Our next stop after leaving Exmouth was the Karijini National Park. We broke the journey wih an overnight stop in a bush camp near the Beasley River. It was a nice location but it looked as if it had been flooded not long ago and the place we chose to pitch the tents consisted of dried up mud. The navigator and the two creek walkers are posing with their fly nets. There were a few around and the fly screen on the awning attached to the car proved its worth at breakfast.
We were woken in the morning by the dawn courus which was led by the butcher birds in the gum tree just behind the tents. Josie thought there were monkeys in the tree as they were so loud. There wasn't a lot of water left in the river but just enough to make a nice photo.
The camping area is an official 24 hour rest area with a long drop dunny. It was useful to know that we could report any problems by popping along to the local phone box just 95km away!
The next day we drove on to the mining town of Tom Price to fuel up and pick up provisions before driving out to the National Park. Whilst in town we also booked ourselves on a tour of the local iron ore mine.
Karijini is a very picturesque area with hills and deep gorges, most of which have pools suitable for swimming. Our first walk was into the gorge nearest the camp site - Dales Gorge. The climb down into the gorge was a little difficult and the first part of the walk to circular pool was hard going. Here are a few pictures from Dales Gorge.
Circular Pool
At the far end of the gorge is a place called Fern Pool with where we all went for a swim in the crystal clear water.
The reason why it was called Fern Pool could be seen around the edges.
On the track back to the camp site our Snake Bait (We decided that one of the creek walkers should walk ahead of us to prevent us from getting bitten by a snake!) spotted this creature. It wasn't a snake although it didn't have legs and moved like a snake it was a Burtons Legless Lizard. We have seen more snakes on this trip than all our previous trips to Australia.
The next day we drove back into Tom Price for the tour around the Rio Tinto iron ore mine. Its a massive hole in the ground with lots of big stuff being driven around by women. A dangerous place! Everything is brown except for the sky.
We spent another day at Weno Gorge where we walked one of the easier tracks but some of the walks were a bit extreme.