West 3 ~ Karijini & the Pilbara

Five gorges in one day was our challenge on our first day at Karijini National Park.  Having arrived late in the evening after a long day of outback driving, we got to camp for free in the "overflow" section.  Next morning after breakie, we were off and into the gorges.  Karijini gorges are beautiful - they cut right into the deep red rock of the Pilbara, and each has it's own character, some tight and narrow, others are broad open canyons.  One nice feature is that you can basically park at the top of each gorge and walk straight down into it, making the five in one challenge achievable.

We started with Weano Gorge, initially following the open walking trail down the upper gorge, then slipping into our wetsuits as it got tighter and wetter further down.  We didn't bother taking the wetsuits off to climb out of Weano and down Hancock Gorge to Kermit's Pool.  We ate some lunch on the drive to Joffre Gorge, a big open gorge with a stunning waterfall and big cold swimming holes, and then ducked over to Knox Gorge.  The Sun was sinking as we got into Kalamina Gorge, but we marched on down to the Natural Arch and then had a swim at the top of the gorge that was partly to refresh ourselves, but mostly so that we could say we swam in all five gorges.

Next day we packed up the camper and spent the morning walking and swimming our way through Dale's Gorge before heading northward to the coast.  On the way down from Karijini the Great Northern Highway winds down through Munjina Gorge.  It's a pretty impressive sight, especially with the massive roadtrains rolling down, and we decided that one of us had to ride a bike down.  HJ took the honours, I got to be the cameraman.

For our last night on the road we camped at Cape Keraudren, a beautiful, bare little peninsula about an hour from Port Hedland.  We got in at night and it looked like everyone was asleep in their caravans, so we crept around setting up the camper and went pretty much straight to bed after a couple of quiet card games.  In the morning we had a slightly successful spearfishing expedition.  I say slightly because the one and only fish we caught was floating upside down when we found it.

One long final stretch of driving along one of the flattest dullest sections of road around brought us to Broome.  We had both survived nine days on the road, ten gorges, one cave, multiple attempts to find more caves, three bike rides, five snorkels, one skateboard ride, one bogging, three sci-fi audiobooks, innumerable inane conversations.  Whether our friendship survived remains to be seen.

~ Photos ~
Gorges clockwise from top left: Weano, Hancock, Knox, Dales, Kalamina, Joffre.
HJ riding down Munjina Gorge.
Camp at Cape Keraudren.