Exploring Karijini

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Day 38 – Monday 6^th August – Karijini National Park

This morning when we woke up at 6.30, the temperature was 7 degrees. But as soon as the sun began peeking over the Hamersley range the air quickly warmed up and by 9am it was around 24 degrees! We had a slow start to the day, doing more diary writing and reading. Anna took a soft grey rock from Cape Leveque and has been grinding it into a clay paste for a couple of days, aiming to make some sort of clay animal. Let’s see what happens to this…

At 10.30 we headed off to do the Dales Gorge walk. From the car park there is a steep descent into the gorge and before long you reach the very pretty Fortescue Falls, a fan-shaped waterfall cascading down ledges of rock into a turquoise pool below. About 500m along from Fortescue Falls is Fern Pool, another beautiful, clear pool of turquoise water. Fern pool is a sacred place for the aboriginals, home of serpents. Swimming is allowed but you have to be quiet and jumping/diving is not allowed. We decided we would rather not be quiet when swimming so just admired Fern Pool from the banks and marched back along the track to head deeper into Dales Gorge. We would save ourselves for a swim in Fortescue Falls on the way back.

Once again, the hike along the gorge was quite technically difficult with lots of rocks to climb over and ledges to balance along on the edge of water, so one false step could mean getting wet. The steep gorge walls were very impressive, with angular lines making them look like they could be made of lego if you look at them from a distance (with your eyes half closed!). After a couple of kms we reached Circular Pool at the end of the gorge which receives little sunlight. This meant the water would be pretty cold. Despite this we all decided to have a dip. Mark and Hazel lasted only 30 seconds but the kids were much more (fool)hardy and jumped in and out of the water, swam up to the waterfall at the back of the pool, where they discovered that the water coming down was actually quite warm! Luke found a baby frog in a rock hole and proceeded to show anyone who came along to the pool. I think it survived its encounter with Luke and lived to fight another day.

Next was a very steep climb back out of the gorge to the lookouts. From there you get a great view of the rocks of the gorge and the circular pool from a long way up. We finished with a walk along the rim of the gorge back to the car, then made our way back to Fortescue Falls to enjoy the mid-afternoon sun, lounging around on the ledges of the waterfall and playing in the pool. The Australian outback has some sensational places to cool down when you get too hot.

Back at the tent the kids did some more diary writing and were serenaded by our neighbour in the next camping bay whose Aussie bush music was blaring out of his Jayco Expanda. Without even realising it we were soon singing along to “I’m fair dinkum, bloody oath I am”. Quite fitting for us now that we are Australian citizens.

Evening entertainment was games of Pass the Pigs and Monopoly Deal. Lots of hilarity with the pigs – such a geniusly simple game (for simple folk).<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">

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