Karijini

KARIJINI 🤸🏻‍♂️👟🌱💧 one of our favourite National Parks!!

After leaving Marble Bar, we pulled into the Auski Roadhouse. Our plan was to stay the night, but we spotted👀 some of our friends out the front. 10 minutes later, another couple we knew pulled up. As it was Amz’s birthday we decided to all go 15km up the road to a free camp, so we could have some birthday beers🍻, a fire & a good ole chinwag. We had a great night with our friends, and Ally (one of the girls), generously made Amz some bday cupcakes🎂.

The next day, we said goodbye and headed back to the Auski Tourist Village Roadhouse. With temperatures around the 35-38 degree🌡 mark, we knew we would need some aircon for little Rusty if we were to day trip into Karijini. We settled in and did some washing and did some planning on what we wanted to see. The next day we got up at 5am, gave Rusty🐶 a quick run, settled her into the aircon and headed off to the Dale’s Gorge’s area.

We made good time, with it only taking us one hour to get to the carpark. We walked down and checked out Circular Pool. Before moving carparks to the Fortescue Falls⛲️ carpark. We thought with school holidays on, the place would be chock a block. Luckily for us, families mustn’t get up early as we had all of the pools pretty much to ourselves. Fern Pool🌿 was very pretty, along with Fortescue falls & circular pool.

After a nice short dip at each spot, we headed to the Visitors Info centre for a look. Lots of history, displays and facts about Karijini inside. We then checked our watch⏱ for time, and decided to go see one more gorge. Headed down the road we stopped into Kalamima Gorge. A nice hike with some different scenery, but a little disappointing at the end. We grabbed some photos then trekked back up to the car. We made it back to Auski roadhouse around lunch time. Rusty still fast asleep💤 on our bed, lapping up the aircon.

The next day, we moved camps to the other side of Karijini. We chose to park the van at a free camp🏕 just outside of the National Park. We wanted to climb Mt. Bruce, which was only 5kms down the road. That night, we had a little meet up with all our friends again. We had a team campfire🔥 cookup which was delicious. Roast pork & lamb, potato bake, roast veges, peas and gravy. Finished off with some homemade nutella scones👌🏼.

Us and two other couples decided we would set our alarms for 4:00am and try to make it up Mt Bruce for sunrise🌤. Up nice and early we all met at the carpark at 4:30am. Most of us walked up the mountain in zombie mode, still half asleep. Unfortunately we just missed sunrise when we made it to the top at around 6:10am. There was lots of cloud cover about, so technically we still saw the sunrise from behind the clouds while we were there💁🏻‍♂️. We ate some snacks, grabbed some photos and started the decent, as it was bloody freezing up there.

Fern Pool

Getting to take in the views on the way down, with the sun up was brilliant. We’re lucky we decided to do it as a group, otherwise we probably wouldn’t of made it up😅. We returned to the caravan and just relaxed the rest of the morning. In the afternoon, we decided to head up the road to Hamersley Gorge. Only a short walk from the carpark and you are at the gorge. We climbed up to the upper pool💦, which was alot less busy and nicer (in our opinion). This is also where people get the popular ‘spa pool’ shot. We had a splash, grab some photos and headed back to the van for dinner.

The next day, we decided to day trip into Weano day use area and finish off the gorges. We were quite happy living our van at the ‘roundabout mountain views’ free camp, as it was parked in the shade🌳 and temperatures were very cool for little Rusty. We left a fan on and her kong full of treats and headed in.

For our first gorge we wandered down and into Hancock Gorge. We’re so glad we did this one first thing, as it turned out to be our favourite💚! Such an amazing gorge system to wander through. We had to walk, swim, spider-walk and scramble over rocks. Definitely need grippy shoes you don’t mind getting wet, wear your swimmers and take minimal stuff. We wore our water-shoes and had a dry bag with a bottle of water, keys and phone in.🎒

We even saw our old pal Hutchy at the end of the gorge, near Kermits Pool. Had a good 10 minute chat to him & Gabs before they left👍🏼. We then trekked back out and up to the car for a quick top up of H20 then off to Weano gorge we went. We wandered down and into the handrail pool. We’d been told the gorge doesn’t stop here and to walk through the opening at the handrail pool, which we did. It led us to a large longer pool and no-one in sight.😎

The handrail part, which you have to climb down is a bit sketchy. We saw one man almost axe it😳 and a few little kids crying and refusing to climb down. This is one gorge we’re glad we explored while we are young and nimble. We walked back to the car and decided to go see one last gorge.

Mt Bruce

We skipped past Joffre and headed straight to Knox, as we had heard good things. It was probably the steepest of the gorges to get down into, but worth the effort👟. The end of the walk is epic looking. We knew time was of the essence, so we took a minute to appreciate it then turned around and headed back. We stopped by the large swimming hole for a few bomb dives and to cool🏊🏻‍♀️ off before the steep trek back upto the carpark.

➡️Overall - we loved Karijini! Yes we had to break up our journey over a good few days to see everything, but this was perfect for us. This is definitely up there with one of our favourite national parks we’ve seen. Kurt loved the fact, most of the walks were quite short (excluding the Mt Bruce hike😝).

Until next time Karijini

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