Karijini - well worth the drive

Karijini National Park is located approx.1400kms north of Perth in the Hamersley Ranges and is Western Australia’s second largest national park covering 627,422 hectares. Karlamilyi National Park located between the Great and Little Sandy Deserts is the largest covering 1.3 million hectares.

The Park has many deep gorges and high peaks.  There are numerous walks down into the gorges ranging from class 2 to class 5.  On Saturday we got in the car and headed to another section of the park about 40kms away.  We did the Knox Gorge Walk (class 5 walk). The trail is about 2kms with lots of climbing up and down with some quite large, and at times loose rocks. Given the temperatures we thought best to start the walk earlyish, so we were on the track just after 9am.

The gorge is simply beautiful.  Lovely pools at the bottom, then you look up and realise the climb you need to do to get back to the car! By the time we returned to the car around 11am  the car was showing the temperature as 39 degrees … a little on the warm side.

We then visited Joffre Falls.  This time we took the easy option, only walking as far as the lookout. Both Knox Gorge and Joffre Falls have fabulous, cantilevered lookouts providing excellent views into and along the gorges.

After our walks we headed to the café at Karijini Eco-Retreat located in the section of the Park containing Knox Gorge and Joffre Falls. After lots of cold water, a burger for Pete and a fabulous beetroot salad for me we returned to our campsite.

Sunday morning, we got going earlier to do the walks close to our campsite - the Gorge Rim Walk and the Dales Gorge Walk (class 4, about 6kms – about 3 hours involving lots of photo stops).

We couldn’t get up to Circular Falls as the track is closed due to a recent rockslide, so we headed in the opposite direction to Fortescue Falls and Fern Pools.  This was a beautiful walk with lots of big ghost gums, water holes, rock scrambling and sheer rock faces.

We sat for a while to soak our feet in Fern Pools.  There was an added bonus with a local pedicure courtesy of the little fish coming up to clean your feet! Think I prefer the more conventional pedicure approach. 

We walked back to camp – Pete set up Starlink and watched Bathurst with an ice cold ginger beer.

Later this afternoon we will go back to Fern Pools for a swim…shame about the 290 steps (each way) down to the pool…I am sure it will be worth it.

Tomorrow, we say farewell to the red dust and head to the coast.  We have a couple of three night stops.  The first just south of Coral Bay and then we head to Cape Range National Park (near Exmouth).  A change from red dust to sand! Hopefully it will also be a little cooler. Karijini is an incredible NP, we now understand why it is such a highly rated place to visit.