty tail and things like that, go home, ‘Hey mum

was ice-cold but exquisite and I remember lying on

sometimes do that. Bayuwanarra, plains kangaroo,

I caught some fish.’

my side, 100-year-old floorboards underneath me,

young girls and boys can’t eat the end of the tail,

watching a watermelon sunrise over a row of ghost

if they do, and rub the fat in their hair, they’ll get

gums.

grey hairs. Like me, I ate it a lot as a kid, that’s why

Elisha Buttler, writer

Kay Warrie , Roebourne Art Group artist

Esther Quintal, Spinifex Hill Artist

I got grey hair! They all have dreamtime stories. The next morning we had a champagne barbeque

They all got stories about them.

breakfast with Elliott and Co; a diverse group encompassing millionaires, entrepreneurs, geologists, wives in pearls and a few outback oddities. Champagne in hand and cigarette jutting from mouth, the ever-charming Mr. Elliott, bestowed yours truly with the ravishing compliment of ‘Cor, who’s this gorgeous blonde?’ After breakfast we drove back to Newman with friends, via the marbled greys and greens of Chinaman’s Pool, and I fell asleep on the back seat of the car, head lolling atop an esky and a pile of blankets.

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Les Walkling ---------------------------- Burrup Peninsula, 2010

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Les Walkling ---------------------------- Mistaken Island, Burrup Peninsula, 2010

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Les Walkling ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

Bewley Shaylor ---------------------------- Silver Star Cafe in the Courthouse Gallery gardens, Port Hedland, 2010 156

September 15, 2010 Writing from Vancouver, Canada. Jim Ziegler (writing about the historic Pilbara Silver Star train carriage, refurbished in October as a restaurant/cafe in Port Hedland) I live in Vancouver, Canada, and plan to visit my daughter in Sydney this November. While in Australia I definitely want to see the city of Perth and the surrounding area. I had never heard of Port Hedland until recently but one thing that intrigued me was the refurbishment of the old railroad car, the Sundowner. Has the conversion been completed and is the car open as a restaurant? If not, what is its current status? If I drove up to Port Hedland would I be able to see it? I will be finalising my travel plans in the next month and any information you could supply about the Sundowner coach would be greatly appreciated.

October 29, 2010 Writing from Tallahassee, Florida USA. Douglas Muir (writing about the historic Pilbara Silver Star train carriage) My grandfather, Logan Napier Muir, emigrated from Scotland in 1901 and went to work for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy. He retired from the railroad in 1948. Owing to his seniority, he was able to be the engineer of the Zephyrs and undoubtedly had the Silver Star in his consist on many occasions. His railroad watch was passed down to me and I treasure it. As an eight year old, I had the experience of riding in the cab of the Denver Zephyr from Chicago to Aurora, Illinois, hitting speeds up to 80 mph, an amazing speed at the time. There was a three track main from Chicago to Aurora and I remember the occasions when my friends and I would ride our bikes to an overpass to watch the Zephyrs go by at speed. Being on the overpass when steam engines went by was a completely different, but exhilarating, experience. You indeed have a treasure in the Silver Star. I hope to travel to Australia in the next year or two and will definitely spend some time in WA.

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John Elliott ---------------------------- Pilbara Church, 2010

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Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

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Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- roadhouse outside Karratha, 2010

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Elaine Argaet ---------------------------- near Tom Price, 2010

Judith Hunt ---------------------------- road to Marble Bar, 2010

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Tom Stephens ---------------------------- South Hedland, 2009

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Simon Phelps ---------------------------- Marble Bar, 2009

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Les Walkling ---------------------------- Rudall River National Park (Karlamilyi), 2010

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Cossack, 2010

October 1, 2010 Hedland

Lesley Jean Kelly, Spinifex Hill Artist Sometimes when I hear sister and cousins telling stories, I say ‘where was I.’ They say you were there, you just don’t remember. Like last week we were all re-telling stories now about our grandfather, it was funny how we were all talking about that. It all started when somebody said, ‘You remember that goat?’ Laughing, and that cousin said, ieee, I just remembered that one goat, and the story just went on and on about the goat. Everyone remembered this one goat. And he was chained, under the clothes line, cause he was our lawn mower. The lawn wasn’t that big, high, but that goat, he’d charge all the kids when they’d run. And our grandfather, he wanted to move the goat under the house, he was pulling and pulling him, he just ended up picking him up and carrying him, the goat carrying on and kicking … funny how a goat starts a story about grandfather.

