We heard from a lot of people that Karijini National Park is one of the best parks you'll find in all of Australia. And it's true - it's gorgeous. But it's also not without risks as we learned on our two-day tour when we had to abandon our four-wheel drive and lug all our baggage and all the water we could carry to the nearest road to find help.

Karijini is a rock-climbers paradise. The gorges and the million years old rock formations, the deep red stones and the streams that cut through them make for a very unique landscape. And we were particularly lucky since it had recently rained (very unusual for this time of the year) so that the semi-desert was actually quite green.

To see all the photos from the tour click here!

Karijini is quite big, too - probably the size of some of the smaller European countries - so that imho it's definetely worth exploring it with a guide. You simply get to go to places you wouldn't find on your own or couldn't go without a 4WD. We decided on a two-day tour with "Daves Gorge Tours" from Tom Price for 134 AUD, half of what you'd normally pay for that tour, or so they told us. Whatever the "realistic" price might be, I'd say it was definitely worth it and Esther, me and the three Scottish girls that were also on the tour were definitely getting our moneys worth - even though we ran into a heap of problems on day two.

The worlds largest train?

First we drove to "Mount Sheila" outside the park, from where we had a coffee, some muffins and a good look at the surrounding area. On the way we passed through some land owned by Hammersley Iron and saw what according to the locals is the worlds largest train. According to the miners it leaves Tom Price about 14 times a day and can be up to three kilometers long. The train we saw had 235 cars filled with iron-ore for Port Hedland. According to Dave the largest can have up to 360 carriages. To me it seemed like this train as going on forever.

Climbing Sheila and testing our limits

Afterwards we went to our first two gorges. For the first half of the day Esther and I felt it was a bit too much of driving and too little of actually being outside and doing things. But then again, some of the gorges are more than 100 km apart, so that might not have been too surprising. At the first gorge Dave got out a rope which we could use to swing around on or to jump into the water. Then we did some light climbing, jumped into waterfalls etc.. Afterwards we went to a second gorge where our impression of the tour quicly changed. Dave went up to ledges or around corners where we didn't think anyone could go. We looked at each other about every 300 meters, thining and sometimes saying: "He can't be serious, can he?". But in the end climbing walls and crawling up waterfalls was much easier and safer then I thought it would be. On my own I'd never have dared to do so, but when I did it, it was easier then I had thought possible. Well, I suppose a lot has to do with having a guide who tells you where to step and where the holds are. After all, people are dying here on quite a regular basis. Which imho makes a rather strong case for having a guide. I was never really worried or scared, but I couldn't tell you whether that's a result of confidence or ignorance.

A stormy night

We set up camp on top of a hill just outside the park. We didn't stay inside since you can't have an open fire inside a national park. It was a really good night but it got quite windy and I and even Dave (as he told me the day after) was a bit worried that my tent might be blown away with me inside! I was woken up by this really insane flapping noise, the walls of the tent having bent to 15 degrees over the ground. But in the end the tent held and I was very happy about the overpriced sleeping bag I had bought in Esperance. Without it I would have been freezing, with it I was able to sleep in no more than my underwear and was even sweating! I even had a tent to myself since the three Scottish girls wanted to share a tent, Esther wanted to sleep on top of the truck and Dave slept outside on the ground. And while it was nice to have a tent for myself I did wonder a bit whether something was wrong with me...

A horrible metallic sound

The only way from our campsite back to the national park was along a pretty serious four-wheel road. So serious in fact that at one point we suddenly heard a very nasty, loud, metallic screeching sound. And a quick look at the car revealed the worst: An axle at the back of the car was broken, so we were stranded withou a four-wheel drive on the middle of a four-wheel track!

Pushing, shoving and winching

At first Dave tried to repair the problem but soon had to discover that it wasn't possible there and then. So the only other solution was to try to cover the distance to the next proper road as good as we could on two wheels. And that meant pushing, showing and using the winch to try to get this 4.5 ton monster up the bloody hills. Alas, it was useless and after a few hours of almost no progress at all, we decided to abandon the car, take all our stuff and all the water we could carry and walk. Before that happened, Esther stumbled and got a rather nasty cut on her hand, at which point I got the chance to examine Daves 1st-Aid-Kit. And to be honest, I wasn't too impressed with what I found. It did the job, but that's when I realized that if something really serious would happen - like getting bitten by the sort of snake we had seen the day before - that person would be pretty fucked. Well, probably dead, really. Especially since Dave was obviously not able to call form help with a satellite-phone from within his car, but told us that we'd have to make it to an emergency-phone to call for help. Fortunately however none of this got anyone to freak out. Everybody was pretty cool about what happened and we all decided to take it with a smile and go hiking for a bit.

The lift

In the end the road was not as far away as we had first thought. It smply can't have been eight kms since we managed to arrive there in 75 mins. And we hadn't been there for more than 30 seconds when a utility-truck from the mines arrived. I suppose that guy was mightly surprised to see five blonde girls on the road, waving like crazy (Dave and I kept in the background). Thankfully he gave us a lift to the next gorge with an emergency phone, but I suppose anyone would do that here if he encountered people who are stranded in the middle of nowhere.

The Miracle Mile

Dave was of course quite sorry about everything that had happened. And after he had radioed for help and arranged for us to be picked up in about 90 minutes, took us for a walk down almost half of what is known as the Miracle Mile. This is some of the most stunning scenery of Karijini but also some the most inaccesible and most dangerous terrain. Dave got us through in what most almost be described as a run and three of the girls stayed behind at "Kermits Pool" while Rosie and I tackled things with exciting names like "Adrenaline Pool". Again, I don't know whether it was confidence or ignorance, but I felt quite safe all the time (only nearly lost my balance once) even when we had to climb with our legs and arms anchored at opposing sites of a gorge, with a stream flowing just below us. In fact, I found it was an enormous amount of fun! Maybe I should do a few tours like this when I get back home. I'm definitely going to do it again in the Kimberleys and maybe Kakadu National Prak as well.

Oh no!

Having done and seen most of the Miracle Mile we were all in a pretty good mood again. After all it was this we had come and paid for and not trying to push a truck up a hill. So we walked back up, out of the gorge, certain that our rescuers would be waiting at the lookout. Imagine our shock we we came up and heard that someone had indeed come, looked for a tourgroup in distress and left again when he couldn't find us. So we asked Dave: "Will he be back." To which he simply replied: "I don't know. But it's not like him to leave without us." Naturally our fantasies went wild atthis point "Maybe he thought we had already gotten a lift and went back to Tom Price [80 km from the park]" etc.. Mentally I was already unpacking my sleeping bag again, while traying to keep the bloody bush-flies at bay. We each must have had more than 300 of the bloddy buggers on our bodys and I was very about the flynet I had bought a few days before. It looks like shit but you really need it here. These fuckers eat your sandwich faster than you can and crawln in your mouth, ears and nose faster then you'd think possible! Fortunately our rescuer had just made a short tour to a nearby campsite and was back at our location within 30 or so minutes. And god, were we happy to see him! And imagine my surprise when I saw that our rescuer was actually the owner of the overpriced campsite. That night however I didn't mind paying the price at all :-).

On the web:
Karijini National Park