Roebourne

Once the administrative centre of the North-West Roebourne is located 1468 km north of Perth, 654 km north of Carnarvon and is 12 metres above sea level on the North West Coastal Highway. It was named after the first Western Australian Surveyor General John Septimus Roe, was established in 1866 and controls an area of approximately 15,197 sq kms, (The shire now has its offices in the large mining town of Karratha about 40km West).

The settling pastoralists initially landed at the tourism & ghost town of Cossack, sailing up the Harding River to the higher and less mangrove laced environs of Roebourne. Once, the commercial centre of the whole Pilbara Region, with strong links to the pastoral industry, mining in Marble bar and the former pearling port town of Cossack, Roebourne still bears the name of the regions largest shire and services a local population of 1200+. With the emerging need for deep water ports to ship out the massive tonnage of iron ore and salt from the interior, Roebourne was side-stepped in favour of Karratha (the regions largest township) and Dampier.

Nearby Cossack was named after the vessel which brought these initial settlers. Around the turn of the century, after the mouth of the Harding River had silted up, the main port moved from Cossack to Point Samson. Both towns endured successive cyclone damage. Point Samson is now a pleasant seaside village beside the towering cyclone proof iron ore loading jetty of Cape Lambert.

While today's Roebourne township is no longer the hub of the top half of the state, it does have the services you would expect from a small regional centre and a massive history to check out with some of the regions oldest and most beautiful buildings to inspect.