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New Year’s Eve, 2004, Kumarina Roadhouse, Elisha Buttler, writer

We were supposed to be driving from Newman to Perth; our first New Year’s Eve and it’s hot like baked clay. I am excited at the dresses and champagne overlooking the sleek silver blues of the backseat of the car, and already it feels like we have travelled a Perhaps intuitively, I have begun counting the scraps of rubber is a pop and a lurch and suddenly our car is limping. A flat tire, rapidly) except that the tiny nuts needed to hold the tire in place gravel. Our spare tire, so plump and robust, is useless. Richard the sun feeling pale and pasty and alien in this heat that shimmers same at all 360 degrees; a hall of mirrors throwing and repeating the earth doesn’t either. Eventually we decide to put the new slowly back north, towards Kumarina Roadhouse. I later read that a ‘wildlife sanctuary’ and ‘grassy tent sites’ but on this particular men drinking beer and parked road trains glaring in the sun. But grateful to be here. Richard goes inside to talk shop and I make but had never seen one. In Kumarina there are more frogs in the cistern. Maybe this is the wildlife sanctuary. I almost faint at the with the tire except that they cannot fix it at Kumarina and there me that the tire is temporarily, gingerly fixed and that somehow think only of a flimsy band-aid taped to the hubcap. It takes us why people go mad out here. New Year’s Eve of 2004 is spent 176

journey along this almost 2000 kilometre stretch of road. It’s prospect of spending New Year’s Eve in Perth; imagining cocktail Swan River. We had left early, bottles of water rolling around the thousand kilometres but Richard tells me it has barely been 200. tire and other pieces of car littered along the highway when there which is perfectly fine (so says Richard – I am already inhaling have popped off and disappeared somewhere in the grass and scrambles around for a while on hands and knees and I stand in and bends like warped glass. I scan the horizon and it looks the the same reflection. I have no orientation and I’m suddenly sure tire in place and hope it does not spin off while we drive slowly, Kumarina considers itself to be some kind of desert oasis, with day the Kumarina we roll into is a faded pub with leathered old bartenders moonlight as mechanics in places like this and we are my way to the toilets. In Newman, I had heard of frogs in toilets bowl than water, and they also paddle around the open-topped thought of frogs jumping ... up. I’m not sure what happens next is literally no room at the inn tonight. Richard tries to explain to it will get us back to Newman if we drive VERY slowly. I can five hours to drive 160 kilometres at 40kph and I understand at the front bar of the Newman Hotel. 177

May 23, 2010 Martu Country Tim Acker, photographer We camped in the white gums beneath a sand dune, by a mining bore, on the boundary of Karlaymilyi. Days two and three were spent winding our way through the central reaches of Karlamilyi – Rudall River itself. This is a desert river – an entire river system that drains a good portion of arid country, before draining into a salt lake, Lake Dora, far to the north east. The tributaries have etched exquisite areas and the team was keen to scramble around with their cameras and notebooks. We finished the day at Desert Queen Baths, a stunning camping area beside a gorge with a series of permanent waterholes – and almost limitless opportunities for those with an eye and soul for desert country. The convoy reversed their journey, back to the Talawanna Track, before heading further east to Parnngurr. Here we met up with the Martu artists at their studio space. Thelma Judson took us out to Parnngurr rockhole, where some of the artists had camped before leaving their nomadic desert lives permanently in 1963. Our last full day was spent immersed in the dynamic life of a remote community: in the morning, the team was in the studio, with artists, photographing the work underway. In the afternoon, a school excursion out to an enormous claypan set out, with artists, and The Pilbara Project team in tow. The last stop was a sublime sunset. As artists collected grass for their fibre works, The Pilbara Project team immersed themselves in the extraordinary quiet that sunset brings to the desert.

