We

Sam - Dales Gorge

awake as dawn breaks and having had at least 10 hours sleep already decide to read in bed for an hour or so before getting up.  We put the billy on and decide to cook a good breakfast as we will not be getting lunch today.  Toast, bacon and bake beans are a perfect camp breky!

We head off to the closest gorge today - Dale Gorge, which is the only gorge in walking distance and is one of the favourites.  We take a couple of litres of water, douse ourselves in sun cream, grab a couple of bits of fruit and our bathers and the camera and set off.

We firstly walk the length of the gorge along the top and take photos looking down into it.  At the left end (west?) of the gorge “circular pool” is the attraction and we can see dozens of people way, way down there already swimming.  We decide to walk to the other

Size comparison!

end and go down into the gorge from the far end.  We start to decend about 3/4 of the way along the length of the gorge.  The decent is not too difficult (category 1 only) as it has designated steps made of cemented in rocks and for the first hundred metres there is a hand rail on the steep side.  As we head down into the gorge we notice that instead of the harsh surroundings that are up on the top and surrounding land it is beginning to appear quite ‘tropical’ and water seeps through the sides of the gorge.

As we climb further down there are still trees but they have now turned into paper barks (trees that like ‘wet feet’), palms and even huge native fig trees with massive root structures.  As we get to the bottom of the gorge the walls are covered in beautiful, delicate ferns - ‘Maiden Hair Ferns’ on the walls and ‘King Ferns’ on the floor.  It is just stunning and is like being in a different world - it could be any tropical forest!  We walk along the pathway

Looking down to Circular Pool from top of Dale Gorge

towards the (eastern?) end of the gorge.  We hear the screeching of some sort of bird (we think) only to find a couple of trees full of large fruit bats with fuzzy red hairy bodies and large wings that are hanging upside down with their wings wrapped around their bodies.

Ferny Pool is the highlight of this end of the gorge.  It is a beautiful clear, deep, natural pool that looks brilliant sapphire blue because the water is so pristine.  There is a group of noisy young guys sitting on the water fall and swimming already and there are around 20 other people sitting eating morning tea and taking photos.  We take photos here for a while waiting for the guys on the waterfall to get out of the frame.  When we’ve taken enough shots to hopefully get a good one to enlarge when we get back, we turn around and head towards the other end of Dale Gorge and to Circular Pool.  This walk takes around an hour -sometimes on pathways, over rocks and sometimes climbing using the horizontal stacked rocks as leavage.

Beautiful Snappy Gum

It is just incredibly beautiful down in Dale’s Gorge and we take dozens of photos of rocks, trees and water features.  When we arrive at Circular Pool it is around 1pm and the people who were swimming here earlier have either gone back up or moved along as it is totally quiet.  We obviously planned this with great timing.  I had brought my bathers with me, hoping to be able to get a swim, but had not worn them.  Cliff stood on look out (just in case) and I quickly strip off and put my bathers on.  We head to the water which we already know will be very cold… however, it is actually near freezing we think…. omg it is damn cold.  Cliff braves the water first and I take a few photos of him as he quickly goes totally numb.  He can only stand 5 or so minutes of the icy water and gets out, his skin red with the cold.  I decide to brave the cold and step onto the slippery rock and slowly lower myself into the still, crystal clear pool.  It is so cold that within 10

Snappy gums grow anywhere!

seconds I am numb, so cold I feel like I am burning.  I decide to swim to the other side of the pool near the water fall (as Cliff did) and Cliff takes photos of me while I swim back and forth trying to keep my arms and legs moving to be able to make it back to the rock to get out.  We both dry off with a towel we brought and recloth.  It takes us a good 1/2 hour of climbing to actually warm up to normal temperature again!

We decide on the closer, steep climb out of the gorge on a rise of steep steps.  We got back to our campsite around 3pm quite exhausted, and exhilerated from our first gorge climb.  We settle in for the evening playing a game of cards and then reading and get an early night for our next day.

