KARIJINI NATIONAL PARK & TOM PRICE

We got to the National Park late in the afternoon and the campsite was full so the Ranger sent us to an overflow area for the night and said that campsites will be available in the morning and the overflow was free to stay.

NOTE to travellers in National Parks in WA – buy a Parks Pass from the Department of Parks and Wildlife Western Australia, we got a 4 week pass for $44, the annual is $88, because each time you go to a National Park in WA you need to pay $12 if you don’t have one.

Next morning we headed into the campsite and then headed out to do the Dale Gorge circular walk which was 6kms.  The walk started with a steep climb down the cliff wall and into the Circular Pool.  It was cool down at the pool and as the pool was completely in the shade of the cliff faces 180 degrees around, the water looked very cold.

We made our way to the other end of the gorge along the base.  There was one point where we were scaling the rock face because we had missed the turn off to cross the creek and as there was no where further to go, we headed back to the turn off – it was much easier on the other side.  Towards the end of the walk was a great section of full of scrambling over rocks upto a waterfall. 

There was another swimming hole just a little further on, so we made our way there which we thought was much better.  We all swam out to the waterfall and the water falling was so warm.  Abi described it as it was like having a shower, which was a good thing as we hadn’t had a shower for a couple of days.  In the trees around the water’s edge there was hundreds of bats hanging upside down.  It was well worth coming into Karijini National Park.

As we were getting ready to walk the 3kms back on the top of the gorge, we were chatting to another family.  Small world, turns out they lived in Eltham and their daughter Abby played netball against the twins.  We arranged to catch up later that afternoon for drinks.

Next morning we headed into Tom Price for fuel and breakfast.  Surprisingly the town was very green.  We were looking forward to having a donut for breakfast but unfortunately there was none at the shop so we had cupcakes and Big Ms instead – not a healthy breakfast.  We saw a huge truck that was located on the outskirts of town (another opportunity for a Ranger photo) which weighed 100 tonne and was able to carry 150 tonne from the mines.