EXCLUSIVE: Westport Taskforce chair Nicole Lockwood engineered the appointment of a close friend as CEO when she was a councillor and shire president at the City of Karratha from 2007 to 2011. Ignoring legal advice condemning the selection process, Cr…
KIM North is Pilbara’s ‘sand king’. Old school, Tonka tough, the father of two a giant in construction and earthmoving with a passion for precious metals, Harleys and choc milk. ‘Northie’ says it straight, the outspoken miner of more than…
THE WA Corruption and Crime Commission in 2012 found the Pilbara cities of Karratha and Port Hedland were exposed to the highest risk of misconduct. Not only because of their strategic importance to WA, “engine room of the Australian economy”,…
EXCLUSIVE: CLAIMS of serious misconduct at the City of Karratha are detailed in a 30,000-word submission to the WA parliamentary select committee into local government. The private submission by Pilbara-based Norwest Sand & Gravel alleges executive staff and elected members,…
THE McGowan Government has spent not one cent of the $425 million promised in 2017 to boost tourism at heritage-listed Cossack, 50km east of Karratha. And it shows. The rundown coastal town is among four tourist destinations singled out for…
A MOTION to stop vehicles parking ‘unlawfully’ on historic Wilson Park was defeated tonight while a motion was passed to join a global network of cities battling climate change, including the Chinese city of Wuhan. Both motions raise serious questions…
“I DON’T think my heart is in it anymore,” Geoff Van Waardenberg says before starting his night shift surveying rail lines out of Perth. “I find it hard to talk about Cossack, I’m so disappointed. It’s killed us.” The 49-year-old…
RETIRED medico Alan Wilson, 73, says all there is of Cossack is its history. “There are not too many places in Australia where you have nothing but the history of a town,” Dr Wilson said of the heritage-listed townsite 1500km…
LOCAL council has walked away. The State Government moves in as ‘absent landlord’. And private landowners once again find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Do they sell out or hang on in the hope they be able,…
THEY have paid rates, fees and government charges for decades. Occasionally, they stand on their empty blocks overlooking Butcher’s Inlet at the mouth of the Harding River, and ask why. What is the point of waiting any longer for local…