We

Dale Gorge - Karijini National Park

arrive at Karijini at 9.30am and head to the Visitor’s centre which is about 8kms inside the park.  They tell us that we need to go directly to the Dale camping ground to find out if they have a camp site available and they mention that there is already a big queue.  This is not good news, and is our worst fear, that coming all this way (1500kms from Perth) that we will be turned away.  It astounded us that we could not book and pay for a site in advance, as you can in most metro or southern camping grounds.  Apparently they need to have a ‘first in best dressed’ type of arrangement to cater for people that have driven across from the Eastern States…. seems crazy to us though as there are no alternative camp grounds to go to!

We arrive at Dale Camping ground at 9.40am and are ecstatic to find that we in fact are only 2nd in line and jag camp site #48 in “Kangaroo Loops”.   We set up our tent, table and chairs,

Beautiful Rocks - Dale Gorge, Karijini.

make up our bed then decide what to do for the remainder of the day.  We contemplate going for a walk or to one of the gorges but instead settle on a ‘total rest’ day and both get out books to read, corn chips and a couple of icy cold beers and settle in the for a lazy day.  This is such a welcome relief after so many days of dusty travel.

For anyone who has not been North in Western Australia and camped in such remote places I imagine landing in a place such as this may be quite a shock.  It is harsh country indeed.  Red dirt is everywhere. Small ‘Snappy Gum’ Eucalypt trees dot the country side and prickly spinifex litters the ground.  There is NO green only greyish, olive greens and the occasional wild flower (it is amazing that flowers exist in such a place where months of 40 degrees plus with no water are common).  The red dirt is something that you cannot imagine and it still amazes me every time I see it.  It is such an amazing dark red, one which stains your skin easily and I spend the next week with bright orange feet!  Amazingly there are lots of birds native to this area.  Insect eating birds with beautiful whistles and the most amazing pigeons called Spinifex Pigeons and we can’t help but spend a lot of time

Spinifex Pigeons

watching these funny birds with weird ‘hair dos’.  They are not scared of us at all and fly in to pick up any seed or crumbs we may have dropped and even walk under our table and chairs while we are sitting on them.

There is no electricity, no water, no shops, no showers and the only facility whatsoever in this huge National park are what we call “drop toilets”.  These by far would be the most horendous discovery for anyone who have not been remote before and are exactly what they sound like - a deep hole in the ground with a toilet on top siting inside a tin box.  There is no water - you simply open the lid (while holding your breath!), go to the toilet (and whatever you do drops down the stinky, deep hole below) and then you close the lid (and hopefully contain the smell!).  These toilets work by simple means of bacteria which then ‘eats’ the contents of the

Ferny Pool, Dales Gorge

hole so that no water is required, and no emptying is required.  And.. although there is quite an awful smell when the toilet lid is open, it is on the ‘earthy’ side rather than like a putrid toilet smell.  In fact these “drop toilets” are cleaner and less smelly than most mens public toilets!  Still it is a weird experience and I never get used to them!

As with most campers, as night draws in we cook our camp dinner, put the billy on for a cup of tea and head to bed shortly after the sun sets in order to be up with the sun the next morning.

We

Spinifex Pigeons at Auski

leave Karratha at 10.40am after shopping for meat, bread, milk and salad and with a good coffee in hand.  The scenery along the drive from Karratha to Port Hedland is very similar.  We arrive in South Hedland at half twelve.  The housing area is old and dilapidated.  Everything is covered in red dust.  We drive to the house that Cliff lived in as a child.  It is almost the same, 25 years later as the houses in red dust areas seem to.  We drive around a bit and then continue on to Port Hedland.

The housing in Port Hedland is newer with more brick homes.  There are also many brand new, cyclone proof housing areas that are mostly made of corrugated iron and each house with a different colorbond highlighted front.  All their gardens are neat and new.

