Gorgeous gorges

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Day 39 – Tuesday 7^th August – Karijini National Park

Another leisurely start saw us leave the tent at around 10 am after bacon and baked bean wraps for breakfast. We drove 45kms to the other side of the park to the Weano Gorge Day use area for our expedition through the Hancock and Weano gorges and Oxer and Junction Lookouts. We had been warned that we would get wet today on the walk and not because of rain.

Hancock gorge “walk” starts with a steep descent down to a sort of staircase ladder in the cliffs, which you climb down to reach the bottom of the gorge. More steep rock walls, beautiful scenery and rock hopping along the river. Soon we reached the wading part. Mark wore his hiking sandals which we bought way back in 1999 for our South America back packing trip. The kids wore their trainers and I had my hiking boots on. I was going to take them off for the wading part and put them back on again, keeping them dry. But I soon realised that there would be lots more wading to come and jumped in the water with my boots on. We balanced along very small ledges, shuffled along parapets on our bums and spider walked down a chasm to get to Kermit Falls, deep in Hancock Gorge. It was very exciting stuff and you could hardly call it a walk. In parts we had to leave the digital SLR camera safely on a ledge to make sure it wouldn’t get wet if we fell in and the waterproof digital instant camera we bought for the trip has come in very handy on gorge walks.

We climbed back out of Hancock Gorge and made our way to the Oxer and Junction lookouts, which give you stunning views across the top of the gorges and a bird’s eye view of just how deep the gorges are. It also makes you think that one slip on the wrong path could be fatal, and indeed we saw several plaques in memory of people who have died in the gorges.

The final gorge for the day was Weano Gorge which is the location of Handrail Pool. Once again we had a knee-trembling quad-burning steep rocky descent to the bottom of the gorge. Almost straight away we came to the first wading/ swimming point. The good camera was stowed in the top of Mark’s rucksack instead of in the camera bag, giving it more height to avoid the water. Some parts of the pool were chest deep and if you took a step in the wrong direction you’d be swimming. We made it safely across this pool without getting the camera wet – phew. More wading, rock hopping, balancing along thin ledges etc and we reached the entrance to the Handrail Pool. Park Rangers have kindly installed a handrail on one side of the gorge so you can hang on for dear life as you negotiate the thin, slippery chasm and smooth rock face down to the pool. Falling and slipping into the pool below would probably be fatal if you landed wrongly. Luckily the kids are a cross between mountain goats and monkeys and the parents must have some of those genes too, so we all made it safely onto the ledge next to the pool. We had been told the water in the handrail pool was even colder than circular pool so only Anna was brave enough to have a dip and get her hair wet. Luke went exploring into the mouth of the next pool but the water was hypothermia-cold and no direct sunlight got into the pool so we decided to head back out after taking the obligatory photos.

On the way back to the car we followed the trail at the foot of Weano Gorge then walked along the rim to the car. We made short stops at Joffre and Knox gorge lookouts on the way back to Dales Campground but found we had run out of energy to follow the trails into these gorges, so we just viewed them from the top. It has been a fantastic day exploring the amazing Karijini National Park. We decided to make use of the showers at the visitors centre before it closed at 4pm, but we weren’t the only people with this plan. There is one male and one female shower so we had a bit of a wait for our cold refreshing shower, however it was well worth it and it felt good to wash our hair again and temporarily (maybe even for only 30 mins) banish the red dirt from our skin.

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