The beginning of development on Karratha began this the weekend with the opening of the new main street - complete with its first ever traffic lights - and the official opening of a new apartment block.
The state government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure and street scaping in Karratha as part of the ‘Pilbara Cities’ project.
The $1 billion project aims to build the population of Karratha and Port Headland into cities of 50,000 people, and Newman to 15,000 people by 2035.
It's built a new leisure complex, with resource company help, and a new health campus is on the way.
Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett says he hopes the new apartments will bring in more people.
“It's happened in Darwin and now it's happening in the Pilbara,” he says. “It’s a bit of a crazy idea, but here it is. Five years later it's happened.”
The project is the brainchild of WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls. He says whilst the region’s once-in-a-generation resources construction boom is over, the area is not entering a downturn.
“Rio Tinto announced yesterday that they planned on pushing from 290 million tonnes a year to 350 million tonnes a year, so I'm just not sure where the language of downturn comes from,” he says.
“The very same customers of our iron ore and natural gas are also going to be the customers for our food products and that provides a great opportunity for agriculture.”
Ryan travelled to Karratha with the assistance of the Western Australia state agency, Landcorp.
