Karijini and Ningaloo Reef Adventures
by Jackie Q & Jo V.
Karijini National Park and Cape Range National Park (Ningaloo Reef), Western Australia – May, 2022
Team Karijini.
We acknowledge the Banyjima, Kurrama and Yinhawangka people, the traditional custodians of Karijini National Park, and the Yinikutira people, the traditional custodians of Cape Range National Park, the lands on which we hiked, and we pay our respects to the Elders both past, present and emerging.
Friday, 13 May
After a big travel day from Sydney via Perth, we landed at Paraburdoo in the WA north-west Pilbara region.
The guides Scott and Chantelle let us know that because of a severe weather warning (rains that could lead to flash flooding) in the national park, we would not drive straight to Karijini. Instead, they took us by our bus to the town of Tom Price, on the edge of the Hammersley Ranges, where we stayed in Tom Price Hotel Motel, primarily used by the FIFO workers for the iron ore mine.
Ready to go! Dinner at Tom Price.
We enjoyed a tasty dinner at the hotel-motel, which was certainly hearty with some of us ordering lamb cutlets, to receive six cutlets per serve!
Saturday, 14 May
With the national park still open, we left Tom Price at 7:30am to head to the eco-retreat camp site, stopping at a few points of interest along the way: the “big truck” permanently on display in town to give visitors a sense of the size of mining machinery. It was impressive and we were told it was not even one of the big ones; the “RIP memorial park” where local mining deaths are commemorated by inscriptions painted on rocks, or in some cases, even metal plaques; and finally a visit to the Karijini Visitor Centre. This was an informative centre, telling us a little of both the indigenous and non-indigenous history of the area.
Hammersley Ranges
From the visitor centre we drove to our first set of gorges. Starting the Dales Gorge Walk, we were struck by the deep bright red of the rock cliffs, and their sharply angular layers. Circular Pool was permanently closed because of a landslide that had exposed too much naturally occurring blue asbestos (which appears as a blue stringy layer in the rock).
We instead continued on to Fortescue Falls, for morning tea, and then to Fern Pool, a popular swimming spot, where you could sit behind the falls. The water was a nice cool temperature but, a repeated cry for the trip, it was too cold for our Perth guides. We walked to the lookout to get a view down the gorge, and learned about the white cypress trees, which are one of the few native trees that do not regenerate after fire, and so you only find them high up the gorge cliffs.
Fern Pool
Knox Gorge was next. Our guides pointed out the white and black ghost gums called “snappy gums”. These trees triage a sick branch and cut off the water supply to that branch which turns it black before it falls off.
We walked down the scree trail of Knox Gorge, and stopped at a pretty bend to contemplate a water hole and admire a family of ducks. Our walk into the gorge included a hairy side traverse to get to the pools at the end for a swim in the late afternoon light.
On the drive to Karijini Eco Retreat, we saw a euro kangaroo and a dingo and had to move off to the side of the road to let pass a truck that was two lanes wide. Arriving at the Retreat that is owned by the local indigenous council, we passed various cabins of diminishing size and glamour to finally arrive at our humble campsite. In particular, the gazebo in the centre of the camp had been broken and twisted by the wind. We moved it out of the way and Scott parked the van over a big muddy puddle and we set up camp which was actually very nice and comfortable. We were also amused to share our campsite with a sizeable termite mound, and we were regularly visited by a pair of tubby spinifex pigeons and some tiny finch.
Our routine for the trip was after a day’s walking or swimming, the guides would serve us nibbles before dinner, we’d get our briefing for the next day over dinner, and then we would wash up and head off to bed. All the meals prepared by our guides and were very tasty. During that night, we heard the mournful howl of a dingo.
Sunday, 15 May
Our morning routine was to make our lunches, eat breakfast and head off at 7:30am. This morning we drove to Weano Gorge. After looking at the gorge from the lookout, we walked to Handrail Pool, with a bit of wading through the gorge to get there. However, our guides had asked us not to swim there as there had been too many accidents getting down the rock surface to the pool. Instead, we took the trail to Hancock Gorge. There were two passages that we had to swim through, and one included some “spider climbing” walking our feet on either side of the base of the rock face. At the end, there was a chain across preventing the descent to the last rock pool, named “Regan’s Pool” after a rescue worker who had died there during a rescue that was hit by a flash flood. Leaving that narrow part of the gorge we rested in a natural amphitheatre to warm up in the sun before wading and walking back.
From a lookout above the gorges we could see where Hancock, Knox and Weano Gorges meet the central Red Gorge. Oxer Lookout is named after Dr Oxer who was the doctor in Wittenoom and involved in the early detection of lung diseases caused by the ingestion of asbestos fibres.