The Port is huge and red and dusty and quite amazing.  BHP buildings are everywhere and huge steel

Karijini Campsite

equipment line the skyline.   There is also a huge salt mine (Rio Tinto says the sign) where they have salt lake beds and piles of dry salt which is being loaded into trucks.  It is still drizzling rain (which I am sure has followed us all the way from Perth determined on dampening our entire holiday).

At 2pm we take the Marble Bar Road South and the sky is dark with rain clouds and the rain starts to pelt down on us again.  We travel for 2 1/2 hours and finally reach Marble Bar.  Unfortunately we find out that tomorrow is the annual 4th July Race Day and the, usually sleepy, Marble Bar is bustling with people in country shirts.  We drive out to a gravel road with a sign marked Jasper.  We pick up a few pieces of Jasper that are interesting looking and head back to the car.  We head back to town and check in to the caravan park which appears to be overflowing with country music drongos awating the horse race meet the next day.  So instead we decide to head out East on the gravel road (towards the direction of Kariniji National Park) and find somewhere off the road to camp.

We find a nice spot about 1km off the gravel road and set up the tent for the night.  We cook our dinner

Karijini Termite Mound

(chicken burritos) on the camp bbq stove, using the salad that we purchased at Karratha.  As the sun starts to go down the local ‘wild’ cattle start mooing to each other and the noise gets louder as the light goes.  We don’t see any of the cattle but can only hear them.  Although we our out here, in the middle of nowhere, we see lights a few kms along the bush track and we are a little nervous as we await the vehicle’s arrival.  5 minutes or so later a 4WD zooms past us not even slowing down.  This unsettles us a little, that someone else now knows we are out here in the middle of no where, with no mobile access and where no-one knows where we are.  But still, we figure, not every one who would happen upon our campsite would be up to no good and we settle in for the evening.  Just 1/2 hour later, now it is totally dark, we make out another two 4 wheel drives off in the distance, both with spot lights, who are obviously ‘roo shooting’.  We look at each other and instantly decide it is time to pack up and move on as the last thing we want is to be caught

Clear skies and the Karijini Moon

in a cross fire by people not knowing we are here.  Although we had decided before this trip to NOT do any driving at night (because it is far too dangerous due to the huge number of animals on the road - owls, kangaroos, emu, goats and cattle) we are packed up in under 10 minutes and are on our way east down the gravel road again.  We have 130kms of pitch black, rough, gravel road to travel to get back to a sealed (tarmac) road.  We decide to head to Auski (a roadhouse that has camping available) which is just 60kms North of Karijini.

It is slow going down this gravel road because it is so rough and so dark and the last thing we need is a tire puncture (which tends to happen if you travel at speed on this ’square’ type of gravel as it gets into your tire treads.  We are both extremely tired but as Cliff has more experience travelling on gravel roads he does all the driving (because he will be more experienced to ‘defensive drive’ to avoid stray animals should we have to).  We finally arrive at Auski at 10.30pm and to our dismay this supposid 24 hour roadhouse is closed up tight.  We park in the carpark (along with 15 truckie rigs) and make ourselves a cup of tea on our

Wild Dingo - dont leave your leather shoes out!

camp stove.  It seems ridiculous to camp in the carpark and sleep in our car - it is quite cold and the car is damn uncomfortable (particularly for Cliff being so tall).  So we quietly sneak in to the camping ground and set up our tent just inside the gates on the first bit of grass we find.  We fall into our camp trailer bed exhausted from our day and all the driving.  Even the horendous noise of the deisel generators 100 metres away doesn’t deter sleep and we have a pretty good nights sleep regardless waking up at 7am the next morning.  We head over the Auski roadhouse the next morning and guiltily tell them we need to pay when we order a bacon and egg roll for breakfast.  We use their showers, pack up camp and are on our way by 8.30am for the hours trip to Kariniji.

