Karijini National Park

4/8/2015 continued

I need to correct the last blog post – most of the ore is transported to Port Hedland by rail, but I saw more road trains on the 70 km that I drove from Port Hedland south towards Newman than I saw in the last two months. Every other minute, a road train with 4 trailers full of ore went past me, and I overtook several empty ones going in my direction. Even one of the companies that I (unfortunately) bought shares from in the last few years, trucks in several million tonnes (!) a year.

Indee station, an operating farm with a small campsite attached to it, was the stop for the night. It's about 10km on a sandy, partially corrugated dirt road away from the main highway. The hosts welcomed me and gave me a nice spot to camp. I hiked up telegraph hill straight away to admire the surrounding landscape and take some photos in late afternoon light. Cooked the fresh fish and had it with the lettuce that I bought in Port Hedland.

Indee station is lovely and has a daily “bring your own (BYO) happy hour” in the main building from 17.30 to 18.30. Basically all the guests come to get to know each other and have a chat, enjoy a beer, glass of wine or two and crunch through the nibbles that the hosts put up for free. Quite a cool thing and a great way to get to know the other people staying here and listen to their stories. I spoke to Julie (from Bunbury), young Florence (from France) and Ray (from Mandurah) most of the time as they were sitting next to me. We had a great time and stayed almost until 19:30, so the hosts dinner was pushed back a bit.

A king brown that the station people killed that day as it was in areas it wasn't supposed to be

Distance traveled today: 332km

5/8/2015

Karijini National Park

Drove the 10km unsealed, mainly sandy road to massive red rock – a local must see. It is like a small version of Uluru, even having some Aboriginal rock etchings, which I unfortunately couldn't find. The drive was a bit harsh on the van, while there was almost no corrugation, the sand was very deep and I had to keep the revs right up there to avoid getting stuck. Luckily nobody came past me, otherwise I'm quite certain I would have been stuck big time. The 10km back – same road – were no better.

Red Rock

Collection of license plates at Indee Station

Drove down the Great Northern, again heaps of heavy road trains. Started to overtake several, but at one stage just decided to stay behind one for at least 50km, no point to push on just to wait behind the next one a few minutes ahead. The drive was very scenic, especially after the brief fuel stop at Auskie Roadhouse.

Karijini is the largest National Park in Western Australia and renown for its gorges, waterfalls, water holes, old geological structures and huge variety of plants and animal species.

I'm camping at Dales Gorge the next two days. Visited all the attractions close to the car park area, Fortescue Falls, Fern Pool, Circular Pool and the Three Ways Lookout today. Insanely beautiful Class 4 hikes, steep at times, and further than usual because the direct access to Fortescue Falls is closed for major maintenance, so you need to hike up the whole gorge. I didn't mind.

Rock, almost like dark and light nougat

Very good performance on the hikes, despite intermittent fasting the whole day. Rewarded myself with a grass fed steak, broccoli in butter and a cucumber & avocado salad with heaps of Kernoel in the late afternoon.

It is cooling down quite a lot, and despite being in the high 20s during the day. The campsite is very basic, a 'long drop toilet' and a gas BBQ. But I read that the visitor center, 10km down the road, has hot showers and running water. We'll find out. No phone coverage what so ever.

Distance traveled: 313km

6/8/2015

It cooled down a lot over night, definitely needed the second blanket and merino wool long sleeves and prepared the sleeping bag as well should it get any colder. When I went to the toilet during the night, I could see the best night sky that I have seen in a long time: the total absence of light pollution here, making a lot of the stars visible that you usually cannot see.

As it was really cold in the morning, I had shakshuka with super hot cayenne pepper for breakfast to warm me up from the inside. Worked extremely well and made a great start to the day.

As the direct road to the other gorges was 4WD only and was very rough, I had to take the longer route, using Karijini Drive to get to Weano and Hancock gorges. Both were extremely beautiful hikes and amazing places to spend some time. The extremely old rock formations, that buckled, broke and got eroded over the billions of years provide amazing terrain to climb on. Both gorges had at least one spot where you got wet up to the knees or a bit further, walking through a stream or a water hole. Had to take off my sturdy Meindl hiking boots and brave these spots bare-feet. Both had some slippery and very narrow ledges where I had to climb along. Great fun. The one and a half years martial arts training really paid off today – both in being able to walk bare-feet on rocks and pebbles and having a much improved sense of balance to climb along.

On the way to Joffre and Knox Gorges, I stopped at the Eco Retreat to grab a quick take away coffee ($6) and get some MCT oil into my system as there were still two hard, Class 5 hikes to be done in the afternoon. Insanely beautiful places and again quite a bit of climbing and being cautious not to slip and fall. The heavy backpack with the camera, two lenses, the tripod, Bob Coopers survival kit and water didn't make it any easier.

