On our final morning in Broome Bob was very keen to address the fuel filter warning light that had been flashing in Frankie. So the kids and I did a little pottering / shopping, including one final visit to the markets, while Bob was yet again being SUPER handy. He dropped into Toyota to purchase some back up replacement parts, and then actually replaced the fuel filter, all by himself on the side of the road. SO manly!!
We then headed south to Eighty Mile Beach. Given our delayed departure, we were once again travelling through the afternoon and into the sunset, and driving down the 10 km dirt road off the highway to the caravan park in the dark. Thankfully it wasn't too corrugated 😅,
In the original itinerary we were only supposed to stay one night at Eighty Mile Beach, but given the somewhat frantic nature of the last few days, and the fact we got in so late, we decided to extend our stay an extra night to catch our breath. And for me to do some laundry, of course! However this meant we were going to lose a night at our next stop, Karijini National Park, taking us down to only two nights which really meant only one full day. So at this point I was starting to consider skipping Karijini all together, but in the end we decided to push through and add an extra 2 nights at the other end of the Karijini stay, cancelling the planned 2 nights in Exmouth. Which turned out to be the perfect decision - we didn't miss out on Exmouth as we were able to visit there on the way to Coral Bay, and we absolutely LOVED Karijini, especially Bob. It really was an amazing and spectacular place, and I'm SO pleased we didn't miss it.
After grabbing some scones from the caravan park reception, we hit the road to head inland to Karijini National Park. As had become the norm, we arrived at the Karijini Eco Retreat late and in the dark, and had to to grab a quick burger for dinner from the restaurant at the retreat. Now, before you get any ideas, this was very much a middle of nowhere, national park style resort - think no potable water, solar powered hot water showers that had a VERY limited supply and eco toilets. But the view from our kitchen table more than made up for it.
Karijini National Park is on the lands of the Banyjima, Innawonga and Kurrama people. The Eco Retreat is owned by an Aboriginal organisation, the Gumala Trust, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find any cultural tours while we were there. There is a yearly cultural festival, so maybe we'll just have to go back one of these years.
While I knew that the main attraction of Karijini were a number of spectacular gorges, I must admit the sheer scale of the park made it difficult to work out where they all were and how best to approach them. So our first effort was to walk from the caravan to the Joffre Gorge lookout. We walked along the seemingly flat red earth, not quiet sure where the gorge was going to appear from. And then we found it!
The walk to the look out had only taken us 25 minutes, so we were then considering walking down into the gorge itself. We had left Toby at the caravan, and it was getting close to lunch time, and the board said it was around 2 km return but it would take 2 to 3 hours. So we decided to have a go but head back if it was taking too long. And we were so pleased we did - it was not a long walk at all, and there were a few ladders installed to deal with some of the steeper descents required, and it was SO amazing at the bottom of the gorge.
We were so impressed with the gorge we decided to have a go at another one after lunch, so we headed off to Minhthukundi (Hamersley Gorge). It was a decent drive from the eco retreat, over an hour, the second half of which was on a pretty rough dirt road. Again, we thought we might just have a quick look around, but once we got down to the bottom it was just so gorgeous we had to explore.
I was really keen to get a photo of all of us in front of the deep purple wavy part of the gorge wall, and as I was wrangling the children Bob took this one which was pretty close....
And then Toby decided he'd had enough family photos and wanted to take the photo for us. This was his attempt....
As you can see, he managed to get almost none of the purple rock in the photo 🤯. But by the time I worked out just how bad his framing had been we had already started for the ladder out, so we just couldn't face going back. So this is good as it gets! Maybe one day I'll use photoshop to combine the photo above and below to make an official family photo.
On the drive home we were flagged down by two young women on the side of the road who had done a real number on one of their tyres - it was ABSOLUTELY shredded 😬. They were twins who were travelling with their parents and brother and they had been in convoy, but apparently the other 2 cars didn't see them pull over in amongst all the dust from the dirt road. The driver had done a really great job to pull over without crashing, but they were a bit nervous about using the jack to get the car up, especially on the edge of such a corrugated dirt road. So we gave them a hand - mostly Bob, who as always did a great job in teaching as he did it so they'd have the confidence to do it themselves the next time. By the time we got the shredded tyre off and had lined up the spare their brother and parents had both come back from them, so we gave them a big wave and headed off, feeling good to have been able to help out our fellow travellers (without endangering ourselves, this time!).
The next morning we had to move to another campground in the national park as the eco retreat was booked out. Its such a huge park that it was an hour's drive, and the new camp was even more basic than the eco retreat - the only showers were actually at the visitor's centre a 15 minute drive away! But it was still a gorgeous spot, and once we were settled in we headed to the next gorge on the list, Ngirribungunha (Dales Gorge). After looking out over the gorge from the lookout, and then walked down a huge number of stairs to see two other water features Fortescue Falls and Fern Pool, both of which was known as Jubura in the local language.
The first water feature we came across was a delightful waterfall into a pool, known in English as Fortescue Falls. We sat and admired the view for a while, but chose to wait for the next pool for a swim.
We then walked on the part of Jubura known but the unimaginative English speakers as Fern Pool. All of the information booklets and signage explained that it was a very scared space for the traditional owners as it was the final resting place of the head of the creator serpent. As such, swimming was permitted but we were requested to be quiet and respectful and not climb on the waterfall at the far end of the pool. Unfortunately, many of the visitors either didn't engage with this information, or decided it didn't apply to them, which is always frustrating, but what are you going to do? We try to stay as focused on the spirituality of the space as we could, and just felt very fortunate to be able to experience it.
Toby didn't feel comfortable swimming, so we gave him another chance to be family photographer to see if he had learnt from our 'constructive feedback' from his attempt the day before, i.e. when we laughed and teased him about his poor framing. As you can see, the lesson had clearly not sunk in!
The next morning we struck out for our fourth and most challenging gorge known as Bilungunha, or Hancock Gorge, which includes two amazing features known as Spider Walk and Kermit's Pool.
To ensure we are all sufficiently fueled for the big adventure, we dropped back into the eco retreat for their buffet breakfast.
When we reached the first proper section of water that couldn't be avoided via rock-scrambling, Toby wasn't comfortable to attempt walking through it, despite the fact it didn't look very deep. Bob was really keen to get him to the spiderwalk element, so he agreed to piggyback him over the water. We left our bags and shoes and got down to the adventure proper.
At the next stretch of water the rock wall was staggered enough that Toby was able to scramble along one side, with Bob behind him to give him pointers. The girls and I made our way through the water, which got as deep as my shoulders in some points. While it wasn't exactly stagnant, it definitely wasn't fast moving, so by the time I got to the end I knew I'd be going back via the rocks!
We left the rest of our stuff in the natural ampitheatre in the middle of the walk and made our way to the real highlights of the gorge, the narrow passage known as the spiderwalk and the deep cold pool that is known as Kermit Pool due to the green hue of the water. We were lucky that the water level was pretty low so we could actually just walk down the spiderwalk section, although Toby chose to go the traditional spiderman crawl halfway up the wall for the fun of it. The rest of us just made our way carefully down the narrow passageway which only had a small amount of water flowing.
We stopped in at the visitor centre for a shower, which was an interesting experience, then headed back to the caravan for a restful afternoon. We were sad to pack up and leave Karijini behind the next day - we were all really blown away by the beauty and majesty of the landscape in the park, with Bob in particular finding it a really rejuvenating experience. We were very pleased we hadn't decided to skip the visit as I had briefly contemplated, and I can definitely see us coming back one day in the not too distant future!