Port Hedland and Cossack

On 7 June I gave a presentation about wikis at the annual Pibara regional libraries meeting in Port Hedland. We covered Wikimedia projects and tools, as well as independent wikis, and I hope it was of some use. They are talking about maybe setting up a wiki for the libraries in the Pilbara, which I think would be a terrific thing. I'd love to help with more online collaboration amongst all the local history people around WA. There is material that can't really go on Wikimedia sites (e.g. post-1923, or culturally-sensitive) but it can sometimes go online ''somewhere''. Maybe [[archiveswiki:Main Page|ArchivesWiki]] could be part of that? I'm a big fan of internal wikis (intranets) too, because the skills somewhat transfer to Wikimedia contributions and they're just generally a good way to organise collective knowledge (better than shared drives full of Word documents anyway!).

There are a few good examples around of wikis being used for local history in Australia. The Birtwistle wiki, for instance (a.k.a. ''Our Contribution''), is a comprehensive database of soliders from the Armadale area who served in the First and Second World Wars. Then there's the transcription projects of the shire of Carnamah (who say they use MediaWiki but who seem to have built a custom front-end to it), also focused on WWI. I think most historical societies have similar desires to have structured, high-quality, records and photos online of the people, places, and events that they're interested in. Not all of this is notable stuff, and so by English Wikipedia standards need not be writted about (although some other language Wikipedias do have articles about every named hill and dale and lots else besides). So they should, I reckon, have an Australian online home.

After the meeting, I headed off with my parter for a few days of holiday at Cossack, a ghost town a couple of hundred kilometres down the coast. I was last there in 1992 as a child, and have wanted to go back ever since. It's a place that's been in my own family's history for many years, since my [[William Shakespeare Hall|great-great-grandfather]] went there in 1863 to help establish the pastoral station ''Andover''.

It's changed a bit since those days (1898):

This trip was the first time I'd ever flown ''within'' Western Australia, which is a bit odd these days with everyone seemingly flying everywhere all the time (carbon emmisions be damned). It wasn't a long flight, and made the two-day drive (or 24 hour bus trip) feel a bit cheated. The country around, as we flew in, was green and dark red and felt somehow foreign — and ''big''.

The drive from South Hedland to Cossack was not so far, and much more geographically varied than I'd been expecting. The first bit is flat. As in, ''flat''. But it's not that way for long! The hills of the Pilbara are wonderful. So round, so ''erroded'', so seemingly-ancient. It feels like nothing moves very fast in this country. Even erosion is slow, through this ironstone.

Shortly before Roebourne we passed Mt Hall, named after Shakey (I think). There's no road shoulder so we didn't stop; I grabbed a couple of photos as we passed, but the sun was low in the west and they're not great.

[t.b.c.]