We arrived at Karijini after an approximately 8 hour drive. As soon as you leave the coast and drive inland, it’s getting hotter: 40°C during the day and even in the night still around 27°C. With the first steps in the red sandstone of the national park (which would later cause quite a headache) we had to organize a site for our tent. A word and a blow! Nevertheless, the nice ranger giving us the site feared us (especially Kerstin) a bit, as he warned us of the snakes: “Now it’s the time of the snakes, they are active day and night. And at night it’s becoming dangerous, so use a torch and look where you step on. And if you see one, it’s very probably highly toxic…” What a start, especially because our torch had a slack joint…
However we rode out the night (hot but still comfortable) and got up early in order to complete the first 3 hour hike before the midday heat. All tracks in Karijini have a similar layout: First, one has to climb down to the gorge. After you did that you can admire beautiful waterfalls and gorges. At the end you have to climb up the gorge again, of course. During our first hike, we could marvel at the Fortescue Falls as well as a water hole (Fern Pool) which is a holy place for the aborigines. Therefore we were told to be calm and observe a couple of parrots and lots of bats, whose sounds resounded in the gorge. Having seen these two highlights, we had to search the way to the Circular Pool. I chose the word “search” consciously, because the ways weren’t always ways, very often we had to cross water/a river, sometimes only with a few stones in the water. In addition, it’s got a few parts where we had to climb a little bit. Really a small adventure, which became even more adventurous during the day… Arrived at the Circular Pool, we were definitely ready for a cooling down in the water. Clear water and surrounding rocks mirroring in the water, amazing! We started our way back to the other parts of the NP.
Arriving our car, we drove to the second part of the park. The camp site and our first hiking tour was in the south entrance and now we had to go to the western part, the starting point of Weano and Hancock Gorge. Btw, only a 100km drive (or 42km with a 4WD on a very bumpy road). 14km out of the 100km were still on one of our beloved rolled sand streets, but here way better and less bumpy than in Kalbarri. Unfortunately, also extremely dusty and therefore our pretty silver rented car was completely red and stupidly the dust went in every small gap (also under the seal of the doors). This wouldn’t have been a big problem, but Hertz asks for 170$, if you drop off the car in an “exceptional dirty” state. That’s why we tried within the next days to clean, which worked out quite well, because the Hertz-staff didn’t get it immediately, so we got our deposit back. 😉
However, back to the two gorges: both of them provide hikes, both partially with a difficulty of 5 (out of 6). Just as a comparison: Level 6 is only allowed with an official approval of the ranger or with a guided tour. That’s why we weren’t so sure, if we are able to complete level 5 completely, as we are definitely not climbing-experienced, but in any case we did a trial because again a great pool for cooling down was promised.
Hancock Gorge and Kermit’s Pool
We directly started with the level 5 trail, which was only 800m long. In the beginning it’s got a very nasty climbing down, but as there were also ladders, it wasn’t a big deal. But then, we discovered what is meant by level 5. There is no guided way, you just jump from one side of the river to the other. Then, the next feature of level 5: also if you can get wet feet in level 4 if you don’t take care, it’s not possible in level 5 to arrive at the finish without wet feet. First, we had to go through knee deep water. Afterwards, we passed a 50m long thin gorge filled with water. We discovered that it was around 1.60m deep, so keeping the camera dry was challenging. In addition, we crossed the water holes barefoot and couldn’t get much grip on the slippery moss-covered stones. We then arrived at the first part of the trail, the “Amphitheatre”, passed the “Spiderwalk” (the name was definitely not chosen randomly, as can be seen on the pictures) and arrived at “Kermits Pool” (no idea if there is a link with the frog). A wonderful water hole, with around 2m deep clear water. Another small walk and we arrived “Hancock Gorge”. Unfortunately a level 6 trail led into the gorge so we could only see the gorge from far away. Of course we had to take the same way back, in any case a really exciting trail and level 5 not at all a problem for everyone who is not afraid of water.
Weano Gorge und Handrail Pool:
As we now knew what to expect of level 5, the trail to “Weano Gorge” was no problem at all. Additionally, as the trail consisted of 80% level 2, neither the way down nor the trail itself were hard. The small part of level 5 shortly before arriving the gorge included only a little climbing, ending up in the gorgeous “Handrail Pool”. A small water hole, ranging in a gorge and another pool, which could only be reached by swimming and without camera (no pictures….). On our way back, indeed a snake was in our way. It had the same plan as we had, because obviously she wanted to go into the same direction. And as she slowly moved forward in a narrowed way which was around 1m, a carful-passing it, wasn’t really a good thing to do. After the ranger’s warning and my (Kerstin’s) biological instinct (“The smaller ones are always the most toxic ones”), we tried by loud trampling to drive it forward, until it finally hid under a stone. We passed the stone with climbing around and as much distance as possible. Anyway, the next wild Australian animal. As we already heard from a few people who were in Australia for 6 months and hadn’t seen a snake at all, we already saw a snake after 2.5 weeks being in Australia. WHAT AN HONOR!!! 😉 Back in Perth, we heard that it could have been a brown snake, approximately one of the most toxic snakes you find in Australia (Wikipedia says: toxic effect: the poison of the eastern brown snake is extremely effective – the Ld50-value for mice is at 0.041mg/kg body weight, wherefore it belongs to the most efficient poisons of snakes that is known.). In addition, it is nervous, very aggressive and if it bites, then several times in a row. However, we survived it 😉
So, the day was nearly over. After passing another time the sandy street, we drove to the next camp site and continued our journey the next day to Carnarvon.