Karajini - Hancock Gorge and Weano Gorge

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.

From Karijini Hancock and Weano Gorges

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.

From Karijini Hancock and Weano Gorges

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.

From Karijini Hancock and Weano Gorges

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.

From Jarndunmunnah

Karijini

25 Oct Karajini National Park
Dales Gorge
Apparently it hasn't rained much at Karajini for two years and it shows. Even where there hasn't been a recent fire, the vegetation is sparse and brown. Most of the camping areas are being rested and the remaining ones have little shade even at 4pm when we arrived. Our big hope however was for beautiful cool spots in the gorges cut deep below the hot dry plains.
We weren't disappointed. This morning we packed our school work, the laptop and plenty of food and headed down into Dales Gorge. We spent the morning beside Circular Pool at one end of the Gorge, after a spectactular clifftop walk.

From Karijini - Dale's Gorge

Here the water comes seeping out of slatey layers at the bottom of the gorge wall and drops into the cool pool below. As the hours pass other visitors come and go. Mid afternoon we packed up our work and walked down the gorge to the junction, then up to Fortesque Falls for another quick dip and finally to Fern Pool to round off a beautiful day in a beautiful gorge.
We returned to camp in time to catch the last rays of the sun and the last few flies before both disappeared altogether.

Kalamina Gorge
The next day we packed up and drove first to the visitor's centre which was closed, then on to Kalamina Gorge.

From Karijini - Kalamina Gorge, Knox Gorge

This is a small gorge with a little waterfall and a beautiful natural arch above a relatively shallow swimming hole. Then we retraced our tracks to the award winning visitors centre for some learning before continuing further to Knox Gorge.

Knox Gorge

From Karijini - Kalamina Gorge, Knox Gorge

Maggie had climbed enough steep goat tracks for one day and stopped halfway down for some sketching. John and the kids continued to the gorge for a swim in the large pool, then descended to narrowing gorge to a point above a natural waterslide where tour groups slide off to the pool below and continue out via the bottom of the gorge and up via a different route. We didn't know this and couldn't have got back up, so we enjoyed being in the deep gorge before returning to find Maggie.

En Route to Karijini National Park

Barn Hill Station

From Cape Leveque we headed into Broome for supplies then on down the coast, making it to Barn Hill Station just before dark. The headland campsite was nearly empty and was being managed by a grumpy character, but we scored a shady site – vital in this hot part of the year. I needed to spend a day doing work – invoicing, accounts, BAS and tax return. The beach was big and mostly deserted.

From Barn Hill Station, 80 Mile Beach and Paroo Station

The waves were barely big enough to body surf on, and got messed up as soon as the strong south westerly wind started, which was pretty early each morning. A few whales were spotted swimming past during the day enlivening the sleepy camp scene.

Pardoo Station
We had been told that Cape Keraudren, while still beautiful had been stripped bare of trees by a Cyclone last December. Stopping at 80 mile beach, we saw that the caravan park there had suffered the same fate. So we skipped Keraudren and headed to Pardoo Station where we managed to nestle the camper trailer in beneath some Casurina trees. Lying around were a few whale vertebrae which campers had used as chairs. Littered around the station were various drilling rigs and a few drilling crews were still living there. I drove the boys down to the tidal creek for a fish but the tide was out and we never got past trying to catch some mullet for live bait. Fabian had lined up a school with the cast net, and was executing a running cast when he trod on a bed of small but sharp barnacles. All that walking around bare foot paid off as his feet nearly survived, but the arch of his foot got a little shredded. So much for fishing!

Port Hedland
We swung by Port Hedland for supplies. It is essentially an iron-ore shipping port and the trains, ships and loading facilities dominate the scene.

From Barn Hill Station, 80 Mile Beach and Paroo Station

Well that and the massive hills of salt at the salt making plant. We tried to identify the seabirds on the river while the iron-ore poured into two bulk carriers on the other side. There was some excitement, as we were passed by some dolphins.
Then off down the road towards Karajini National park, now passing lots of four-trailer road trains hauling iron ore to the port.

New birds- Pied oyster catcher, Least frigate bird

Cape Leveque

Cape Leveque

The road to Cape Leveque is sandy but rough for the first 100km then sealed and good for the rest.
At Kooljaman Retreat reception, we were allocated the nearest beach shack to the main buildings. I was a bit disappointed with this as it looked the least secluded on paper. We drove over the headland and down to the shacks. It looked pretty ordinary at first sight.

From Cape Leveque

A wooden pole structure with a grass thatched flat 'roof' and walls though most of the wall thatch was missing. In the deep sand and tight space, I took ages getting the camper trailer maneuvered into a good spot. It was too hot to set up so we headed for the beach. Once we got set up however, the beauty of the spot became apparent.

From Cape Leveque

The shack is on top of a low rock cliff beside the beach. Out from the headland you can snorkel over the rocks and coral reef looking at the beautiful fish. No fishing is allowed from the beach where we camped, but we could walk around the rocks to the western beach. The tides go in and out out a long way so the fishing spots changed rapidly. We landed and threw back a lot of beautiful but undersize reef fish – blue bone, baldchin gropers, rock cod. We set out striped sea perch as live bait and kept getting busted off on heavier and heavier line by what we thought were mackeral, until John finally landed a 90cm black tipped reef shark. We gave up on live bait fishing soon after that. There was NextG coverage at Kooljaman but just not in the Beach shack. Not until I raised the antenna 5 meters in the air on a tent pole. (visible in the top photo) I was able to catch up on some work and the shack was cool enough for the kids to do school work in the middle of the day.

