When Brian Hoey drove into a largely desolate Cossack in 1989, the former cattle mustering pilot realised it was not quite the oasis he expected.
“The day I arrived there, I opened the door of the air-conditioned car and I was blasted with a 40-knot, stinking hot wind,” Mr Hoey, now 82, recalled or what had become something of a Pilbara ghost town.
“I just thought, ‘Jesus Christ’. I went up there thinking I’d park my bum under a palm tree and paint some pictures, but it didn’t quite work that way.
“Still, you were mesmerised by the sight of the place and the structures that were there and how they’d been built before the turn of the century. You wondered why they did it and I felt some obligation to do something.”
Driven by that simple want to make one of WA’s most historic places “live” again, Mr Hoey became its sole resident for the next seven years and left a particular legacy that is strengthening into its fourth decade.
A well-known art champion of the region, Mr Hoey started what is now known as the annual Cossack Art Prize, which will this year celebrate the 30th anniversary of his first event in 1992 and will offer $89,000 in prizemoney.
There were two precursor exhibitions before the inaugural awards, the first in 1990 featuring 64 pieces from four artists, including Mr Hoey.
It was part of a carnival day he had devised as a way to help fund the town’s development, but it did not all run as smoothly as hoped when an invited hot-air balloon crashed into the tank stand on Cossack’s hill.
The early days of rejuvenation featured many such moments.
“It was like a complete bloody circus,” Mr Hoey said.
“I had one enormous bloke there, who would go down to the wharf in his truck and he played Father Christmas for me one year. I bought him a bottle of whiskey because that’s what he wanted.
“I gave him bags of lollies to stick in his pockets and he tossed them out all over the floor and yelled, ‘Here you go, ya little buggers’. His wife came over and dragged him out by the ear, but he was one of the delights.”
Mr Hoey, whose 20-year stint as a helicopter cattle muster was ended by an accident saw an opportunity in Cossack to bring the surrounding art community together - and away from a prevalence of alcohol abuse - through art.
But despite his hopes of spreading his artistic gospel through the region, he had far from planned for the awards to become such a rich entity for entrants three decades later.
“I got an inclination after the second one and thought, ‘Gee, this is getting bigger’,” he said.
“All of a sudden, here was an opportunity to get something going and I thought, ‘Whacko’. It started with about $10,000 worth of prizes and now its up somewhere near $90,000 - it worked and it’s been a program I’m very proud of.
“My time at Cossack is one of the things in my life that I really enjoyed doing and I remember it with great pleasure. I’d go back there tomorrow and if they buried me there, I’d be quite happy.”
Mr Hoey said the “most exciting” art he had seen had been from the growing number of Aboriginal artists in the region, particularly out of nearby Roebourne. “It ignited a community and the quality of the art is just wild,” he said.
There is seriously now some stunning work coming out of four Roebourne-based art groups - Wangaba, Cheeditha, Juluwarlu and Yinjaa-Barni. Local artist Melissa Sandy is from the latter and without her art focus, she would likely be lost in life.
Ms Sandy, a Yindjibarndi woman and a multiple Cossack Art Prize winner, had her first of seven children in Roebourne at the age of 18. But tragedy struck in the same year when her mother died and she later also lost a four-month-old son to a range of health complications.
“When things really hit rock bottom for me, I turned to my artwork to get me through those moments when nothing else could,” Ms Sandy said.
“I’ve got a great family support with me, but after losing a child, I think I would have been lost. Without my art, I don’t know where I would be. “Artwork is very powerful and a great way to get your story out there.”
Ms Sandy thrives on presenting work largely depicting scenes from her mother’s country surrounding the Millstream Tablelands. It typically includes local fauna highlights such as sturt peas, spinifex, mulla mulla and blue gum.
“I wasn’t arty as a kid, I was sporty,” she said.
“Art never came into my mind, but then I saw my mums doing stuff out the back of the Pilbara Aboriginal Church and started doing some painting. It was one about water holes with so many different colours and my fine dot work. Someone bought it for about $600 and that was it for me.
“That one is still special to me, I can still picture it and it’s my motivation to keep going. Even to this day, you still feel happy when someone buys your artwork because they’re not only walking away with a piece of artwork, they’re walking away with a piece of you, your country and the stories that go with it.
“There are the pieces that have the beautiful wildflowers that suffocate the Pilbara when people travel through it and others that have deeper meaning for me. It takes me into a zone and it’s my home away from home.”
Karratha deputy mayor Kelly Nunn, originally from Boyup Brook, has been a Wickham resident with her husband Craig and their young family for the past 14 years. Mrs Nunn’s first experience with the Cossack Art Prize was when she volunteered to hang some of the work in 2011 and she believed
“I’m not an artist in any way, shape or form, so to see there incredible pieces, you wonder how they do it,” Mrs Nunn said.
“The city is really trying to develop culture within the region and wants the art exhibition to be renowned across Australia’s cultural community. WA has some really rich history, but we don’t really have a lot of public access buildings like this.
“You can really feel what the history was like here.”
The town of Cossack was gazetted in 1872 and just three years later it was home to 57 licenced pearling vessels. But bin 1910, with the pearling fleet moving to Broome, a new jetty built at nearby Point Samson and after suffering damage from multiple cyclones, the town was dissolved.
Its current heritage trail was established in 2002 and four years later, it was placed permanently on the State Heritage register.
Garlbagu is the business arm of the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Foundation which manages Cossack. Its tourism and events coordinator Emily Zimmerle said the annual awards filled the town’s campsites, cafe and hire boats with tourists.
The State Government recently pledged $20,000 to help develop an Interpretation plan for the Cossack site as part of a wider $1.33 million in funding for vital conservation works of heritage places and to deliver community projects that share stories of WA’s past.
“We’re working really hard on activating Cossack and part of our plans are to help the Ngarluma and wider Aboriginal community to be able to tell their stories,” Ms Zimmerle said.
“You feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere here and people say they’re expecting to see a ghost town, which we hate hearing. Then they come out and find it so active and there is always something happening.
“Some people come during the period of the art awards and don’t realise anything is on. They are just so excited to see the buildings come to life because there is so much colour and so much to see and do.”*
This year’s art prize, with the overall winner to receive $20,000, will be held from July 17 to August 7. Entries will be accepted from April 26 to May 30, or until 300 pieces are submitted.
The competition will feature an $8000 prize for emerging young artists and the City of Karratha is also calling for applications for a prized, four-week artist-in-residence position during the awards.