Honeymoon Cove

Catrall Park

Roebourne Historic Prison

Roebourne is an old gold rush town in Western Australia's Pilbara region. It is 202 km from Port Hedland and 1,563 km from Perth, the state's capital. It prospered during its gold boom of the late 19th century and was once the biggest settlement between Darwin and Perth.
Settled in 1866, Roebourne is WA’s oldest surviving town north of Geraldton. It served as the administrative centre for the Shire of Roebourne (previously the Roebourne Roads Board) until 1975, when operations were transferred to Karratha. Roebourne has an estimated population of 1,150 people and is located 39 kilometres south of Karratha on the banks of the Harding River. Roebourne has retained its special character with its historic buildings and pioneering history.
Roebourne has continued to develop and is a thriving hub for Aboriginal enterprise and culture. Roebourne has excellent sporting facilities for a town of 800 people including recently constructed covered basketball courts and a public swimming pool. In 2009 the Clontarf Foundation Roebourne Academy was established.
Gold from Nullagine, discovered in 1878, and surrounding copper and tin mines contributed to Roebourne's prosperity in the 1880s and 1890s. With the decline of both, Roebourne lost the majority of its European population and became a shadow of its former self. What remains of that era are various National Trust buildings around the town.
Until the 1960s, Roebourne was a non-indigenous town operating as a regional administrative centre, and strict controls and curfews were placed on movement of Aboriginal people to, from and within the town - they were mostly confined to camps and reserves a few kilometres away. However, with the construction of company towns (Dampier, Wickham, etc.) for their workers by mining companies who had moved in to exploit the iron ore in the region, the decline of pastoralism in the region, and changing attitudes to Aboriginal welfare at governmental level in the late 1960s, Roebourne became essentially an Aboriginal town as people moved out of the crowded camps and reserves, and from the outlying stations.
In later years, Roebourne became notorious for the struggles between Aboriginals and police that were documented in a Federal report dealing with Aboriginal deaths in custody, which were documented as a major issue in Aboriginal affairs from the 1980s onwards. The report showed that Roebourne (with a largely Aboriginal population of 1,200) had ratios of police to citizens that were five times that of towns in more settled parts of Western Australia.