Ten reasons to visit Karijini National Park

10 reasons to visit Karijini National Park: things to see

Karijini National Park is massive, an enormous geographical area, the landscape seems to be dinosaur sized. The sheer scale is breathtaking. The colours of the intense blue sky contrasts with the iron red cliffs and ancient green sploshs of emerald water and trees. “Karijni National Park is steeped in story and significance. Karijini National park is located in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia and is Western Australia’s second largest national park over 627,000 hectares. Watercourses are studded with garled trees winding their way through the landscape. It is an ancient land, over 2,500 million years old.

Fern Pool, close to Dales Campground is very accessible. You can pull into the carpark, walk a few metres and peer into a 100m canyon to view waterfalls and emerald pools. The landscape is dramatic. Massive mountains and escarpments tower over flat arid lands and valleys to daunting plateaus. Gorges dissect the landscape with jewelled watercourses adding light and colour. Be sure to include Dales Gorge, Fortescue Falls, Weano Gorge and Oxers Lookout.

The park has well organised, signposted and graded walking trails from easy short tracks to adventurous multiple day treks. For an indepth understanding of the park a guided tour and/or walk will introduce you to the traditional custodians and their connections to the timeless world of Karijini National Park.

Explore subterranean gorges, walk through narrow canyons to secret waterfalls where you can swim in rock pools. Chasms, sculptured over billions of years by nature, formed an extraordinary shape and form.

Go camping in designated areas to recharge your batteries. Your mobile phone reception is non-existent, the world is reduced to an ancient landscape. A perfect zen moment.

Sunset and sunrise photos are easily captured from the various lookouts. Junction Point and Oxer lookouts are located near the junction point of the four gorges (Weano, Red, Hancock, and Joffre) and offer views of the 100 metre high cliff walls and the pools in the gorges below.

You have no excuses to go swimming in a rock pool with the only sound is the waterfall nearby. There is a swimming hole next to most waterfalls providing a great place to cool off and restore the spirits.

Spend time taking in the night sky lite with stars. There is minimal light pollution with the quiet of night encouraging the senses to hear the sounds of wildlife scuttering past your campsite foraging for food. Your campsite will have incredible views sweeping across the rugged Hamersley Range.

Complete the spider walk at Hamersley Gorge. This is another challenge for the day and definitely not in the middle of the heat exercise. You will climb over rocks using all four limbs ‘spider walk’ to inch your way along a narrow section of Hancock gorge with the reward of Kermit’s Pool at the end. The grade 5 walk into Hancock Gorge is often described as ‘journeying into the centre of the earth.’ A selfie moment is called for once you have arrived. And by the way the return is the same route.

Find Handrail pool. Getting there is your challenge for the day. Located at the end of Weano Gorge is Handrail pool, and getting there is half the fun – wade through a waist-high section of water, scramble over rocks and boulders, then make your way down a narrow section of the gorge to emerge at the top of a waterfall. Then, holding on tightly, use the handrail fixed to the gorge wall to access this picture-perfect pool.

Spend time to meet the local inhabitants from the tiny pebble mouse, lizards to red kangaroos. Your campsite, in the quiet of the dawn or find a shaded rock, sit and wait for the locals to turn up.