We’ve been to Karijini! : ) After spending the day on Monday in Newman getting organised again, we headed North on Tuesday (once again!) to Karijini National Park. Here’s some fun facts for you about KNP – it’s the second largest national park in WA, and has both of WA’s highest mountains, Mt. Bruce and Mt. Meharry. We didn’t do any mountain climbing this time, but definitely did some other climbing – up and down into the gorges! It was a bit bizarre when we first got into the park and got set up, you can’t really see anything from any of the day use areas that would give away the size of some of the gorges, and they’re all down in the ground, instead of up like we were expecting. There are a few mountain ranges in and around the park, which are pretty massive in themselves, but then to have all these big gorges go down from ground level is quite amazing. (As I write this, we’re actually driving through some of the ranges to the east of the park, and there’s even some more gorges you can see from the road - beautiful!)
So, we camped in Dales campground (quite fitting since we were still with Craig and Dale!) for the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and managed to see all of the gorges within the area within those couple of days. The first afternoon we thought we might as well make the most of it, and headed straight down into Dales Gorge, to the beautiful and bloody freezing Circular Pool. There was water cascading down out of the rocks into the Pool, and being the afternoon, the sun was nowhere to be seen since we were at the bottom of the gorge. We then headed up to the other end of the gorge to Fortescue Falls, the water was falling off the layered rock and straight into another big pool and was a little (not much though) warmer than Circular. After swimming there as well, we headed on even further (still in the same gorge) to Fern Pool. We definitely swam in the right direction, because Fern was the nicest and warmest one of them all! (BTW, I’ll add photos of all these when I get a chance to get them off the camera – in the next couple of days) We had an early night, as we have tended to do when we’re off-road, and made plans for the next day.
Wednesday we were up and going early (early to be, early to rise!), we had a 43k drive to Weano Gorge. This one was the same, no inkling of a gorge even being there until you’re actually climbing down into it. Craig, Matt and I headed off leaving Dale to read while we tackled this one. After a steep descent, and even a shimmy down a ladder, we made it to a pool where you had two choices, get wet, or climb the rocks. Craig and I scrambled over the rocks while Matt put his non-slip sandals on and waded through the water. We got to Spider Walk after that, where you have to have your hands and legs spread over either side of the gorge, and “walk” through (again, I’ll put some pictures up if that, I don’t think I explained it very well!) to Kermit’s Pool. Kermie was a bit chilly (no, actually it was bloody freezing!), but we had a union rule for the three of us, one in, all in. We couldn’t go any further along this gorge, since it turned into a category 6 after Kermit’s Pool, so you have to be accredited to abseil and all that kind of stuff. We headed back along the Spider Walk, I took Matt’s advice and left my shoes tied to my bag and just walked through the water at the bottom of the gorge instead of spidering along. We were back at the top of the gorge before we knew it, with burning thigh muscles (not for the first or the last time)!
After a bite to eat, we headed off to another gorge, and down along the bottom to Handrail Pool. We left Dale at the entrance to Handrail, and climbed down the slippery water course and had another (chilly) swim over to the other side of the pool, and into a smaller gorge that we swam through, only to be met with another sign that it turned into a class 6 gorge! So, again we turned back and headed back up the gorge.
We then headed about 20k’s back towards our camp, and on to Knox Gorge. It was getting pretty late in the day by this stage, but we still headed in, and along the bottom once again. We didn’t get too far again when we hit the class 6 section, so couldn’t go any further, but headed back a bit to a pool we’d passed on the way and had a nice soak for a bit, even though the water was a tad fresh. A Swiss family (Robinson, I like to think their name might have been) caught up to us as we were just getting out, and Matt talked them into going for a swim on the proviso that he went back in to the water as well. The son took ages to jump in the water, but mum was videoing him at the same time, so it might have been a bit of a play for attention. He was quite funny to watch though, I reckon he counted to three about fifteen times before he actually jumped in, and then his sister and dad jumped in straight after him. We had a bit of a chat to them afterwards, they’d just come from living in Switzerland for 6 years and were heading to Sydney after this holiday, where the mum had been living before that. Interesting people you meet… : )
We had another quiet night, dinner and a couple of quiet drinks around the pseudo-campfire (aka Craig and Dale’s candle, since we weren’t allowed to have an actual fire). Had a very cruisy morning yesterday, then headed off to Kalamina Gorge, after a quick stop in at the visitor’s centre (they had some awesome Christian Fletcher photos for sale, as well as his second book that I pored over for about 10 minutes!). We had some lunch before heading down into Kalamina, then Craig and Dale headed straight to the waterfall while Matt and I headed the opposite way to have a bit more of a look in the gorge. Most of the pools here were pretty stagnant, with only a little bit of running water, so after a bit of a look around, we headed back to the waterfall where there was a nice little pool that Craig was having a dip in. Matt had a “shower” under the waterfall, and I took some pics (surprise, surprise), then we headed back to camp.
We were planning on chilling the bottle of Moet that Nigel and Donna gave us as a going-away pressie, and taking it down to Fern Pool to drink, but we’d over-exerted ourselves a bit too much over the last couple of days, and ended up just having a lazy afternoon, reading and snoozing. Sorry Nige, I promise we’ll find somewhere even better for a drink! : )
So, that brings us up to this morning. We’ve been up since about 7:30, packed everything up and have been up to Auski Roadhouse to drop the van off, and are now back on our way to Newman to pick up muttley, who’s had his teeth cleaned and has hopefully been given a hydro-bath by now, so he won’t be so red and stinky vby the time we pick him up! We’re booked in at Auski for the night, pretty expensive but nice grassy sites, so we’ll make the most of it while we’re there. We’ve got a few bits and pieces to do in Newman, then lunch and pick up not-so-stinky dog before we head back to Auski. Should be heading up to Port Hedland tomorrow, but if we find somewhere nice to stop off tomorrow night, it might not be until Sunday night that we grace the Hedland. We’ll see… : )
PS. For all the Perth kiddies, we’re going to be back through that way for most of October. Matt’s working for most of the time, and I’m looking for work to get a bit more dosh for us. Hope we’ll be able to catch up with you! : D
