Australia's Pilbara Is Hiding Something Nobody Talks About

The Pilbara, in Western Australia's north-west, covers roughly 500,000 square kilometres – about the size of Spain – with only a few tens of thousands of permanent residents. In this countdown of 28 facts, we travel from the rust-red Hamersley Range and Mount Meharry to Nullagine, Marble Bar, the ghost port of Cossack, Newman's giant open-cut mine and the golden "staircase to the moon" at Port Hedland. Along the way you'll find the shorebirds of Eighty Mile Beach, the oasis of Millstream Chichester, the deep gorges of Karijini, the abandoned asbestos town of Wittenoom and the hundreds of thousands of rock engravings at Murujuga. The countdown also covers the 1946 Pilbara strike, the destruction of Juukan Gorge, driverless iron ore trains, record cyclones and heat – and the ancient rocks that may hold some of the oldest signs of life on Earth. If this journey through the Pilbara surprised you, give the video a like, subscribe for more Australian geography, and let us know in the comments which fact you'd never heard before. 00:00 The Pilbara: Red Dirt and Hidden Secrets 00:47 Facts 28–24: Size, Rust, Spinifex and Floods 04:04 Facts 23–19: Gold, Ghost Ports and the Iron Boom 07:32 Facts 18–14: Tides, Shorebirds, Wildlife and Oases 10:43 Facts 13–9: Marble Bar, Wittenoom and Karijini 14:02 Facts 8–4: Ancient Crust, Rock Art and Record Winds 17:13 Top 3: Heat, Iron Ore and Life on Mars 19:07 Recap #Pilbara #WesternAustralia #AustralianGeography #Australia #Outback