THE  PILBARA

KARIJINI  NATIONAL  PARK

One of the pleasures of this trip has been revisiting places we've been before, and having the time to explore them more thoroughly.  Karijini is one such place.  Our previous visit had ended in one of our "disasters". (We've had a few along the way on previous holidays.)  In 1996 Colin, our eldest son, was working at Tom Price.  We flew over with Marissa, now his wife, to visit him for a week.  He lent us his very first car so that we could take a day-trip to Karijini while he was at work.  Unfortunately for us, an overseas tourist lost control of the old car he was driving, and ploughed into the front of Colin's car.  We managed to drive it 100kms back into Tom Price with the front all mangled, but it was a write-off.  (The moral of the story is:  Don't lend your car to your parents.)  This had happened straight after we'd seen the first gorge we'd come to.  So not only had we wrecked the car, we hadn't seen much of Karijini.  You'll be pleased to know that we saw a great deal more this time, and with no crashes or disasters.  Mind you, some of the roads haven't improved much.
The scenery is superb - and surprising.  Vast areas of grassland open up to reveal deep gorges.  They are rugged, and in some cases quite deep.  We climbed down into a couple - Geoff went further than I did.  And several we viewed from up on top.

We camped at Dale's Gorge, and with no power, we were glad to have the 12 volt system up and running.  Facilities were basic, but surprisingly included gas BBQs.  The days were warm and sunny, but at night the temperature dropped to at least zero.  In fact, we heard that one night it was -4 degrees.  It certainly felt like it - we were cold, even inside the van.  We were really glad we weren't in the tent.