Termite Mounds, Coral Bay (CLICK on each photo for larger view)

We left Coral Bay at 8am and headed out on the road north towards Exmouth.  This being the start of the farthest north I have ever been within Australia. Large termite mounds cover the ground, to our left and right, as far as the high could see all along this road.  All of them constructed in exactly the same shape and the same orange/red color.  They must be built in a fairly waterproof way because these have stood exactly like this for years and withstand all the winter rains. It is hard to know what these termites would be eating as there are no trees anywhere along this 100km long road, just low, grey shrubs.

At 2.30pm we arrive at Panawonica.  Panawonica is a mining town.  In fact, the mines seem to own, and operate, everything in town, including the service station where we must abide by their OHS ruling of allowing a safety clothes wearing person to re-fuel our

Panawonica Roos

car for us. The town is tiny, just a mess hall, dongas and workshops, a school and a shop.  We stop at the shop and buy a couple a chocolate bars and some milk to take to Millstream with us as there are no shops, or anything for that matter, after this point until Roeburn!

We head east out of Panawonica on the 100km long gravel road (the side way in) to Millstream.  This is not the most usual path travelled into Millstream we find as travellers usually travel up or down into the park rather than the way we have come.  We have come in this way due to the weather front that we have been out running for the past 4 days!  We had been told that this gravel road was rough but we find it in extremely good condition with no corrigation at all.  In fact… this 100km stretch of road is the most picturesque section of road that I think I have ever seen.

One of many wild horses at Panawonica

Everywhere looks green, well grey/green (which is the green of the Aussie outback) from afar it looks like the earth is covered in lush grass but on closer look in fact it is covered with millions of clumps of spinifex.  This little plant may look harmless but it has an extremely nasty bite as its ‘leaves’ are actually spines.

Amongst the spinifex you can see the red earth.  The red earth from Panawonica and north & east of there is the darkest, most beautiful red earth I have ever seen.  The orange/red earth of Kalgoorlie/Kambalda doesn’t come close to this beauty.  I don’t know what it is about the red earth that I love so much, I just found it amazing and can’t get enough of it!  Amongst the spinifex clumps different types of soft leaf wattles grow.  These are all in flower.  There are small clumps of purple wildflowers and grey leafed red flowering natives.  There are small hills made

Campsite Millstream

completely of rocks that just appear out of nowhere on the left and right intermittantly.  We pass huge tabletop hills that loom out of the ground which have spinifex on the sides and red earth tops. None of these words can impart just how beautiful this area is.

There are huge flocks of corellas and finches flying everywhere.  Several types of butcher birds and willy wagtails have also been in all the areas we have stopped since Perth… they seem to thrive up here just as they do in the metro area.  The only birds which have totally changed are the types of eagles we see.  Up until Coral Bay the eagles were all wedgetails but north of that they are a smaller eagle which is brown (almost pink) in colour with a creamy underside to their wings with black feathers at the wing tips.  These eagles do not feast on road kill (as we saw the wedgetails doing) and seem more timid also, preferring not to land at all when cars or people are close.

Several of the flock of 1000s of Corellas, Millstream

At 4pm we arrive at Millstream and pay the gate fee of $10 for entry into the park.  This is a self service where you fill out your details on a small envelope and place it in a metal box before following (the poor) signage to the “homestead” where apparently we get more directions to where we are able to camp.  On arriving at the homestead we find it all open and unattended.  They invite you to look around in the homestead which has displays and notes about the rotten treatment of the aboriginal people (which seems to be the same story everywhere we go!) and that we should proceed to one of a couple of camping sites that are still open.  We choose the no generator site of Crossing  Pool and take Snappygum drive which has two small river crossings to get to camp site.

