Lap Around Australia: Karajini National Park

Karijini National Park

A number of people along our journey had advised us to not miss Karijini National Park if we could possibly spare the time and the large detour off the main Great Northern Highway to do it.

We did have time, as our friends Karen and Steve, Ian and Kathy, were still in Derby as we were about to leave Port Hedland. We have at least a week to ten days before they'll catch us up. So .... off to Karijini NP for us!

We drove down via the highway leading to Newman, as we do not want to tow our van off-road. The highway is good although we were held up with roadworks and sat for 20 minutes (yep, really!) in the heat waiting for our turn to go slowly through 20 km of the work in progress. There were many, many road trains on the road in both directions. It makes sense when we saw the many turn-offs to mine sites along the route. Newman has by far the largest mine site, with an open cut pit over 5 kilometres wide and very deep! There's a lot of ore being transported to the port by road and trains.

 

We fuelled up at the Auski Roadhouse just north of Munjini Gorge, as it's the last fuel stop available for us until Tom Price, and we won't be there for a few days. The landscape starts to become very pretty as we near Munjini Gorge. There are still a profusion of wildflowers along the roadside and carpeting the fields beyond, although it is getting late in the season. We finally arrived at the Visitor Centre at Karajini after first self-registering at the park entry point. Our Annual WA National Park pass is really paying for itself (yay for Seniors Cards!). 

 

The Visitor Centre is deceptively well camouflaged against the burnished cliffs and we almost missed it! We paid to stay for three nights at Dales Gorge .... a princely sum of $42 total cost. There is no power or water or showers here, but you are allowed to run a generator and there are drop toilets and a dump point at the campground. You do have to be self-sufficient and self-contained with grey water too. There are no shops anywhere nearby - the closest town is Tom Price almost 100 Km away. The visitor centre does offer hot showers for $4 each, but it is a 20KM round trip from the campground.

We were delighted to find the campsites are very spacious and well-spaced. You actually feel like you are camping in a garden of wildflowers and red dirt. It is pretty! The lady at the Visitor Centre warned us to always wear enclosed shoes in the park, especially at night as there are snakes, not to mention dingoes, kangaroos and other beasties. We were glad we'd heeded that warning when on our second night Barb was sitting outside reading and felt something slither over her foot. A snake! She leapt inside very quickly and refused to go outside at night again. Luckily we have a loo in our van.

We were camped very close to some lovely gorge walks and natural swimming pools. The camp grounds are actually close to the ridgeline of the gorge and you have to descend into the gorge to reach the pools below. The first vista we came to on our walk was Fortesque Falls lookout. You can view the falls from the lookout above and then walk down steel stairs (250 of them!) to the next level. From there it becomes natural stairs down the cliff side into the pool. These rocks get slippery and slimy when wet and there are no handrails. It took us some time to work up the courage to go all the way down.

We walked further along the path to Fern Pool, so named for all the beautiful ferns surrounding the pool. There are tiny fish in the water and about a 100 metre swim to a waterfall that has a rock ledge where you can sit beneath the cascading water. It looked so inviting that even John wanted to go in (until he realised the water was not yet up to blood heat)! Barb really enjoyed the invigorating swim, and we met some lovely Welsh people, Viv and Gordon, who are camped at Dales Gorge near us.

 

 

We walked back up the 250 stairs to the top of Fortesque lookout and were standing at the top debating whether we would do the Circular Pool loop walk, some parts of which were grade 4 and included another steep set of natural stone steps to the valley floor. We'd almost decided NOT to do it (thinking of our trouble at Nitmiluk NP when we had to be rescued by the ranger) when we met a nice man on his own, Stewart, who worked as a supply teacher at Tom Price.

 

He'd done the walk heaps of times before and encouraged us to do it. He even came along to act as our guide and lend assistance where required in the difficult bits such as creek crossings over wobbly stepping stones. What a gentleman! We were very proud of ourselves for doing this walk. We had plenty of water, mandarins and muesli bars with us this time too. The loop walk ended back at Fortescue falls right at the very bottom swimming hole, so we had to climb the cliff steps and then do the 250 steps staircase all over AGAIN! The views were well worth the effort, but we were hot and exhausted by the end of it. The temperature in the sun outside our awning was 41 degrees when we got back to camp. Even in the shade it was 36 degrees so we were very grateful to put our feet up at last. A hot shower would have been wonderful, but we had to make do with a lukewarm birdbath, water being a premium resource. A ginger beer shandy was most welcome also.

The next morning we set off early to visit Circular Pool. We'd missed seeing the views from above yesterday and they are quite spectacular. You look over the edge into a deep dark pit with a swimming hole at the bottom. Some people were already down there swimming, but you can't stay in the water long as it is icy cold. We decided not to try to go down the steep stone stairs again as we didn't have Stewart's help this time.

 

We tossed up whether to do the long drive to another gorge - Weano Gorge - but 100 km of corrugated dirt to get there and back put us off. We don't want to risk another flat tyre when we are so isolated from help here. There is not even any phone or internet coverage. Also we still have a fair way to travel and we've already used up one of our spare jerry cans of fuel running the generator and fridge.

We returned to camp and might go for another swim later after the heat of the day. Meanwhile John is amusing himself baking bread on the Weber. Did we mention we're enjoying the camping life?