Quite a nice climb down along waterfall

The spiderwalk

Mount Bruce from a distance

All up I hiked 8 hours 45 minutes worth of trails, I probably did it in under 6 hours, despite taking out the tripod several times to capture the stunning landscape. The light in these gorges is very low, our eyes are a lot better adjusting to the low light compared to a camera. The difficult part is to capture a realistic image when you got both, sunlight and dark shadows, again, the dynamic range of our eyes is far superior to the camera equipment.

As previously said, Karijini is huge, I drove more than 200km today just to get to the gorges and back to the camp site. The park is very green, they had some rain not too long ago. The diversity of wildflowers and wildlife is fantastic. Not only were there heaps of butterflies, dragonflies and lizards in the gorges, several huge wedge tailed eagles were soaring over the park, on the lookout for food.

At the campsite, just when the sun was setting, I had the amazing free range lamb fillets, with a tasty coconut oil/butter sauce and a salad. Washed it all down with two glasses of red. I'm quite certain that I'll feel my leg muscles hurting tomorrow, I was quite brutal with them on the up and down sections. Karijini is a fantastic place to experience the Pilbara and comes highly recommended to everybody reading this who is into hiking and nature. Well, just look at the photos and I probably don't have to loose any more words about it. I've driven past the Karijini National Park turn off at least 60 times last year – when going to Nammuldi site for work and driving back to the airport, yet never had the chance to visit this amazing gem.

Tomorrow I plan to hike Mount Bruce, the second highest mountain of Western Australia, followed by a visit of Hamersley Gorge, a quick stop at Tom Price to refuel and restock and then make my way towards the coast.

Distance traveled: 212km

7/8/2015

Another quite cold night, I was happily wearing the long sleeved merino shirt that I bought in Melbourne. Got up bright and early to drive the 70km to Mount Bruce and get going. The class 5 hike is marked as a 6 hour return trip, but I had a maximum of 3-4 hours to complete it, in order to get everything else done today that was on the cards. Hence I had to push my tired legs a bit harder. It is a lovely hike with magnificent views of the surrounding landscape, and the Marandoo mine where my company installed a stacker a few years ago.

There was a lightning strike and subsequent bush fire on Mount Bruce late last year, so there are many burnt remains of trees standing around, but nature in form of grasses, flowers and shrubs has taken over already. Beautiful from start of the hike all the way over the countless little hills to the top of Mount Bruce (Punurrunha) (1234m). As I started my ascent around 8am, no other hikers were there yet. There are a few tricky points where you need to climb some rocks and walk along quite high drop offs, but nothing that posed any challenge.

Enjoyed a little breakfast at the summit, three hard boiled eggs with Himalayan rock salt, a fist full of almonds and a pear. Food tastes so amazing when you're hungry. ;-)

While descending, I saw two couples that were on the way to the top, all tourists like me judging by their accent.

Mount Bruce, I started on the far right and hiked over all these little hills up to the summit

Halfway up looking over the foothills

Marandoo Mine

Marandoo processing plant

In order to get to Hamersley Gorge, I had to drive 52km on unsealed roads. Partially heavily corrugated, partially quite okay. Unfortunately I had to find out that I left the roof vent a tiny fraction open – so I picked up a lot of red dust on the inside of the van as well. Hamersley Gorge is beautiful too, and only a very short hike down into the gorge. I bathed my tired legs in the cool water of the gorge and watched the little fishes swimming around in the water hole.

Another 45km of dirt road followed by some sealed roads to get into Tom Price to restock and refuel. I refueled at the Shell service station that I've visited probably 30 times last year, if not more. Still the same staff there!

Cheela Plains station was my selected stop for the night. Unfortunately another probably 50km dirt road as I took the shorter way – it surprises me that there are still that many dirt roads out here, despite the many road trains going to mines sites to deliver stuff. Drove past another two or three mine sites. It is quite horrible actually when road trains pass by, the amounts of dust they kick up is insane. Had to slow down and even come to a halt several times – I don't like driving when I can't see more than 2 meters ahead!

The station where I'm staying is wonderful – a great, family run business that only started to open up for campers and caravaners this year. Very professional setup, I suspect they have prospecting/exploration people staying here as well – they have some rooms too that look like the dongas I've experienced in mine site camps and the amenities are all in containers as well. They even got a satellite service for Telstra mobile phone and a free wifi connection, not bad for being situated in the middle of pristine Pilbara farmland, hundreds of kilometers outside the next village or town. Quite funny, I saw a road sign more than 30km before the farm, indicating that this is the eastern border of the lands belonging to the farm. Over here they seem to measure land in square kilometers, not square meters ;-) - I'm definitely still in Australia!

After dinner, I cleaned the van inside and in the back, greased all the hinges on the doors as they were squeaking like hell and used the free washing machine to get my dusty, redish, dirty clothes from the days in Karijini cleaned up. They are lighting up a campfire tonight, so I'll join the other people there and enjoy a glass of wine to celebrate this amazing trip.

Flying grasshopper (taken with the iPhone!)

Distance traveled: 309km