Cossack

It may be a fair distance from Karijini, but the ghost town of Cossack and its open-air museum is well worth a visit. Providing an insight into the Pilbara's frontier past, it was a place of some (relative) prominence in the 19th century, only to be abandoned by the middle of the next.

Originally named Tien Tsin (after the barque that carried Walter Padbury, the region's first settler), the town went through a succession of name- and identity-changes in its short life. Sheep grazing, then gold mining, then pearling were the industries to which Cossack (like the Pilbara in general) yoked its fortunes during the latter half of the 19th century. It was pearling, in particular, that gave the town its international flavour, attracting divers from across Asia. When the industry moved north, and the harbour silted up, Cossack's fate was sealed. Left to the ghosts for 50 years, old stone buildings such as the Police Barracks and Customs House now house and feed the growing stream of visitors to this open-air museum.