Karijini National Park Pt. 1

Fortescue Falls



Ok Blog Fans, Google Karijini National Park. If you look at Dales Gorge that is where we spent two nights recently, we trekked down into Dales Gorge and swam in Fortesque Falls, then walked up to Circular pool. Now circular pool didn’t have a little guy swimming on it’s welcome sign, but we jumped in regardless. I’m glad we did.

Circular pool is in a corner of the gorge, surrounded by lush scrub and small canopy trees, essentially making it look like a small oasis, circled by big rocks and in one corner engulfed by water lillies that reach all the way to the bottom of the pool. On the back wall there are countless small waterfalls dribbling down and making a soothing sound as you cruise around the pool. The water is crystal clear with a green tinge. I think the word immaculate would describe it well.



This was just the first day. Tom Price, the nearest town to Karijini is a large mining town servicing the big BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto mines of the Pilbara region, mining Iron ore from the National Park. It is very strange to walking through an area of extreme beauty and it’s basically metal. The red rocks are scorching to the touch and when one rock hits another, it clangs, like metal hitting metal. Very odd.



We arrived in Tom Price at around 6 after travelling 7 Hours from Exmouth, passing WA’s very own Uluru. We filled up with Diesel (We had borrowed a Nissan Patrol 4x4 from Sam) shopped in Coles, our first big supermarket (country town big)  for about 5 months and headed into the wilderness with a dimming sun. We drove up tens of kilometers of dead straight roads heading across the plains of the national Park. Big mining industry to our right and stark Arid Beauty to our left.

Our second day we decided to head to Weano Gorge on the West side of the Park, Dale’s Gorge is on the East side of the park. We landed on Gravel Roads, which are very popular in this area of the country as it costs around $1million per Kilometer to make a real road. You can barely feel the corrugation in the road after 80km per hour, so we stayed at that. Thankfully past experience on similar terrain proved useful.

Handrail Pool



Weano Gorges



We stopped at a few gorges on the way over and viewed from the viewing platforms the enormity of natures effect on the landscape. If you Google Weano Gorge, you should find Kermits Pool, Handrail Pool and Junction Pool among the most popular. We went to handrail pool, but decided against the others as our legs were still recovering from Dales and some of them you needed abseiling equipment and special permission. We camped that night at the Karijini Eco Retreat, a small tent based resort in the middle of nowhere! How on earth does that place exist, unreal. It even had a restaurant. We paid our fee and camped in an area which definitely catered for a heap of tourists. But we only shared it with 4 or 5 vehicles. And get this, they had showers there! In the middle of the Pilbara you can have a warm shower.





This was probably our most interesting night, we think we shared our space with some big lizard and some dingoes. We woke up during the night to what sounded like an angry snake, I did the whole “Don‘t Move Holly… It sounds like it‘s In here” But thank God we couldn’t see anything, that was unbelievably scary though. (I might add (Holly) that I did not sleep well at all this night.  I kept waking up hearing dingos, lizards and snakes, asking David what each noise was.  The snake sound is what finally made him get up and look around a bit.  Blah!)



Hammersley Gorge



So the next day we headed back to Dale’s Gorge, camped another night then headed off to Hammersley Gorge. Google this place next. I know right…WoW!



Now between Hammersley Gorge and our next real destination was about 500 to 600 km’s. And it was all Dirt road. Picture Australia, Long straight red dirt roads, either side you have flat, Flat arid land with scrub, the odd Station Homestead and Nothing else. It was incredible. We drove for Hours and Hours along these roads kilometer long dustplooms behind us. We stopped a few times for a drink, pulled a cold bottle of water from our Waeco Fridge. My new Love in Life. And admired what we were doing.



Blogger upsets me sometimes as I still dont understand it.. I had it set up all nice and I decided to add one more photo and now it will not play nice...soo...there are two photos at the end here.  They are not together at all.. but they won't seperate or move.  The top one is from Weano Gorge and the bottom one is Circular pool.













Circular Pool