Karijini National Park

We left Port Headland and travelled south to Albert Tognolini Look out and camping area where there was a view right around of large rocky mountains.  On the way there we saw wildflowers of red, blue, purple, yellow, pink and white growing in big patches.  I also saw the Sturts Desert Pea growing on the side of the road.  The Sturts Desert Pea is Western Australia’s state flower. 

Button grass everywhere

Pink wildflowers

Mountainous country

View from our camp at the lookout

Road train coming up the mountain

Heading into Karijini National Park

 

At the lookout we went on a walk and saw an awesome lizard. I tried to catch him but he was too fast!

I also saw a big termite mount shaped like a pyramid.

On a track I came across some weird fungus balls coming up out of cracks in the ground.  When I hit them with a stick they exploded into green and yellow dust. 

After the walk Pop made a fire and we all had damper and golden syrup.

Today we went to Karijini National Park which is Western Australia’s second largest national park.  The park is full of massive mountains and deep rocky gorges.  Erosion has carved the shape of the land out of the rocks that are 2 000 million years old.   We went on the Dale Gorge walk first. We had to walk on a steel platform to see a really nice little waterfall.

On our way into Dale Gorge

View from the top of Dale Gorge

Looking down to the waterfall in Dale Gorge

We climbed down steep rock steps and walked along the floor of the gorge to a swimming  spot called Fern Pool that had small waterfall.  There was lots of small fish in the water.

Fern Pool

 While we were walking down in the gorge we had to cross pools of water by stepping on stepping stones and we had to cling onto the sides of the gorge and side step along ledges to get past pools.  There were lots of nice rock pools and I saw and heard lots of little birds up the gorge.

Reflections of the rocks were really clear in the water

Large ghost gums and paperbark trees were growing down in the gorge

Weeping figs were growing in the gorge and on the sides of the walls of the gorge

Creek crossing

Looking up from the bottom of the gorge

Boulders in the gorge

I'm super strong!

We walked for about 3km to the Circular Pool which was a big swimming spot that had ferns growing all around it on the gorge walls.

The Circular Pool at the end of Dale Gorge

The most exciting thing I saw happened on the way back out of the gorge.  I saw a little spotted quoll sniffing around for food on the rocks.  We were really quiet and took some great photos.  He ran past us and was really close until some European backpackers were being really loud and scared him away. 

On the way out I had to climb ladders to get to the top of the gorge.  It was awesome!

The next day we drove up to Joffre Gorge lookout.  The gorge was really deep and had a long drop waterfall at the end.  The water was so clear that we could see the rocks of the gorge going deeper down into the water.

Tomorrow we are off to Newman which is a big iron ore mining town and we are going on the Mt Whaleback Mining Tour. The mine is the largest single pit open cut iron ore mine in the world.

That’s all for now.

La revedere (Romanian for goodbye)