Tim Acker ---------------------------- Nova the dog, Round Hill near Newman, 2010

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September 21, 2010 Karratha Mollie Hewitt, curator We took the first flight up to Karratha and were welcomed by gusts of wind blowing dirt across the flats. Gathering supplies in the Karratha shopping centre, I found it fascinating to witness the social and cultural phenomenon of towns that are substantially populated by fly-in-fly-out workers. It is like a void, a lapse in time and place where things work differently. It is accepted and common practice for two men to do pedestrian, domestic activities together – like grocery shopping or dry-cleaning. After lunch we took a dirt track off the east road along the coast – a well worn car track that shines with use. Around a bend or two there is a natural salt flat, pink and dull, that has abandoned car bodies at various stages of decomposition, rusted red against their original white. Running down the front of the flats, through the firmer mud near the road, are fresh tyre tracks – as if the corpses of old vehicles are not warning enough. It is all about surfaces in the Pilbara: the salt crusted red mud, the dried and cracked earth behind, the shine of the roads worn by heavy industrial vehicles, the debris. As we drove west out from town, passing the residential houses that look a bit like bunkers (with rooves almost touching the fences, one next to the other) we hit peak hour traffic; an onslaught of white 4WDs and buses denoting a change of shift. We stopped at the place where the Dampier salt flats meet the highway, and walked along the paths that segment the small areas of salt between the road and railway line. Layers of colour, texture and transport – trains, planes and cars – all crossing over the sometimes matt, sometimes reflective surface. It is interesting that it was there, standing for some time on the salt pans, that Bill (Fox) and I began a discussion about place-based spirituality.

Tony Hewitt---------------------------- Karratha airport, 2010

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March 1, 2010 Iron Clad Hotel Marble Bar Chris Fox, photographer Where else would could you go and expect to find the Winter Olympics on the TV, miners, construction workers, families, old timers, and a Scottish bar maid? The hamburgers were good and the drinks were cold, an important thing in the hottest town in Australia. .

Chris Fox ---------------------------- Iron Clad Hotel, Marble Bar, 2010

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July 13, 2010 Onslow

Max George, Spinifex Hill Artist The little town of Onslow, sand hills and sea water. Was my whole life. I never saw anything outside that.

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Direction Island, looking out from Onslow, 2010

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Nicole Yardley ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2009

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Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Karratha, 2010

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Christian Fletcher ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010

Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Billinooka Station, 2010

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Peter Eastway ---------------------------- Billinooka Station, 2010

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Nicole Yardley ---------------------------- Port Hedland, 2010 192

September 29, 2010 Cemetery Beach, Port Hedland

Winnie Sampi, Spinifex Hill Artist

May 18, 2010 Tom Price Sharon Jack, visual artist

In between the tides hundreds of these

What drew me to the Pilbara? A new

little blue crabs come out – they clear

adventure and somewhere different,

their holes and make patterns on the

from snow! We have always wanted

sand. It’s funny how they know when the

to live in the Pilbara and WA. I had seen

tides go out – they’re up and working.

many photos of the Pilbara and WA and was desperate to see the landscapes and seascapes first hand. Also, we have many friends who have toured WA and told us how beautiful it was.