We concluded the day with a short walk to nearby Joffre Falls. Scott had made this seem just like a little extra walk, but the gorge was spectacular. We descended four ladders to reach the first pool and then swam and scrambled around the rock face to get to the second pool. This was within a magnificent chamber with waterfalls at the end. Alison was last to scramble around the rock face and nearly stepped on a brown snake so hastily leapt off into the water.
Monday, 16 May
All of our walks so far were “class 5” trails, with “class 6” requiring technical equipment. This was usually because of some difficult element, such as the traverse in Knox Gorge. Today’s class 5 walk was the hike up to the summit of Punurrunha/Mount Bruce. We left at 6:30am so we would be walking in the cooler morning hours.
Along the way we saw a willywag tail, a welcome sparrow and a currawong, as well as lots of little brown lizards. The rocky trail included a “chimney climb” scramble up, and a short chain traverse.
We had lunch on the summit gazing at both the Hammersley Range, and the Marandoo iron ore mine site. On the ascent we had already admired the 2.5km long trains going in and out of the site. This site was specifically excised from the national park for Rio Tinto. The Hammersley Range is 300km long stretching across the national park.
On the drive back to camp our guides told us that another severe weather warning, which included the possibility of flash flooding, meant that we would pack up camp that afternoon. This included some of our group busting up the gazebo so it wouldn’t blow around and cause any injury or damage.
Tuesday, 17 May
After a night in Tom Price we had a couple of hours in town where we shopped, had coffees, and Pam, Rachael and I walked up a small hill behind town which had the town flag pole. We also saw some Australian Ring Neck Parrot (large, green, with a black head and yellow band around the neck).
A quick morning tea then on the bus for the 2-hour drive to Paraburdoo and then Cheelah Plains Station. This was less a homestead, more a pleasant camp site. And after setting up we walked the 4km return walk to the cave, encountering mud, flies and excellent welcome swallow nests on the ceiling of the cave. A few of us walked on top of the cave but only at the back of the mound, concerned that the cave might collapse. We noted that the thin layering of the tilted rock made it look like drift wood.
On the way back to camp we diverted to climb up the flag pole hill. At camp, oddly another camper was practising his saxophone scales. But that didn’t put us off our nibbles, and a couple of sharp games of “Left, Right Centre” – it’s too complex to explain – and celebratory prosecco (or “prosciutto” as Alison called it and which term we adopted). We dashed up the hill to try and catch the sunset and views to the old homestead in the distance.
Rain after dinner didn’t stop us enjoying two beautiful fire pits made from old mining cone crushers inverted. We enjoyed spectacular steaks for dinner and jumbo toasted marshmallows. At about 4am a group of dingos were howling to remind us we were far from town.
Wednesday, 18 May
Some of the group woke up early to see the sunrise from the top of flagpole hill. Then we packed up for a big driving day to Exmouth via Paraburdoo and a truck stop at Nanutarra Roadhouse
A feature of the drives on this day and in Karijini was listening on the bus to ‘Wild WA’ podcasts telling us some of the relevant history of the area. We heard about the Pilbara Strike by indigenous station workers in the mid-1900s, Edith Cowan and whale hunting. Also, to our great enjoyment, Scott played a songlist that his dad created, called “Awesome” which had many a hit from our vintage including John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice” which we all belted out.
Just before our arrival at Exmouth we stopped at Pot Shot Memorial. This gave us a good view of a spot on the coast from which this military operation ‘Operation Jaywick’ was launched, and also of the thirteen communication masts in their star formation currently operated by the military.
When we met up again we drove to the west side of the Exmouth Peninsula to Yardie Homestead campsite. We rushed to put on our swimmers and drove to a nearby beach for a short swim and to watch the sunset over the Indian Ocean.
Back at camp, after setting up, we had a tasty dinner of snapper, and fennel and orange salad.
Thursday, 19 May
The weather was perfect and we had a relaxed pick up by “3 Islands” marine tour group to take us to Tantabiddi boat ramp across across to our mother ship, Seafari.
We had a couple of false starts trying to meet a whale shark that kept diving down when we caught up with it. So once we were beyond the inner reef, the boat took us to a spot to swim with manta rays. We were told repeatedly not to chase the manta rays, as they swim in swooping arcs and returned several times. We loved their graceful “flying” motion. We also tried to follow instructions and swim with as little flapping about as possible to keep the marine life calm, and to ensure bubbles and movement didn’t stop everyone being able to see. We took turns to be in and out of the water swimming with the marine creatures. Most impressive in our group was Asunta, who could not swim, but wore a life jacket and held onto a float that the boat guides pulled along.