Snappygum drive is very winding and is very narrow.  The scenery is much harsher than on the road from

The desert Pea (Sturt)

Panawonica which surprises us.  10 minutes later we pull into a treed area next to a billabong type area of the Fortesque river.  We meet the ‘camp hosts’ who tell us to look around and choose from the two remaining sites available.  There are only about 10 groups here and they are set up very close to each other and we choose a site next to a small tree to put up our tent.  It seems so strange that we have travelled 1500kms into the middle of nowhere to camp in such a tiny space with a dozen couples (including kids) which is hardly what I had been expecting (I had expected someone to point along a long vacant river bank saying set up wherever you like!).  We set up in between to camper trailers which we are told will both be moving on the next morning.  After setting up our tent the neighbour tells us that the correllas in the trees overhead are constant visitors.  Until this moment we are so tired we have not noticed the noise, which now we are made

Canoeing on Fortesque River, Millstream

aware, is quite ear piercing.  Literally thousands of corellas litter the trees above us and on both sides of the river.  Worse than the noise however, is the mess, which there is no avoiding.  A thousand corellas make for a huge mess and in the two nights we are here our tent, cooking stuff, chairs and car (particularly) are covered in corella poo!

At 5.50pm the noise of the corellas reaches it peak and they seem excited about something.  The neighbours tell us that this happens every night and at around 6pm they ‘flock off’ and peace is returned.  At 6.05 this happens…. it is quite spectacular!  The next morning the flock returns to spend their day pooing on the campers before leaving at 6.05pm again on the second night.  Obviously their ‘country time’ is more precise than the humans… you can set your watch by them.

We decide on Wednesday morning to drive to the gorge.  It is still overcast and, like the photos of previous days, not the perfect weather for photography.  Once at the top of the hill where the cliff gorge is we realise

Millstream Gorge

that although we seem to have travelled a long way (and have over winding roads in various directions) actually the cliff is just a little further up the river and opposite our camping ground.  The view from the top is nice, but nothing special.  We find Geocache WANOZ03 “Millstream Cliff” and take photos of the view, a cute little lizard who blends in with the red rocks very well, and the river.  There are greyish native palms everwhere.  Snappy gums are prolific and seem to reach the same height (smallish) and tall paperbark trees line the river.

We decide to take up the offer of the ‘camp hosts’ and borrow the ranger’s canoe to go up the Fortesque river to where we can view the cliffs from a low vantage point.  The sun shines for the first time in days and it is very peaceful and quite beautiful paddling up the river away from the other campers.  There are many types of birds - heron, shags, kingfisher, corella and other small chirping birds.  There are a lot of brilliant blue and also red

Water crossing, Millstream

dragonflies amongst the bullrushes but they prove elusive when we take out the camera.  The red cliffs are certainly more impressive from on the river but both Cliff and I agree that we are not impressed at all with Millstream, in fact we are very disappointed and we wonder if this will be the same for Karijini.

We are dirty and dusty after 2 days on the road and decide to take a swim in the cold waters of the Fortesque River.  We have been told that it is frowned on to use soaps or shampoos anywhere near the rivers in the outback but we decide to overlook this (the ton of corella poos bombarding the water here each day would surely do more damage than a handful of shampoo?) and we quickly wash our hair while taking a swim while hoping no-one notices any frothy bubbles around us!  We are grateful for the swim and feel quite refreshed.  We talk to other campers, all who are from interstate, and they tell us that Karijini is amazing and that Millstream also is a disappointment after the hype of brochures.  This is encouraging news.

Down the goat path at Mt Herbert, Chichester

We get up and have breakfast at 7am on Thursday morning (2nd July) and by 8.30 are on our way out of camp stopping at the first water crossing to scrub our car of corella poo (until other campers leaving push us through) and then at the 2nd water crossing to wash off the mess after losening at at the prior waterering hole.  Other campers moving past obviously think we are simply washing our 4wd (which would be ridiculous in the circumstances, in the middle of the red dirt) what they don’t realise is that bird poo actually eats through your paint top coat in just a couple of days and seeing as there was about 1/2 ton of the stuff on our car we can put up with the looks of the passers by!

