This week, we head back south again to fill in the gaps we missed as we dashed up to Broome to meet our girls. Our focus this week was on exploring Karijini National Park – but we had a few hurdles to get through to get there! See Parrott’s OzLap Week 12 video for the full story!

Monday 28^th – Wednesday 30^th Mishaps on the road to Karijini

After a ‘farewell’ walk along Cable Beach in Broome Monday morning, where we nearly got stranded by the incoming tide, we stopped by the Broome Post Office to mail back items our youngest daughter had left behind and ran into a human roadblock – a stubborn, rude man who held up the queue while he made unreasonable demands on the PO staff. An hour later, we were heading down the road to Port Smith Caravan Park when a big road train flicked a stone up onto our new windscreen and put a big deep chip in the screen just above the steering wheel! Grrr we’d only replaced it in Perth 4 weeks earlier. After bouncing 23km down to Port Smith caravan park we took a 1km walk down the dirt rd hoping to glimpse the water but it was hidden behind a deep grove of mangroves and mudflats, so we hunkered down in our van for dinner and trip planning. We headed off after breakfast Tuesday, deciding to forfeit our 2^nd nights accommodation at Port Smith to get down to Karijini a day earlier and catch our friends at Dale’s campground and put in a big 600km day’s driving. We made it half way down the Karijini access rd and pulled into the Camels Rest free camp for the night at 7pm. The last hour was tough as we passed at least fifty 4-carriage road trains all heading out of the Northstar mines back to Port Hedland and on the narrow road, we got blown a little sideways every time they passed.  Wednesday, we got up and away early, hoping to make it 80km down to Karijini Visitor’s Centre by 9am to grab a cancelled site. We got 30 minutes down the road and ran into a line of trucks and cars pulled over on the side. We thought it might be a wide vehicle coming out from the mines but soon found out there had been a fatal collision between two road trains. Apparently, around 11pm the previous night, the last carriage on the northbound road train came off and hit the southbound road train, killing the southbound driver and throwing his truck across the road. The estimated wait for the police investigation and truck removal was 8-10 hours. With the only other way into the park a 5-hour drive around, we decided to wait in the hope we could make the hour’s trip down the road into the park before dark. We ended up waiting 8.5 hours and as we had no mobile coverage we thoroughly sorted and cleaned the van, read maps, christened our bathroom and chatted to others up and down the line. At 4.30pm they finally let us through, escorted at 30km an hour by a truck, and after nearly hitting a cow and a dingo, decided to forfeit any idea of making it to Karijini to meet up with our friends and followed others in to the Albert Tongolini Lookout for the night where we were rewarded with a beautiful sunset and starry, starry night.

Thursday 1^st July, Dale’s Gorge, Karijini and Rolling up our sleeves in Tom Price

We made it in to Karijini National Park at 8am Thursday and caught up with our friends for coffee before they headed off. We explored Dales Gorge on the east side of the park and walked in to Fortescue Falls and around the gorge floor marvelling at the tessellated ochre and rust rocks. We did a quick visit to the stunning Fern Pool but didn’t swim as we had a 2pm appointment at the Tom Price hospital for our Pfizer Covid vaccines (90 mins drive on the other side of Karijini). After a painless jab from the Super friendly nurses, we checked in to our Tom Price Caravan park and chilled.

Friday 2^nd – Sunday 4^th July Arctic plunges and sky high scrambling around Karijini National Park

What do you do the next two days after your Covid vaccines when the nurse tells you to take it easy? Well, we hiked the rim of Weano Gorge in Karijini National Park then took a class 5 hike down the steep and narrow Hancock Gorge, scrambled down a waterfall, swam through sub-artic pools (they warn of hypothermia) to reach the magnificent Kermit’s Pool! The next day, we scrambled up the vertical cliffs to the top of Mt. Nameless behind our Tom Price Caravan Park. We met a mine worker up the top and found out a few interesting facts about the mining in the area. Mt Tom Price is now a hole in the ground having been thoroughly mined out and there’s only a processing plant in Tom Price now. There’s s a 70km conveyor belt running through the gorges from Brockman Mine to the Tom Price processing plant. There’s also a railway track that has an automated 3km long train that is controlled by a computer located at Perth Airport that transports iron ore around the area. Rio Tinto controls the mines and the town and had closed the gym and the pool – so the locals were running up and down Mt. Nameless for exercise! Suitably shattered, after merely walking up and down the mountain, we decided to eat at the Tom Price Pub Saturday night (think neon lights, flouro vests and plastic tables…). Sunday we headed back in to Karijini as we finally got a spot in Dale’s Campground, and did the full Dale’s Gorge walk we hadn’t managed to complete three days earlier.

Next week we head to the hottest town in Australia, Marble Bar and back to Broome.