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The Pilbara () is a large, dry, sparsely populated region in the north of Western Australia. It is known for its Aboriginal people; its ancient landscapes; the prevailing red earth; and its vast mineral deposits, in particular iron ore. It is also a global biodiversity hotspot for subterranean fauna.
Under the Regional Development Commissions Act, Pilbara is situated south of the Kimberley, and comprises the local government areas of Shire of Ashburton, Shire of East Pilbara, City of Karratha, and Town of Port Hedland.
The Pilbara region covers an area of 507,896 km2 (193,826 mi2) (including offshore islands), roughly the combined land area of the United States States of California and Indiana. It has a population of more than 45,000, most of whom live in the western third of the region, in towns such as Port Hedland, Karratha, Wickham, Newman and Marble Bar. A substantial number of people also work in the region on a fly-in fly-out basis. There are approximately 10 major/medium population centres and more than 25 smaller ones.
The Pilbara consists of three distinct geographic areas. The western third is the Roebourne coastal sandplain, which supports most of the region's population in towns and much of its industry and commerce. The eastern third is almost entirely desert, and is sparsely populated by a small number of Aboriginal people. The two areas are separated by the inland uplands of the Pilbara craton, including the predominant Hamersley Range, which has numerous mining towns, the Chichester Range, and others. The uplands have many gorges and other natural attractions.
The Pilbara contains some of the world's oldest surface rocks, including the ancient fossilised remains known as stromatolites and rocks such as that are more than three billion years old. In 2007, some of the oldest evidence of life on Earth was found in 3.4-billion-year-old sandstones at Strelley Pool, which preserve fossils of sulfur-processing bacteria. The mineralised spheres, which were found on an ancient beach and have a cell-like morphology, were chemically analysed, revealing that they used sulphur for fuel.
An extinct genus of stromatolite-forming cyanobacteria, Pilbaria, was named after the region, where the type specimen was found.
The first European to explore the area was Francis Thomas Gregory in 1861. Within two years, European settlers had begun arriving. The region was regarded as part of the North West at first – a larger area that included the modern Kimberley and Gascoyne regions.
Settlements along the coast at Tien Tsin Harbour (later Cossack), Roebourne and Condon (officially Shellborough; later abandoned) were established over ensuing decades, mainly as centres of the rangeland livestock (grazing/pastoral) industry or pearling ports. However, as natural mother of pearl beds around Cossack were fished out, the pearling fleet began to move northward, and by 1883 it was based at Broome, in the Kimberley region. From , pastoralism went into decline with the growth of other, more productive agricultural areas of the state.
Mining in the region started on 1 October 1888, when the Pilbara Goldfield was officially declared – named after a local creek, the goldfield would later give its name to the region as a whole. It was later divided into the Nullagine Goldfield and Marble Bar Goldfield. However, gold mining began to decline in the Pilbara in the mid-1890s, after alluvial ore had been exhausted. In 1937, mining of asbestos commenced at Wittenoom Gorge. While the presence of abundant iron ore had been known for about a century, it was not until the 1960s and the discovery of high-grade ore in the that the area became pivotal to the state's economy, and towns built to accommodate mining and allied services boomed.
In the 1950s, three British nuclear weapons tests were carried out in the Montebello Islands, 130 km (81 mi) off the Pilbara coast.
Family clans in the Pilbara who were supported by mining prospector, Don McLeod, developed skills for mining and the concentration of Precious metal. For a short period money accumulated, which according to Aboriginal law was to be used for traditional ways. Eventually the funds were used to establish an independent Aboriginal-controlled school.H.C. Coombs (1994). 9780521440974, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. . ISBN 9780521440974 The concept has expanded into a movement with around 20 similar schools established in northern Western Australia by the mid-1990s. Jan Richardson, wife of Victorian Aboriginal activist Stan Davey, wrote a biography of McLeod as a doctoral thesis.
Many Pilbara communities face the many complex effects of colonisation, and lack adequate access to housing, health and education. A 1971 survey of 1000 Aboriginal people conducted by Pat McPherson found that most had one or more serious diseases. At the McClelland Royal Commission into British nuclear testing, Aboriginal people from the Pilbara provided evidence regarding the explosion on the Montebello Islands.
Aboriginal communities are sited over a number of different places. Western Australia Aboriginal Communities. Department of Indigenous Affairs. Many have poor infrastructure, and relations between police and Aboriginal people are often tense.