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Tim Acker ---------------------------- Desert Queen Baths, Rudall River National Park (Karlamilyi), 2010

May 22, 2010 Martu Country Tim Acker, photographer Boundaries are funny things: they come in many forms – lines on a map, fences through the landscape, the water’s edge in a rockpool. All of them mark something, but they only speak one language; without that language, the boundary becomes invisible. A team of Pilbara Project photographers, artists and writers gathered in Newman, in late May, ready to explore some of these boundaries. After having done several field trips to the western Pilbara, it was now time to journey into the desert and see how far the ‘Pilbara’ stretches, and what sorts of languages – visual, physical, literal – were visible in the country that stretches from the iron ore rich Opthalmia Ranges eastwards into the sand dunes and Spinifex of Martu Country. The Martu people (‘martu’ means ‘the people’ in the local Manyjiljarra, Putijarra and Warnman languages) are the traditional owners for an enormous section of the Little Sandy and Great Sandy deserts. Moving between Newman and remote communities (Jigalong, Parnngurr, Kunawarritji, Punmu, Warralong and Nullagine), the Martu are also one of the last desert groups to set up their own art centre. Martumili Artists, based in Newman, works with all interested Martu artists, facilitating the production and sale of paintings and fibre works. The first day of the trip was one of practicalities and logistics: loads of gear to sort through, swags to pack, food to buy and to round off the day, sunset on Round Hill. The second morning saw the convoy of three 4wds rolling east, out of Newman and onto the Billinooka track. A crumbling ruin of a cattle station, set on the edge of the ‘proper’ desert country, it was a place to fossick – photographically and literally; the detritus of a couple of generations of people trying to make a cattle station work on such marginal country.

Tim Acker ---------------------------- The Canning Stock Route, near Well 51, 2007

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John Elliott ---------------------------- Left to right: Leaine Cook and LorraineÂ Bartlem, Port Hedland, 2010; Janet Brown with daughter Sarah Davidson and granddaughters Isabella and Emily Davidson, South Hedland, 2010

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Christian Fletcher ------------------------- near Tom Price, 2010

July 13, 2010 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Secret locationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; near Tom Price

Christian Fletcher, photographer This morning, at a secret location just out of Tom Price, I managed to get a few pics worthy of keeping. This one I liked even though the sky is blown out. It was so cold and windy. It is amazing I man-

Faye Harris ---------------------------- Yarrie Railway Line, 2010

aged the shot with no camera shake.

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March 6, 2010 Mount Sheila Mags Webster, writer Tom Price to Dampier, 9:30am There is a daylight moon. Do we see it because the air is so clear? In the midmorning sunlight, the colours are pretty bleached but there is still a hint of its lacy outline hovering above the escarpment. Mount Sheila is a mesa, a flat-topped hill, 975 m in height. Where I come from, that’s over 3,000 ft, a Munro. Though I’ve climbed a few in Scotland, I am glad that we are driving up this hill, and I am also glad that it is not I behind the wheel. The track is very rough and steep, the ute complains, and it feels more like we are in a skiff in a force 6 on the Solent than in a four wheel drive. On top of the hill there is a 360° view. Having penetrated the depths of the gorges yesterday, here we are on the roof of the Pilbara. Mount Sheila used to be the site of a telecom repeater station, its purpose to listen for and amplify telephone signals. It’s certainly a good spot for tuning into the elements. For several moments all I do is listen to the wind.

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December 2010 Onslow Ben Graham, traveller ‘Nah can’t say I’ve ever heard of it’, ‘it’s up near Karratha somewhere isn’t it?’, ‘Onslow – far out haven’t been there for years but did go once or twice when I was younger, great fishing’. When I asked friends and family over the weeks leading up to my first trip to Onslow what they knew of the town, the response was normally some variation of that. Normally a hive of worldly information, the usual sources were surprisingly dry. I didn’t think too much about what they’d said (or more so hadn’t said) at the time, but looking back now I realise they’d actually just summed up the very essence of Onslow. After regular trips over the past six months, I’ve probably just scratched the surface in getting to know the town. But what I have found is truly magnetic, inspiring and like no other part of Australia. Unlike a lot of towns in this part of the country, its history is not one written as a by-product in the race to deliver a mine. Rather, it has grown through great adversity and determination, with its foundations forged through strong links to an Aboriginal and European past. You walk the streets of Onslow and you feel something. A community. A history. A life. From the World War II infrastructure now nestled by houses, to the local Aboriginal kids spear fishing at Beadon Creek, when you take the time to stop and look you realise just how much of a story this town has to tell. But to me, Onslow’s charm is not just it’s story, it’s the fact not a lot know it. At a time when the word ‘Pilbara’ is on everyone’s lips, it’s humbling that a small coastal village sits quietly on the shore and largely off most people’s radar. The next pages in the story of Onslow will soon be written and the eyes of the world will turn.

Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- termite mounds outside Onslow, 2010

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Les Walkling ---------------------------- Newman, 2010

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Tony Hewitt ---------------------------- Salt flats, Karratha, 2010

Contributors This book is just one part of The Pilbara Project. The lead photographers featured here travelled throughout the Pilbara over the course of 2010, creating and distilling photographs, sharing ideas, and letting the songs of this region engulf, inspire and challenge them. Their work, alongside that of Western Australian videographer Michael Fletcher, is also gathered together in 52 Weeks On, the first Pilbara Project exhibition. Curated by William L. Fox and developed by FORM, the exhibition opens at FORM Gallery in February 2011.

Christian Fletcher

Dr. Les Walkling Photographer

Peter Eastway Photographer

Tony Hewitt Photographer

Michael Fletcher Videographer

Christian Fletcher’s photography career spans

Dr. Les Walkling is an artist, educator and

Peter Eastway is a Grand Master of Photography

Tony Hewitt’s photography career spans over 20

Michael Fletcher is a West Australian videographer

around two decades. His passion for photography

consultant. He studied science and philosophy

who as practiced photography for 30 years.

years during which he has been named a Grand

who specialises in landscape video. Michael’s

William (Bill) L. Fox is Director of the Center for

and for the Australian landscape and its

at Monash University before turning to fine art

Master of Photography.

background in still photography allowed him to

Art and Environment of the Nevada of Museum

inspirational visuals has cemented him as one of

photography in 1975, receiving Australia Council

His passion for landscapes has earned him several

develop a strong eye for composition before

of Art; a writer whose work is a sustained inquiry

Australia’s premier landscape photographers.

Arts grants and exhibiting widely.

coveted photography titles including multiple

He has collected several coveted awards for his

developing his skills as a ‘one-man production

into how human cognition transforms land into

awards for Australian Landscape Photographer

work in illustrative, fine-art, landscape and portrait

team’ in capturing moving pictures, producing and

landscape. He has published poems, articles,

editing video.

reviews, and essays in more than seventy

Photographer

Christian’s natural and urban/industrial landscapes

His work is in many public collections including

of the Year and AIPP Australian Professional

photography including the Western Australian

of Western Australia won Gold and three Silver

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The

Photographer of the Year.

EPSON Professional Photographer of the Year in

awards at the 2009 Australian Professional

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and The

Photography Awards.

National Gallery of Victoria.

www.christianfletcher.com.au

www.leswalkling.com

William L. Fox Writer and curator of 52 Weeks On: A Pilbara Project Exhibition

magazines, has had fifteen collections of poetry He has been in partnership with his brother,

published in three countries, and has written

photographer Christian Fletcher, at Christian

eleven nonfiction books about the relationships

Tony has also co-authored nine books and is a

Fletcher Studios since 2001 establishing his film

among art, cognition, and landscape.

skilled public and motivational speaker.

production in 2007 as an addition to the studios

2004. www.petereastway.com

successful still photography medium. www.tonyhewitt.com www.vimeo.com/user655337

Portraits by Peter Eastway

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www.wlfox.net

FORM gratefully acknowledges Principal Partner BHP Billiton, whose

Published by FORM

partnership with FORM over more than seven years has enabled strong

ISBN: 978-0-9808691-3-2

community and cultural outcomes such as The Pilbara Project and this

Edited by Elisha Buttler

publication.