We had an energising morning tea on the boat of pizza and fruit, and the boat took us to the outer reef where we swam with an 8-metre juvenile male. Roughly 85% of the whale sharks along this reef are juvenile males, and we don’t know why.
We had perfect conditions to see our shark, with bright skies and the shark staying in water roughly no more than 4 metres deep. We spent the maximum of 1 hour permitted swimming with him. We had three 5-10 minutes sessions swimming with the shark which were actually quite tiring. We were allowed to swim along with the whale shark, but behind its pectoral fins, as they have poor eye sight and this would disturb them the least. We also had to stay at least 3 metres from their body and 4 metres from their tail. One of the boat guides, Gabby, stayed in the water the whole time taking photographs.
The final swim was closer to the inner reef and another swim with the magnificent manta rays. Then the last part of our boat trip was accompanied by fruit, cheese, cake and beer and wine.
Back at camp around 3:45pm there was time to relax, and to do some clothes washing. Then a few of us decided to walk to the beach to see the sunset over the water and one last swim for the day. Scott said a previous guest told him it was about a 20 minute walk to the beach. So Jackie, Pam, Jo V, Alison, Liz, Rachael and Jo B set off. A whole 1 hour and 5 minutes later of walking along the highway we finally found an access road that cut across the plains to the beach. We didn’t want to walk across in our thongs and sandals as we had already seen a dead snake along the road. We managed a 5-minute swim before the sunset, and none of us were looking forward to the walk back. Luckily one of the two 4WDs that were on the beach took two of us back to camp where we then got Scott to drive and pick up the rest.
We all were back in enough time to enjoy a very tasty dinner of Moroccan chickpeas, and eggplant “steaks” with couscous and brown rice. The next morning we saw the path that would have led us straight to the beach in the expected 20 minutes, and that we walked straight past.
Friday, 20 May
We departed for Mandu Mandu gorge. “Mandu” is an indigenous word for limestone. We had a couple of sightings of black-footed rock wallabies (which were good at hiding on the cliff walls in plain sight), and we saw a fossilised megalodon (mega shark) tooth embedded in the rock. We also tried rock fig fruit and the nectar from bloodwood tree blossom.
We then drove to Yardie Creek Gorge, which is the only freshwater gorge in the park. We walked along the rim of the gorge at first, watching a group of kayakers and paddlers making their way back down the gorge. We saw a colony of flying foxes, and then Scott pointed out “osprey stacks” which are their nests of stacked sticks in hollows in the cliffs.
Then best of all an adult osprey swooped from her tree and two or three times followed an arc along the gorge to a certain bush to grab something to bring back to her squawking chicks. We wondered if it was berries.
Our afternoon began at the “Oyster Stacks” snorkelling site, where you can only swim at high tide. You either hop into the water off the rock platform or from a small sandy beach, and the snorkelling was excellent. We swam with schools of garfish, yellow flute fish and big bright parrotfish.
Our second snorkel for the day was at Turquoise Bay, well known for its strong current out between a gap in the inner reef to the Indian Ocean. Again we swam with lots of marine life, including triggerfish, a big brown potato cod and Jackie swam with a green turtle that was merrily munching on the coral.
Sunset in camp, dinner and a small group of us walked out on the camp road away from the lights of the campsite to look at the stars.
Saturday, 21 May
Today was our “tourist” day.
Charles Knife Canyon walk was closed because of heavy rains earlier in the season. We managed to view the east side of the Cape Range and the spectacular jagged canyon. We walked along the top of the canyons to see one gorge burnt out by a fire in February. It was quite eerie.
Next we went to the site of the wreck of the SS Mildura (one person and 500 cows died), and to the Vlamingh Lighthouse which was built as a consequence of that shipwreck.
Finishing with a visit to a turtle sanctuary, we learned that green turtles get their name because they are herbivores. Hawkbills are omnivores and the rarer Loggerheads are carnivores. We could see indentations in the sand where the turtles had come to lay their eggs.
Back to camp briefly then off to Lakeside Beach, another marine sanctuary great for snorkelling. Jo V spotted a green turtle and showed nearby Jackie. We also swam with giant stingrays, and reef sharks.
The day ended with a celebratory dinner, drinks and stories of our favourite moments. And then another short walk out to see the stars and a short meditation lead by Alison.
Sunday, 22 May
Last day meant morning pack up then we a few hours wandering around town, browsing the tiny markets and lunch in the park. And at the designated time we all met up at the Visitor Centre where the shuttle bus picked us up to take us to Learmonth Airport (owned by the RAAF) for the flight back to Perth.
