Pilbara / Karijini National Park

Hancock Gorge Bushwalk, Karijini NP
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I spoke too soon about the warm nights (refer Exmouth) – just a few hundred kms inland it was almost freezing at night. I’m quite sure that it hit 0 degrees C a few nights. We had blankets and sleeping bags and thermals and socks and beanies and still felt the cold. Climate aside, we loved Karijini. We walked / rock scrambled in Dales, Hancock, Joffre’s, Weano and Hammersly’s Gorges – one each day. The scenery and colours are fantastic – rusty red rock faces, crystal clear cold water, cascading waterfalls with ferns, narrow and sometimes slippery ledges that look impassable (without mountaineering gear) etc… The camera can’t really capture it. We had trouble holding A back. A highlight was the “spider walk” at Hancock Gorge where you need to straddle the gorge – one foot and hand on either side, you then “spider” above the waterfall in a narrow passage through to the next rock pool.

Crazy A, Spider walk, Hancock Gorge Bushwalk, Karijini NP
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We went in to Tom Price (mining town nearby) to do the Pilbara Iron (Rio Tinto) Ore mine tour. They literally cart away the entire mountain. We also tried repeatedly to pick up our school packages – there was some kind of a mix up - in the end we left without them and aside from journal writing and some reading the girls, by default, are on school holidays 2 weeks early. We got a permit to travel on the private rail access road back to the coast and saw the 2.5 km long trains that cart the iron ore away for shipping. We camped at Python Pool on the way (happy to report there were no snakes).