Leaving Port Hedland for the 280km drive in land (out back) we were excited to be heading for the Karijini National Park. The park cuts through the Hammersley Range and is dominated by 15 red rock gorges, these are deep and narrow fissures in the surface of the otherwise barren and featureless landscape and are often all but invisible until you’re standing on a clifftop high on a gorge’s rim. There are two permitted camping areas within the national park and we had arranged to stay for one night in one and two nights in the other.
One thing we had failed to fully appreciate was that around 1-hour after leaving Port Hedland we no longer had any phone signal and there was not any WiFi in either of the two basic outback camps where we had elected to stay and so whilst we had warned our son that we may be out of contact for a couple of days we had neglected to advise our daughter of this. Needless to say when we re-entered’ civilization 4-days later we had a number of messages from our daughter culminating with the question ‘are you dead?’. Our son on the other-hand showed no concern and I have a lingering suspicion that a search of his internet history may show him asking how long you have to wait before you can legally declare your parents dead!
Our first night in the national park was spent at Dales Campground, a camping ground run by the parks service and close to Dales Gorge
It was back to basics, long drop toilets and no showers but this only added to its magic; aside from the addition of required health & safety and accessibility features this is an unspoiled land in which you gain some understanding of the power of the planet on which we live. The ground itself was a sea bed that over millions of years and through a number of climate change cycles has been thrust up by the movement of the earths crust and fractured through water movement creating deep gorges with micro-climates inhabiting their base thanks both to the presence of water and shade from the strength of the sun.
Moving on from Dales we traveled to the other side (western side) of the park to the Karijini Eco Retreat. This had a couple more creature comforts such as showers and flushing toilets as well as a restaurant on site which meant that we didn’t have to endure another night of motorhome pasta. This is an aboriginal owned retreat with a focus on sustainability and it manages to trade-off the requirement to attract tourists in order to fund the work undertaken in the national park to manage it and deter the incursion of the mining companies who would like access to the iron ore laden rock with minimal impact of the landscape and environment that makes the area special. From here we were able to explore Hancock and Weano Gorges each with their own particular highlights such as Kermit’s Pool in Hancock Gorge:
and Handrail Pool in Weano’s Gorge:
And next for something entirely different, back to the coast and Exmouth (pronounced Ex Mouth and not Exmuth as per the UK) for some scuba-diving.