There are many Aboriginal corporations across the Pilbara, some of which administer Native Title responsibilities, and others which focus on social, health, and education outcomes. Since 2022, the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation Ltd (NYFL), under the leadership of Yindjibarndi man Michael Woodley, and CEO Sean-Paul Stephens, has become known as one of most impactful organisations in Western Australia, given its focus on advocacy and influence on social and economic policy.
The Pilbara town of Marble Bar set a world record of most consecutive days of maximum of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) or more, during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.
The average annual rainfall in the region is between . Almost all of the Pilbara's rainfall occurs between December and May, usually with occasional heavy downpours in or tropical cyclones. The period from June to November is usually completely rainless, with warm to very hot and sunny conditions. Like most of the north coast of Australia, the coastal areas of the Pilbara experience occasional tropical cyclones. The frequency of cyclones crossing the Pilbara coast is about 7 every 10 years. Due to the low population density in the Pilbara region, cyclones rarely cause large scale destruction or loss of life.
Despite an economic output of over $125 billion per year (as of 2025), the economic wellbeing of the Aboriginal community has deteriorated over the last three decades. Professor Peter Yu of the Australian National University has labeled this disparity as “economic apartheid”. Professor Marcia Langton has written about the extreme disparity between Pilbara Aboriginal communities like Ieramugadu (Roebourne), and towns like Karratha and Dampier, only 45km away, which are home to much of the mining, oil and gas workforce. (2025). 9781921656163, Griffith Univ. ISBN 9781921656163
In 2025, Seven West Media published an opinion article by Regional Development Australia (Pilbara) board member and CEO of the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation Ltd (NYFL) Sean-Paul Stephens, on the failure of the Pilbara in achieving economic reconciliation in the years since the Pilbara strike.
The Pilbara's economy is dominated by mining exports and petroleum export industries.
During the 1970s the area was known for union militancy with many strikes and some mines operating as fully unionised 'closed shops.' This was challenged by employers from the mid-1980s onwards and the region now has a very low level of union membership compared to other parts of Australia.
Iron ore deposits were first discovered by prospector Stan Hilditch, who in 1957 found a large iron ore deposit in the southern Ophthalmia Range, at what was to become the Mount Whaleback mine.
In the 1960s, it was reportedly called "one of the most massive ore bodies in the world" by Thomas Price, then vice president of US-based steel company Kaiser Steel. Geoscience Australia calculated that the country's "economic demonstrated resources" of iron amounted to 24 gigatonnes, or 24 billion tonnes. According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, , that resource is being used up at a rate of 324 million tonnes a year, with rates expected to increase over coming years. Experts Gavin Mudd (Monash University) and Jonathon Law (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) expect it to be gone within 30 to 50 years (Mudd) and 56 years (Law).
, active iron ore mines in the Pilbara are:
Despite Woodside’s North West Shelf and Pluto Gas Plants recording record profits over the life of operations, Woodside’s agreements with Traditional Owners have been heavily criticised, given no royalties are provided to the Aboriginal community, and “gag clauses” are enforced through their agreements.
Five heavy-duty railways are associated with the various iron-ore mines. They are all standard gauge and built to the heaviest North American standards. Rio Tinto runs driverless trains on its railways.
"Fairy circles" (known as linyji in the Manyjilyjarra language and mingkirri in the Warlpiri language) which are circular patches of land barren of plants, varying between in diameter and often encircled by a ring of stimulated growth of grass, are found in the western part of the Great Sandy Desert in the Pilbara. It has not yet been proven what causes these formations, but one theory suggests that they have been built and inhabited by Australian harvester termites since the Pleistocene.
The Pilbara is home to a wide variety of endemic species adapted to this tough environment. There is a high diversity of invertebrates, including hundreds of species of subterranean fauna (both stygofauna and troglofauna), which are microscopic invertebrates that live in caves, or groundwater aquifers of the region, and terrestrial fauna (see short-range endemic invertebrates). The Pilbara olive python, the western pebble-mound mouse, and the Pilbara ningaui of the Hamersley Range are among the many species of animals within the fragile ecosystems of this desert ecoregion. Birds include the Australian hobby, nankeen kestrel, spotted harrier, mulga parrot and .
Wildlife has been damaged by the extraction of iron, natural gas and asbestos, but the protection of culturally and environmentally sensitive areas of the Pilbara is now enhanced by the delineation of several protected areas, including the Millstream-Chichester and the Karijini National Parks.
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