After extending our stay to 4 nights, we left Kooljaman feeling more holidayed than anywhere else. We drove out to the aboriginal community of Long Arm Point where there is a Trocus Shell hatchery.

From Cape Leveque

This is the story we were told of the hatchery:- The aboriginal community at Long Arm Point apparently move there recently from missions on nearby islands. They collect trocus shells off the reef and sell them, mostly going to italy to make buttons but also to china to be crushed as an ingredient of metallic car paint. In many areas of the world there are no Trocus shells left, and with an export volume of 15 tonnes per year, this community would have extincted the trocus on the surrounding reefs. However, a white man, Barry, worked out how to breed trocus shells and set up the hatchery. When the shells are a certain size, they are placed out on the reef to grow large, thereby sustaining the industry. For this reason, the community has poured money into the hatchery. The hatchery is also breeding clown fish and sea anemones which could be sold to the aquarium industry but these activities are reportedly viewed with suspicion by the community. It also has a few turtles rescued form the reef and other fish for interest and possible commercial breeding. We enjoyed the very informative tour and got to feed the barramundi.

New birds- Sooty oyster catcher, Sanderling

Broome

13 Oct Broome

Cable Beach caravan park seemed to be the pick of the many large but half empty Broome caravan parks. We paid top dollar but it was worth it as we needed to stay put for a few days and do some work. We got a very shady site under a beautiful big tree, and close to the swimming pool and showers.

I had booked-in the car to have the wheel bearings repacked, on the advice of the mechanic who serviced it in Darwin. That took up half a day as did tracking down the right bolt and sleeve to replace the ones that fell off the trailer brakes calliper. Next day, Maggie and I caught the bus into town to pick up mail and redraw more money from the home loan, while the kids swam and did some school work. I made another attempt to share my computer's internet connection with Fabian's school laptop, to reduce the demand for my laptop but failed again.

Cable Beach is a beautiful beach, and we walked down there every evening to have a swim as the sun set.

From Broome

Maggie found out there was a market on Saturday in the grounds of the courthouse in town so we all piled in there for the morning. It was very laid back and Maggie sold more work than in Darwin at Mindal Beach. She really enjoyed chatting to other local artists and  Millie and Fabe did well busking.

From Broome

  We had a go at catching fish from the deepwater Jetty but all we got was a little coral trout, despite seeing great big queen fish around the pylons. Maybe if we stayed longer we could have caught one but we had a booking for a beach shack at the Kooljaman Eco retreat, so after one last shop, we headed up the notorious road to Cape Leveque.

Tunnel Creek

Tunnel Creek
12 October
Tunnel creek is further down the rough dirt road towards Fitzroy Crossing than Winjana Gorge. As we mopped up our flooded camp, the park Ranger opined that the RTA might close the road that day. In any case, it seemed likely to rain again that day so we headed off as early as we could after hanging everything out to dry.

Tunnel Creek used to be called Bat Cave but could more accurately be called Cave Creek. It is a limestone cave running through the Devonian reef with the added appeal that you have to wade thigh deep through the creek complete with freshwater crocodiles.

From Tunnel creek

At the far end the cave opens up again to bright sunshine and a nice swimming hole.

From Tunnel creek

We had a look at the aboriginal rock art above the swimming hole before heading back, conscious of the threatening weather.

It started raining on the way back, and the road was a long muddy pool in sections. A fun distraction was a frill neck lizard on the road which Fabian managed to pull out of the tree it skittered up.

From Tunnel creek

From Tunnel creek

We had decided to pack up our camp at Winjana Gorge and head out before we found out that the campground had been closed in our absence. When we reached the Gibb River Road, we found the road we were driving on back from Winjana Gorge had also been closed.

From Tunnel creek

We were lucky to get in. The Gibb River Road seemed like a highway in comparison and it was an easy drive to Derby.

Winjana Gorge

Winjana Gorge
We arrived late in the afternoon after staying a bit long at Manning Gorge. Maggie and Bro at least were feeling all gorged out, but Winjana Gorge had a trump card up it's sleeve - the promise of seeing lots of crocodiles in the wild. We started down the walk though the Gothic-like limestone gorge walls and,sure enough, there they were in broad daylight floating on the surface or sunning themselves on the far bank.

From Winjana Gorge

It took some coaxing to get Maggie in for an afternoon dip further down the gorge, away for m the crocs.

At first we couldn't find the wall of fossils at the far end of the gorge, but after a bit of scouting around, we found them on the opposite side of the dry river bed. Subtle imprints of Devonian Corals which deposited the limestone which now forms the towering gorge walls.

From Winjana Gorge

On the walk back up the river bed there were lots of spots where the Euros had dug a hole in the sand for a drink of water rather than risk their necks drinking in the river.
We got back to camp under a bruised sky. That night, it let loose a nice heavy shower of rain. Nice until I stepped down to check the camp and found the tent floor floating.

From Winjana Gorge

We let Fabe Millie and Bro sleep on until the water started leaking in at the corners. Then Bro and Millie joined John up on the raised queen size bed above the trailer while Maggie and Fabe tried to sleep on the car seats. Neither camp slept well. Next morning, the tent was still standing in the deepest part of a puddle which covered a significant part of the campground.
I dug a drainage channel across the gravel perimeter road which was holding back most of the water, and we started mopping up the mess, before moving to higher ground.