October 14th and Michele and I are still travelling together. We left Port Hedland heading for Karijini National Park and as we left we started to encounter a lot of HUGE road trains, up to six carriages long. The roads were excellent so it didn't cause us a problem, but we did start to use the CB Radio if we needed to pass or if we needed to pull over to let them pass. We also saw some extremely long rail freight trains en route as well that I thought were about a kilometre long...BUT I've just found out these Iron ore trains are around 2.2km long and pull around 226 carriages using 3 locomotives....I knew they were long๐ฑ
The drive to Karijini was amazing for a couple of reasons. We stopped off at Auski Roadhouse (now known as Munjini) for lunch and petrol and this is when we started to drive into red dry dusty iron ore country....
Then we hit the Pilbara mountain ranges...Firstly, I thought I'd be hard pressed to see scenery more stunning than what I had already experienced, but driving through the Pilbara region blew me away!! Mountain ranges of dark red cliffs and gorges, often with very little vegetation apart from lots of fine spinifex grasses giving a soft sandy look to the bare red dirt hillsides. A beautiful juxtaposition against the dark red cliffs. (Note: I didn't get in to the Bungle Bungles as my car is not suitable and I'm sure I would have been blown away with them as well)
As always...photo's do not do the scene justice. Maybe a painting might do a better job??
This is taken from a lookout point and looks back on the road we had just travelled. If you look carefully you'll see a couple of road trains. A six carriage road train coming up the hill and another smaller one heading down, which is not so big!!
We were following this truck for some time. Michele got on the CB and said to him " MRT 14 this is Minnie Camper, can you please let me know when it's safe to pass". He responded a couple of minutes later with "OK love, make a run for it" ๐๐คช
Karijini NP was stunning...we explored most of the gorges and pools and all were different and were so deep!!! To get down to most of the gorges requires some serious walking or steps. Some were easy, some were quite challenging, but Fortescue falls, which is the only permanent waterfall in Karijini NP, had a 267 step handrail staircase down to it...thank goodness!! Fern Pool is about 300 metre further up the gorge valley. They were both fabulous swimming spots, but we only swam at Fortescue and took a look at Fern Pool as it was getting late and we had to climb back 267 steps before dark!!!
Our first view of Fortesque Gorge from the lookout...
With Michele looking towards the pool from the same lookout point...now you can see why there are 267 steps down the 150 metres to the swimming pool.
And now we are down in the gorge almost at the pool. There were walks all along the gorge river, but it was late and the weather was very hot so we skipped the long walks
We parked our vans at Dales Campground at the eastern end of the National Park and sat outside having dinner (another personally caught fish dinner!!!) and a wine while watching an amazing Milky Way star display ๐คฉ Early the next morning after a walk along the top of the gorge to some lookout points we packed up and took off to explore other spots within the National Park.
Sunrise at Dales Campground in Karijini National Park
A morning walk around the perimeter of the gorges
I love the colours in the landscape...this has got to be the basis for a painting one day in the future๐ค
I left my car at "Joffre Lookout" and we took Michele's 4WD Camper for the day. As we arrived I came across this not so little critter...
...a goanna, at the car parking area ๐ฎ
We checked out "Circular Pool", "The Junction", "Knox Lookout" and "Kalimna Falls", but decided against walking into the "Hancock Falls" as the climb was a class 5 and had some rather dangerous looking rock precipices to climb past!!
Circular Falls from the lookout. We didn't take the walk down, but as you can see there were quite a few people down on the gorge floor. Look for the people sun baking on the rocks just right of the water, bottom right in the photo.
A close up view of Circular Falls...this would be an amazing sight with water flowing.
I think this is "Oxer Gorge"!! ...Too many gorges in one day and it's hard to keep track of which one is which๐คช
We went back and picked up my car and that afternoon we drove into Tom Price and parked our vans at the Tourist Park for two nights...the only caravan park in Tom Price. It was too late to start cooking so we went to the recommended Tom Price Miners Club (canteen) for dinner...They served a good meal in the bar and the beers were cold!!! What more could you ask for after a long hot day๐
Tom Price was the perfect park to do a big clean up as cars and caravan were full of and covered in red dust, but before doing that we had one more gorge on the north western end of Karijini NP we wanted to see, namely Hamersley Gorge. We took off very early next morning in Michele's 4WD. It was around 65 kms each way of which there was around 45kms of red corrugated dirt roads with almost non stop Road trains...that was an experience in itself!!!
We pulled over a number of times to let these trucks pass as visibility was nil.
The gorge was well worth the trip. From the top looking down we felt a little disappointed after seeing such beautiful gorges the day before, but once we climbed (and almost crawled at times) down the rocky steps, the gorge and the swimming was soooo worth it. ๐ It was probably the best we'd seen, but all the gorges were different and worth visiting/swimming/exploring. It's so hard to choose photos as I've taken so many, but here's a few...
Our first view of the gorge from the lookout point!!
The rock face beside the path as we climbed down.
You could swim in any of this water. Although it looks green, it's beautiful, clean, clear fresh water
Looking from another point
This is the spa pool outlet swimming hole....at the very end, just right of centre is a small cave with a beautiful fresh spa pool and waterfall that then flows out to this fabulous swimming hole. We swam here. Some people were climbing into the small spa pool, but it was quite slippery to get in and out of so we didn't attempt it.
Finally to finish off with Hamersley Gorge, I just want to show a few photos of the beautiful landscape. Some people might find it boring, but I have to say I find it breathtakingly beautiful.
On the road, almost into the Gorge
A Hammersley region scene
We were back at Tom Price CP by early afternoon and we spent the rest of the day cleaning the cars and vans, washing, swimming in the pool and cooking another personally caught fish meal...OMG!!! the Black Snapper and Long Nose Snapper meals we are cooking are superb. Is it because we caught the fish???
I think I might have to do more reef fishing to stock up the freezer again!!!
The red dust is all gone ๐ ...well for the time being at least๐
We had decided we would attempt to get to Exmouth for the "Stuck In The Middle With You" (SITMEX) a day early by travelling from Tom Price without a stopover . It was all on sealed roads so it was good to feel clean again!!! It was a huge day of driving. We left at 7.30 and arrived at Exmouth around 4.30 - 9 hours on the road. About 6.5 hours of driving and the rest of the time was for driver rest, petrol or food breaks.
We parked our vans at the RAC Exmouth Caravan Park and would be staying for at least a week with 262 women from all over Australia and even a few from New Zealand who are all attending the event. It was a great plan to get there early as we didn't have to line up the next day when everyone started arriving. We were set up and could relax and watch the registration process going on. The CP was closed for the whole week to the public because of the function.
The PARTY has begun...Whoo Hoo๐ฅ๐...I'll continue the story of SITMEX in the next episode, which is on it's way very soon. There's been too many parties, making new friends and things to do to spend time writing a blog, but I'll catch up soon...I promise!!! Keep a watch out for the next party inspired episode.
If you haven't subscribed fill in your email address below and you'll receive an email when I do a post. Feel free to share the blog if you have friends travelling who may be interested in my travels.
Until then, I hope you'll keep enjoying the journey with me ๐๐ฅ