The Savanah campground at the Karajini eco resort was even more bare than at Dales campground, but did feature showers. No matter, we headed off in the morning into another gorge - this time Hancock Gorge.
Hancock Gorge
Once we had clambered down the rough track and ladded down to the bottom. Maggie stopped beside a nice pool while the kids and I continued deeper as the gorge walls got closer.
We traversed through the "spider walk" to Kermits pool and then on past the warning signs about needing a nationally recognised qualification in rockclimbing to the top of a small waterfall. The only way down was to jump. A couple of German guys were already swimming in the pool and had worked out a climbing route to get back up, but it looked hard to me. Fabian was keen to continue, so I waited with Bro and Millie while Fabe jumped down to the pool below and climbed up again to check out the route before heading off donwn the gorge while I waited behind with Millie and Bro. After a while, Millie and Bro went back to Kermit's pool leaving me to continue my vigil alone. I was temped to follow Fabe, but I had badly bruised one toe and didn't fancy climbing the rocks with it. Finally Fabian returned with tales of the wonderful final section of the gorge. Unfortunately, because we had to swim and wade, we have no photos.
Weano Gorge
One more gorge for the road. Weano and Hancock Gorges are accessed from the same carpark, so we got some lunch ingredients back at the car and dropped down the other side into Weano Gorge.
Handrail pool is the end of the easy walk, but Fabe and I swam across and continued down past more warning signs. It turned out to be easy going all the way to the falls into the junction pool where 4 gorges meet. Because I had told Fabian of someone who had climbed the falls, he decided to explore climbing down them. It was pretty exposed and I felt a bit negligent that I didn;t stop him but after a while, he reappeared all in one piece, having stopped before a more dangerous section. After we returned to our lunch spot at hand-rail pool I took Millie and Bro back down to see the junction pool and Jade pool.
There was still plenty of time left to hang around at Handrail pool avoiding returning to the campsite until the worst of the heat and flies had departed.
Jarndumunnah
Driving out of Karijini, we eschewed Hamersley Gorge even though it is supposed to be quite beautiful - you get ho hum about them after a while - and headed to Tom Price for Supplies. At the bottle shop, I got a tip to drive up Jarndrumunnah - ignorantly called Mount Nameless by Europeans, for a view of the Tom Price iron ore mine. We left our camper trailer at the bottom as directed by a sign. It was a very rough steep track up to the highest peak around but the view made it worthwhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment