East Pilbara

Distinguished and Famous people from East Pilbara

🎨 Ngamaru Bidu

Martu artist Ngamaru Bidu’s work records Country, family journeys and knowledge of the desert. Born around the Canning Stock Route and associated with Parnngurr, she grew up travelling with her family before the changes brought by mission life and wider contact. In the account accompanying her Wantili-area painting, she describes sandhills, a claypan, hunting and the water that determined where people could camp. Her contribution to East Pilbara’s visual identity carries a personal geography, joining remembered experience with cultural knowledge in the painted landscape.

🏭 Sir Gordon Jackson

Sir Gordon Jackson helped build CSR’s involvement in the Mount Newman iron-ore venture. In 1964, American Metal Climax approached the company about partnering in the development of the Mt Whaleback deposits. Partnerships with that company and later BHP connected CSR to an operation supplying iron ore to Japan’s steel industry. Jackson had begun at CSR as a clerk in 1941 and became its chief executive in 1972. His connection to East Pilbara lies in the business decisions behind the Mount Newman project, part of a career that helped turn a sugar company into a diversified industrial group.