Blogs from Karijini National Park, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 5

DAY 194 Moving day out of Karijini National Park, Andy and I are taking heed of Kens message to us and we decide that we will travel with Kirsty and Andrew to Broome, and thus missing Marble Bar. We are up at 7.00 and as soon as a cup of tea is made we set about getting things packed up, it will take a while longer as we have the awning up, but the extra time is worth it as it has protected us from the searing heat of this desert. Andy blew his nose and a fly came out, we have no idea how long it has been lodging there, but the fly was dead for sure. The day was already hot, it was tiring just packing up, but by 9.00 we were ready ... read more

DAY 192 We awoke at 5.00am to our Dingo chorus, it was really rather lovely, we thought they may be asking us to “name that tune.” It still felt very cold, but it would soon warm up when the sun comes up. Andy got up at 7.00, the cooker had packed up entirely so we had no early tea, Andy just took the cooker apart to try and fix it, he found that the jets were blocked so got a pin and unblocked them, success we have a cup of tea, better late than never, but for a new cooker we wonder why we have blocked jets, could it be dirty gas? We prepare ourselves for a short hike this morning, they are within walking distance of the camp, so we will go for a short ... read more

Karijini was one of those places we'd been looking forward visiting ever since we touched down in Australia - thanks to our eager host Mary at the first place we resided in Perth. She laid a photo-book of Karijini and other Western Australian wonders on our table in the dining room - I saw it, and I was hooked. The national park is situated about 1500km north of Perth, inland from Exmouth (east) to the tune of about 600km, and about 4/500km south of Port Hedland. Its only about 50km though from a little known (outside of Australia) mining town called Tom Price which had nothing to offer other than cheap booze and weird books in the tourist office! This corner of Australia is an area called the Pilbara which is mainly famous for its abundance ... read more

What’s your favourite animal? Not a question I’ve been asked in quite a while. Back as a kid it seemed of endless fascination to any number of girls. They’d sidle up next to you completely uninvited, conjure a mechanical origami contraption and promise to tell your fortune. This they did by requesting your preferences over colour, numbers, or best of all, animals, desperate to discover any clues to the inner workings of your mind. Should you accidentally answer appropriately they’d promptly unfold their paper oracle to reveal something called a love-heart, or else claim you’d marry them and have eighteen children. While you were busy trying to work out what the hell was going on they’d move in for a sneaky peck on the cheek and promptly run away. All-in-all a most harrowing experience. The girls ... read more

We set of at breakfast time, "On the road again" was our catch phrase and we had a good 600k's to go to reach Karijini. By now the earth was really red this could be one of the reasons we had still not seen a wild Kangaroo, but we had seen wild emus, ostriches, dolphins hopefully we will spot some in the national park. We did see some really massive Termite minds the one we stopped at must have been hundreds of years old as they carry the dirt when it has rained and build up the minds then the sun bakes it hard onto the termite mind this allows them to build a massive coleney, trust me this was huge must be so old. We stopped in at Tom Price which is the last stop ... read more