We head east through Millstream then North towards Roeburn which is only 200kms or so away.  We decide to head to Mt Herbert and  Python Pool on our way out of Chichester.  The

Mt Herbert Summit Rock Building

drive to Mt Herbert again is more scenic that actually in Millstream and there are dozens of rocky peaks on both sides of the road.  They are all covered in spinifex but by far the most amazing this is the fact that they appear to be made solely from individual red rocks.  All of these rocks are squarish and you would think that each hill had been made by a helicopter dropping out a pile of rocks from a height.  Mt Herbert is a small hill really and we park at the bottom and climb the goats path to the summit and the view is breathtaking.  Cliff builds a small rock tower (as everyone seems to do around here for some reason!) and the trip down the rocky path is more trecherous than the trip up was.

Python Pool is not far away and the winding road up and through the small hills to get there is very nice.  We pull into the small parking area and it seems nothing special but on walking

Python Pool, Millstream

the 100 metres through the head high scrub we come up on the most beautiful water pool with a huge rock face.  The water looks very inviting.  The sun is out just at the right time for some great photos.  We stand there in awe for about 20 minutes taking photos and chatting to another couple that have turned up who had been at our camp site at Millstream.  By far Python Pool has been the highlight of the entire two days at Millstream Chichester National Park (and the canoe!).

At 11.30 we head off on a tarmac road (amazing for out here where everything else is gravel) between red rocked hills and spinifex.  Brahman cattle graze at the edge of the road along the way.  There are two cattle stations on this stretch of road - it would be very strange being a farmer out here where the cattle roam free and graze on

Python Pool, Millstream

whatever it can find growing amongst the spinifex, for surely they could not eat that prickly stuff (that prickles through jeans and even shoes!).

We arrive in Roeburn at 1pm.  What a totally woeful place Roeburn is.  Cliff has been here before and tells me that all/any building had bars or shutters on it last time he was here…. and this is still how it is.  There are 3 indigenous groups living here and their areas are marked by signposts and a mass of tin looking buildings about 250mtrs from the road.  The town would have once been quite beautiful.  The buildings quite European looking and all the same era… but, time has stood still in this place and it is un-inviting, and quite spooky really.  The police station has about 6 patrol cars parked at it and surely is the most used building in town.  Roeburn prison is at the Northern end of town a couple of kilometres away from the end of the other buildings.. probably because it is too much of a pain for the

Brahman Cattle on route to Roeburn

aboriginal locals to walk.  The walls are high on the prison, probably not to keep the prisioners in but to keep non-prisioners out.  I imagine it is like with the Kalgoorlie prison where they have to head count each even to weed out the ‘extras’ that have come in for a free meal and bed for the night!

We have no desire stop anywhere in Roeburn and head north up the point to Cosack.  The signage there is depressing stating how the Enlish arrivals in 1885 (who were shipwrecked off the coast) incarcerated the local natives to use in pearling and prostitution.. however, other signage say that the total population of (non natives) including the pearling men was just 31 people.  It appears the entire area of Roeburn has decided to dwell on the past of over 200 years rather than do anything for now or the future.  We walk for 5 minutes up to the Cosack museum and have a quick look around and read the story of a 19yo English woman who was brought to Cosack in 1885 by her new husband (a very harsh life) before quickly heading back to the car and high tailing it to Karratha.

Lizard, Millstream (click for larger photo)

Karratha is just 40kms away and we decide rather than setting out our camper trailer we will find a motel that has a washing machine and dryer so we can wash our clothes.  The motel “Great Western” is almost fully booked they say (though it is deserted when we arrive) and we check in to a ‘delux’ room which we pay an extra $50 for so we can have the washer/dryer.  By 7pm there is not a space in the carpark which is now full with miner/workers vehicles…. extraordinary considering it would cost them $1750 a week to stay here… but then houses rent here for $2,500 a week!  We decide not to sightsee late this afternoon and have a long awaited shower and propertly washing our hair etc.