TripRoundUnder

It was time to head inland after almost a month on the coast and we were excited, as we had heard good things about Karijini National Park!

Leaving Exmouth, we missed out on staying at the renowned Buralla Station, as it was fully booked. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as there was availability at the nearby Giralia Station which looked intriguing. It turned out to be a great idea, as this old sheep station turned out to be a great find! The old shearing shed had been converted into a shower block and even better, it overlooked the sunset! They also had a projector set up and played the local WA derby between West Coast and Fremantle and there were a few passionate supporters around!

Moving on, we started the long drive inland towards Karijini. We were again reminded of how massive and desolate parts of WA are, as there wasn’t much to look at for the 6 hour drive. After a while, the flat scrub turned into some larger rock formations and we realised we were getting closer. Pulling into the town with our favourite name in Australia Paraburdoo (say it in a real Aussie accent), we realised that Rio Tinto might be pretty big in these parts as everything had its label on it. Same went for the main town in the area, Tom Price and we hoped they wouldn’t make a mistake and slap a Rio Tinto sticker on the Troopy!

In saying that, Tom Price is a lovely little town and we didn’t have to go far out of town to see our first mountain!

We also quickly learned that we wouldn’t have to struggle for free camps around Karijini and found a lovely little spot to set up camp for the night and have a little fire.

The following day, we ventured into the National Park, with our first gorge visit being Hamersley Gorge. We were excited for a fresh water swim and quickly made our way down to the gorge. We marvelled at the amazing rock formations and patterns and after reassuring ourselves that crocodiles don’t travel this far south, we went for a much needed dip. We also got a first glimpse of an event that would see a great deal of in Karijini in the form of “older” gentleman and ladies navigating slippery rock edges with broken hips seeming inevitable! We admire them for getting out and about, but jeez it’s a stressful sight!

After an awesome little walk and swim we made our way back up the car park. It was when we drove up the track and got a little phone service that we realised we had committed a cardinal instagram sin and taken the photo of the upper falls the wrong way. We apologise instagram gods, we will do better.

After spending some time back in town doing some admin (eating 4 maxibons while on hold to insurance), we drove back out and again had a lovely little bush camp this time closer to the National Park.

The next day, we ventured to Joffre Gorge with a slightly more challenging walk awaiting us down to the water. The lookout for the gorge was spectacular enough, but photos can’t really do justice to how magnificent it was down at water level. You really felt like you had entered an ancient auditorium with the towering walls circling around you.

Although we didn’t go for a swim, the water certainly looked inviting, certainly more inviting than the 35 degree heat outside the gorge!

After consulting maps, we decided fatefully to take the corrugated road going through middle of the park instead of the longer bituminised route. If you asked us how we felt about this decision 10 minutes later, we might have had some rude words to say. That road entered the top 3 for our rankings of worst roads in Australia and we were not enjoying going 30km/h and being rattled into a blended smoothie.

In saying that, we have a belief that the worse the road is, the better the attraction at the end of the road is. Now, we’re not going to promise this is true on every occasion, but Dales Gorge at the other end was pretty amazing!

Venturing down the numerous steps to the beginning of the gorge where Fern Pools and Fortescue Falls were located, we had another morbid episode of, ‘will this elderly gentleman have a fall’. Happily, this did not occur, but we were surprised at home many people were around the swimming holes. It was still beautiful, but you could imagine it would be even more special if you were one of a few people there. That and we’ve decided we’re a little bit off people in general.

We decided to do the full gorge walk and this gave us the special feeling we were looking for. We were able to walk the track mostly by ourselves and stepped off the track to properly take in the majesty of the gorge.

We made it up the seemingly endless steep steps and walked back to the car, happy after an eventful day. Little did we know we had a longer drive than planned ahead of us.

The campsite we had planned to spend the night at apparently didn’t exist when we arrived, so with no phone service we had to find another option! After some scrambling up and down the main highway, we managed to arrive at Albert Tognolini rest area and to our surprise, it ended up being one of our favourite camps! Nestled on top of a hill with awesome views, it was a hidden gem in the middle of nowhere!

Steve even managed to capture some pretty cool drone shots through the nearby pass between rock formations!

The next day was our last in Karijini and we had decided to finish it off with a bang and climb Mt Bruce, WAs 2nd tallest mountain for sunset. Boy, in retrospect was this a terrible idea…

Things started off quite well, with a challenging but doable climb revealing stunning views of both the amazing Karijini landscape and the nearby iron ore mine. The setting sun, soon our adversary gave everything a beautiful glow, emphasising the colours of the classic Karijini red rock.

Maybe stop reading here mum.

As the sun was in the process of setting, we decided to not fully summit the mountain as we had done the maths on beating darkness to the bottom of the mountain and it was looking close. Fast forward 30 minutes and our maths may have been slightly off, as we were nowhere close to the bottom as the sun fully dipped below the horizon. Not the best time to be walking down a mountain… Adding to this, both of our phones with their torches had died and in a moment of poor judgment, we had not brought a torch. A quick piece of thinking by Lauren made us realise that we could use the display of the camera as a light and off we went, slowly down the mountain.

Not going to lie, we went close to losing the walking trail at times and the thought of dingos definitely crossed both of our minds! But, eventually we made out the beginning of the walk and we have never been happier to spot the waiting troopy.

After taking a minute to compose ourselves, we decided no more sunset summit walks and always bring a torch!

We sped back to Tom Price to get to the public showers before they closed and boy were we happy when we found them still open! Little tip for anyone visiting Tom Price, the public showers only need $2 to open, not the advertised $4. We feel terrible for taking advantage of a small up and upcoming company like Rio Tinto, but oh well hope it doesn’t effect their stock price too much.

Our time in Karijini was at an end and it was time to head back to the coast and further north! Stay tuned!