For pioneer settlers, the Australian climate and environment has been harsh and unforgiving. Nowhere is this more true than in the North-West, where cyclones, drought, fire and flood conspire to make simple existence a challenge. Yet it was here, in country that would later be called the Pilbara, that a young woman, Emma Withnell, and her family settled. Their first experience of the place was as survivors of a shipwreck, but they stuck it out and today, Emma Withnell is remembered as the `mother of the North-West'. by Llyrus Weightman