Thursday 30 August – What a beautiful day we have had today!  We were up very early and waiting with three other couples and two singles (Italian friends) outside the caravan park office well before 7.30 – the designated pick-up time for the full day tour of Karijini National Park.  And when the bus arrived with Lisa as our driver and tour leader, she told us that we ten were it for the day, so that was a nice small group.

We had about a one hour twenty minute drive to our first port of call where we stopped at a lookout where we had stunning views of Hancock Gorge.  The gorges here are very different as most of them are viewed from ground level, then there is a climb down into them, whereas others we have seen are where ground level is the base of the gorge and you need to climb up to the rim if you want to get a bird’s eye view.  And the colours here are just stunning, with the iron ore in the mix the reds are very dark and the rock formation is varied and usually layer upon layer.

Lisa, while only having lived in Tom Price for five months, was exceptionally good, but boy! did we  get a rough ride through all the corrugations in the road for the major part of the 354 km we travelled today.  Talk about Nature’s massage!!  From Hancock Gorge we drove a few kilometres to Oxer lookout which was the junction point of four gorges – all of which we were going to see. Words don’t do justice to these sights – the bottom of them (if you can see it) seems miles down, and the rocky walls are so rough and rugged. We were able to follow the routes of the other gorges by the gaping crevasses heading off in each direction.

From this vantage point we drove to Weano Gorge which again was just beautiful. A twenty five km drive further on saw us arrive at the Joffre Gorge, even more beautiful than the others if possible.  Here there were people swimming way below us, but we yelled comments to one another as they made their way into the water.  There was a waterfall here too, and a few people in the pool below that, with one bloke in particular climbing the rocky steps up beside the waterfall, then climbing back down again for another swim.

 From Joffre Gorge we went to Knox Gorge – also very beautiful.  Sometime during this time we had morning tea – cuppas, bikkies and lamingtons.  After leaving Knox Gorge we made our way to the Karijini Visitors Centre, an interesting building designed in the shape of a goanna, and made of steel – deliberately rusted to fit into the environment.  Here we enjoyed a packed lunch provided as part of the tour, containing miles more food than you could eat for lunch, so Lisa told us to save what we didn’t eat for afternoon tea or to take home.  We then went into the centre and had a good look around.  It was very well set up and the displays were very informative.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in the vicinity of Dales Gorge, which we had called and paid a quick visit to on our drive to Tom Price a couple of days ago.  First stop was at Circular Pool – where the pool isn’t actually circular, but the rocky cliffs which surround it are pretty much in a circle.  The after a short stop at the Dales Gorge lookout we went for the toughest walk of the day – the walk down the cliffs to Fortescue Falls and then on to Fern Pool.  This walk consisted largely of rock steps, built I think for very tall people as some of the steps were very deep, and it was almost back to the hands and feet method of getting down.  A couple of members of our group had a swim at Fern Pool, a beautiful oasis following a lovely shady walk – if a bit tough, where we hung around for the best part of an hour.  Here we had a talk with a fellow from Warragul and his two kids, who were having a swim in the pool.  

Us at Fern Pool.

The climb back to the top was hot, tough and steep, but we eventually made it to the shade of a tree at the lookout and rested there briefly before making the short walk to the bus.  Just as we were about to start that short walk a fellow came rushing over, shook hands with Grant, gave me a kiss and said something along the lines of: ’Fancy meeting you here!”  For a full minute I was wracking my brain trying to place this person, whose wife had now joined us and was greeting us too.  It was going through my mind that we must have met them at some earlier caravan park when it suddenly dawned on me who they were.  They were fellow Newboroughites Richard and Dianne Zupecki, whose daughter I had married back in March!!  So we had a five minute chat to them before we had to get on the bus and return to Tom Price.

It was almost twenty to six when we arrived back at the caravan park after a really good day.  While I went and had a shower, Grant went down to the town to get some bread and fill up with petrol for tomorrows drive – if we leave tomorrow.

While we were getting tea ready we realised that the fridge seems to be not as cold as it should be, so we have to get that looked at tomorrow if possible.  So our departure day/time/whatever depends on the fridge!