We left Crossing Pool around our normal time being very childish and making extra noise to wake up the couple who camped next to us last night and made sure the whole campsite could not get to sleep before they went to bed. Some people have no idea how loud they are when it is so quite, they must have though their tent was soundproof. So after the guitar playing, then the saga of the lost charger they eventually got into bed only to keep talking in A LOUD VOICE for ages. It was probably only 9:30PM but everybody is well and truly asleep by then up here as you are up with the sun before the heat sets in.

We went to the last site on Milstream – Chester we had not visited Deep Reach Pool and here I noticed a squeak in the front end when we pulled up (other than all the new squeaks the truck has now). I found the bull bar mount that was welded in Kununnara had cracked right through again on the same side. The root cause of the problem is Finns Bodyworks tried to repair the old crush cam and the geometry of it is not right any more causing it to flex in the wrong spot. Welding it again will only end up with the same result. Anyway I spent an hour or so under the car again tying it all up with wire to keep it on the car if it comes off. A guy stopped and gave some useful advice that helped a lot and we had a good chat. He was a cocky and done these sort of repairs many times. After wasting all that time we did not go for a swim and moved on. The pool was a huge body of water with steps down into the water and picnic area with shade cloth.

Fix anything with wire???

Steps into the water!

We trundled down the road about 50Km and decided to use our Rio permit and leave the main road and head down their permit road via Mt Sheila to Karijini. This took about another 100Km mostly on their permit road. We met so many huge trains going in both directions. They must have a large fleet of them. The amounts of iron ore traveling along these lines out here is staggering. We stopped an took some photo’s of a stopped train up close and did a video of one from end to end. Along the way there was plenty of maintenance going on in places and one of those machines that removes the old sleepers from the rail line and puts the new ones in, unfortunately it was not operating.

Big trains up close

The end is another 3km down the raod

The access road to Mt Sheila is VERY STEEP. The site was a Telstra relay station in years gone by but only concrete footings and the bases of where the old towers were now. The views over the Hamersly range were pretty good though and worth the drive. The terain here is quite different to what we have been seeing up till now. The truck hit 79.9L/100Km on the way up in first gear, that’s how steep the road is. Going down in first gear you still had to use the brakes and the revs quickly rose to high levels.

Some hills south of Mt Sheila

Hamersly Gorge was our next stop and the first in the Karijini Nation Park. This park was on our must do list before we left TAS. The gorge has very different rock formations and only a very short walk down a steep access track to the pools you can swim in. After clambering over some rocks a couple gave us the tip on the best pools and we headed over to them without any effort. You swim across a pool and climb into a hole cut out by the water action and it has a lovely warm water fall coming into it. The water had quite a force behind it and enough to push you under if you did not hold on the few hand holds available. The pool is a lovely jade colour and I could not find the bottom so it was very deep.

Our pool at HamerslyBack massage

Wavy rock formations of the gorge walls

Just before we went down to the pool I noticed something not right at the back of the truck. The passenger side rear shock mount was torn off the diff housing and hanging off the end of the shockie. Ahh well at least there is another one on the other side (for now)! After we got back from our swim and the exhaust had cooled I removed the whole thing and we were on our way again. A group of guys had left a nice note on our windscreen telling us it was not right but we already new. The mount is quite feeble inspecting it and I suspect the other side is close to breaking as well. I will see what I can do tomorrow with them or it may be a bouncy trip home with out any rear shockies!

Good thing I can laugh about these things now

Too light for the roads up here!

Traversing the Hamersly road I suddenly spied a plane that looked like a DC9 taxiing out in the middle of nowhere. We rounded a bend and several buses were lined up to take some FIFO (fly in fly out)workers on or off the plane. There was a sealed runway and some infrastructure out in the middle of the mining area. We got into Karijini just on dark and there were a bunch of allocated sites for late comers. We picked the last site but it is in reasonably full sun right at the back end of the campground. The campground here has 5 sections, 3 of them are booked out and full and there are a few spots in the other two. This is a very popular spot now you can get here all on bitumen if you go via Tom Price. More gorges and swimming tomorrow hopefully. Another few spits of rain tonight, about 4 drops……