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Published: August 9th 2012
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Day 37 – Sunday 5
th August – Cape Keraudren to Karijini National Park
As expected, we had landed in a pretty beautiful spot last night and we had great views from our tent of the coast, bathed in pinky orange pre-dawn sunlight. The morning temperature was 9 degrees, so it was nice to sit and watch the day start with a hot cup of tea.
We packed up after a quick breakfast, did a quick drive around the rest of the Cape, paid the ranger our camping fees ($27 for all of us, including the $10 park entrance fee for the car). Some of our neighbours are staying there for a week, for the bargain price of $64! It’s not bad being a grey nomad.
After 150kms of driving we arrived in Port Hedland, the big mining town on the coast. We were interested as to what this would be like. The first thing we saw as we drove in was a salt mine with two huge mountains of salt being topped up by salt cascading from vertical conveyor belts. Further into town the presence of the large mining companies was evident – a huge BHP
Billiton refining centre, massive Caltex fuel storage tanks, giant tankers in the harbor waiting to be filled with iron ore. The “town centre” was being dug up and the cafes were closed so we went to the Shopping centre to grab some fresh groceries from Woolworths and some treats from the instore bakery. We were confused by a chocolate caramel filled muffin that is supposed to have been baked instore but has “Made in Ireland” on the label. Hmmm. It tasted fresh enough to have come out of the instore bakery and not having made a journey half way round the world. Anyway, as you would imagine the supermarket was full of people wearing their mine workwear – navy trousers and fluro orange tops – after having finished their shifts. It’s hard to imagine being based in a place like Port Hedland and living in a portacabin in a mining camp some hundreds of Kms away. But I guess the money makes it worth it.
From Port Hedland we continued on our journey to Karijini on the Great Northern Highway (also called the Warlu way, a tourist drive), driving through impressive landscape, always featuring dark red rocks of various
shapes and sizes, yellowy green tufts of Spinifex grasses, deeper greens of gum trees etc. Amongst this classic colour combination, including the dark blue sky, there are also little pockets of other colours – yellow flowers on some trees, light lilac flowers on some grasses, tiny indigo flowers on other plants and occasional splashes of red. Approaching Karijini we had a great view of the Hamersley ranges stretching in front of us to the left and right.
We arrived at the visitor Centre at Karijini at around 3pm and managed to secure a spot at Dales Campground. It’s a popular place and you can’t book but luckily we weren’t too late. We picked up walking maps to plan activities for the next couple of days. Dales campground is very well laid out. There are several loops around sub campsites and marked allocated areas where you can camp. This is so they can ensure that campers keep a decent distance from each other and the place doesn’t end up looking like a caravan park. Facilities are very basic – tank water is available near the visitor centre but has to be boiled before drinking. There are a few pit toilets
for each loop and two showers at the visitor’s centre. We paid $36 for two nights camping - excellent! We put the tent up and enjoyed the last hour or so’s hot sunshine (still no clouds!!) reading our books and forcing the kids to do some diary writing. A nice relaxing end to the day.
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