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Published: July 23rd 2007
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As we left the coast from our big fishing adventure - less fish, we headed south to the some of the national parks and into Mining Country
The first stop was a little known national park called Millstream National Park. The park is quiet small in size. The walks were short, but the one around the rangers station was very interesting as it was told in the eyes of a 12 year old boy that use to live there. There was some great scenery. Some of the ranges (as in mountains and not Park Rangers) had really great colours, but the overcast cloud did not do them justice. One of the ranges looked like ice-cream with chocolate topping dripping down, which in fact was brown rock with white plant life on the lower section. But I like the first explanation better.
We spent the night in Millstream at one of the camp grounds. The weather has started to get a bit colder but not too bad.
After Millstream we headed into Karijini. We had heard such good things about this place we had high expectations.
We stayed at the Dales camp ground in the park. It was
nice, but the red dust was the worst we have ever encountered. It was thicker than others, and just clung to everything.
There are 2 main Gorge areas in Karijini. Once is Weano recreation area. It was about 50km from where we camped and had many different walking trails. They are all of different grades. We decided to take one of the more difficult walking trails called Hammersley Gorge. You climbed down about 75m on rock made steps, and a ladder to reach the bottom. That was the easiest part, but when we got to the bottom we thought the walk back would be tough. Going through the Gorge to the Amphitheatre you had walk through freezing cold water. Bruce did it in his shoes, and I did it bare foot. I thought I was doing so well, until just near the end. My feet were frozen (the walk was only 100m) and I slipped ending up on my bum in the water. I managed to save the camera and my sneakers, but the rest of me was soaked.
You also had to climb along the cliffs when the water got deeper. The rock is very layered so
you had plenty of foot and hand holds. It was great fun, and not too hard. From the amphitheatre you had to go on a ‘spider walk’ to see the next pool. This was having your hands and feet spread across both sides of the gorge as the water ran underneath you. We got about half way along before I could not reach across the gorge anymore. So we headed back. As we were right, the walk up the gorge wall was bloody hard. At the top we heard from other people that the rest of the Gorges were not as spectacular as Dales Gorge and that was all the excuse we needed to drag ourselves back to the car and leave.
The other Gorge area is Dales Gorge which is just by our camp ground. We went to Circular Pool, again the walk down the Gorge was very difficult, but the walk along the gorge was not too bad, just lots of rock hopping. Well that was until Bruce got a bit cocky. He fell off one of the rocks, down to a level below. The fall was over 2m. He landed on his feet, but slipped and
ended up on his side. People came running from everywhere to see that he was ok. My first reaction was that he had done major damage and would need to be winched out. But it turned out his ego was very bruised, and his arm hurt. We were nearly at Circular Pool so headed on to have swim to help Bruce’s bruised bits. The water was cold, but the pool was awesome. Nice spot for a swim.
Bruce realised he could not walk out the way we came down as he could no longer use his right arm. Apparently it hurt a bit, wuss! We were told that the next major water area had an easier walk out. So we walked about 2km along the floor of the Gorge to Fortescue Falls and Fern Pool. Bruce did this with out any complaint, and lots of support from me with leaning on my shoulders to get down some of the rocks. His arm must have been hurting. Fern Pool was awesome it was a great place to swim, but by this time we were both sore, and Bruce’s arm was really hurting so we made our way back to camp.
We really enjoyed Karijini National Park and it did live up to our expectations.
I finally got to use our first aid kit, and most of its contents that we bought with us, and put his arm in a sling. Bruce had a very bad night, so about 2 hours in I used the rest of the bandages to bandage up the arm to try and relieve some of the pressure. He said I did do a good job and went to sleep not long after. With the arm needing lots of support we decided to head into Tom Price 1 day early to get it looked at. We were also sick of the thick red dust, and desperately needed a shower and to do some washing.
As we started to pack up Bruce noticed the front tire was a bit down. There were some rocks in it where he took the only water crossing a bit rough yesterday, so he took them out. (Well a bit rough was a nice way to put it. He went up the high side, but there was a big whole in the middle so we had to drive through it quickly
otherwise we would have tipped in. This was one of the smallest water crossings for the trip and caused the only damage. ) Then the tire went completely flat. Thanks for that!!!. So out came the jack and with Bruce supervising I tried to place it under the car. This was until a lovely couple (Tony and Vicki) came over to give us a hand. Thank god for their help, otherwise we would have been there all day. Tony had a beading kit, and re-beaded the tire (popped the tire off the rim the clear the rocks and put it back on) which worked. This took us over 1 hour and Bruce was very frustrated with only able to supervise. By now his arm was really hurting.
Once in Tom Price we decided to try out the local public hospital and see how the WA Health System handles things. It was not too bad with only a 30 minute wait before we were seen. Then another 1.5 hours before the X-Ray. The Doc for the ER in the hospital is actually the local GP and only pops over during her lunch break. The guys next to us was there
since 8am. They decided that the arm was broken, just near the elbow on his right side. The break is not really a break, just a crack. It can not be too bad as they did not put it in plaster, just gave him a sling and lots of drugs, with instuctions to keep it moving. They did say though where the break was, near the joint, that if it was bad they would have flown him to Perth for an Operation. Lucky for me it was not. So looks like I will be doing most of the work around camp for the next few weeks, including all the driving. I am soooo happy about that. The movement is getting better, and he can now at least put his clothes on, thanks mostly to his magical mystery tour around various Codine, and paracetamol based pharmaceutical products, so by the time we get home he may have learnt to cut up his own food as well.
Bruce’s only disappointment is that he will have to inform the All-Black selectors that he will be unavailable for the upcoming World Cup. But Richie and the boys seem to be doing ok.
Doing a Mine tour in Tom Price tomorrow then heading to the coast again and going to Exmouth. Hopefully to swim with the Whales, well Amanda anyway. We are into our last 2 weeks of our trip and not looking forward to coming home to the cold weather. The tans are doing very well, and seem to not rub off when you have a shower either, but that may not mean anything because we can not wash off the red dust either.
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