Richard Moody ---------------------------- Desert Kurrajong tree, Packsaddle Range, 2010

Acknowledgements

Printed by Scott Print Thank you also to the photographers and writers featured in this publication, in particular contributing essayist and curator William L. Fox, Pilbara Project

FORM

exhibition photographers Christian Fletcher, Les Walkling, Peter Eastway and

Building a state of creativity

Tony Hewitt, Project videographer Michael Fletcher, and Monique La Fontaine for assisting with Canning Stock Route Project field notes.

357 Murray Street Perth Western Australia, 6000

The journeys which comprise The Pilbara Project would not have been possible

T +61 8 9226 2799

without the support and information of the Project’s guides and welcoming

F +61 8 9226 2250

hosts. Therefore a special thank you to Tim Acker, Paul Parin, Shane Peters,

mail@form.net.au

Martumili Artists, Roebourne Art Group, Spinifex Hill Artists, Frank and Elaine

www.form.net.au

Argaet, Ben Graham, Jeffrey, Janine, and the companies and sites which opened their doors and allowed the Project’s creative minds to explore.

Other FORM websites www.midlandatelier.com

Last, a big thank you to Kate Antonas for helping to bring this publication

www.courthousegallery.com.au

to fruition.

www.thepilbaraproject.com © 2011. All rights reserved. Copyright for photographic images is held by the individual photographers. Copyright for written content resides with the individual authors. Copyright for the publication resides with FORM. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publishers, FORM.

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References The Story of the Warlu is from the Millstream-Chichester National Park and Mungaroona

pg 73

Range Nature Reserve Draft Management Plan, Bentley, WA: Department of Environment and Conservation, 2007.

ABC North West WA, http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2010/10/13/3037584.htm Special thanks to Ben Graham for revealing this story.

Second Journey pg 115 - 125 Pomfret, John. ‘Chinese influence worries Australia,’ The Washington Post, March 7, 2010. An article about Newman, the Mount Whaleback mine, and Chinese investment.

William L. Fox Pilbara Diaries First Journey

Rintoul, Stuart. ‘Boldly out of the West,’ The Australian, September 27, 2007. Coverage of the founding of the Martumili Art Centre.

Bird, Caroline & Sylvia J. Hallam, Archaeology and rock art in the Dampier Archipelago. A report prepared for the National Trust of Australia (WA), August 2006. Accessed on March 13, 2010 at:

Haynes, Roslyn D. Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film. Cambridge:

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Read, Jolly. Kangkushot: Life of Nyamal Lawman Peter Coppin. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, Holcombe, S. Early Indigenous engagement with mining in the Pilbara: Lessons from a historical

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2008 reprint).

perspective. Working Paper No. 24/2004 [Revised August 2006]. Satar, Arif and Audrey Fernandes, with essays by Ric Spencer and Marion Pastor Roces. The Clay Pan Project. Cottesloe, Western Australia: Spencer Johnston Art Books, 2009.

Centre For Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

‘National Trust of Australia (WA) nomination to the National Heritage List 2004’ accessed on March 13,

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2010 at: http://www.burrup.org.au/Dampier%20Rock%20Art%20Nomination.pdf

National Heritage Listing,’ Archaeol. Oceania 44 Supplement (2009) 49–69.

Port Facility Upgrade--Anderson Point, Port Hedland. Dredging and wharf construction-third berth,

City Growth Plan: Karratha City of the North, Vol. 2. Landcorp, Shire Of Roebourne,

Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. Report and recommendations of the Australian Environmental

Western Australia, 2009.

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Dredging at Finucane Island, BHP Billiton RGP5 Project, Port Hedland, BHP Billiton Iron Ore, Report and recommendations of the Australian Environmental Protection Authority Accessed on April 19, 2010 at: http://www.epa.wa.gov.au/docs/2814_Rep1304_ARI_BHP_171108.pdf

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