Continuing with our Karijini adventures today we drove to the western side of the park near the Eco Resort to try our luck with Hancock gorge walk. Sharon had this one earmarked before we left home as a must do. The drive out from our campsite was only 55Km of which 44Km was corrugated gravel road. Now with only one shock absorber left on the truck and the other one with some nasty looking cracks on the same bracket we had to take it easy on the corrugations. We spent a lot of time in 2nd gear idling along and also a bit of time in 1st gear! It took well over an hour to get to the carpark.

That put me in a good frame of mind as you can imagine so I was a bit grumpy to start with and complained about the signage of the trails after I walked past the start of the walk and ended up on the lookout above Junction Gorge. Interestingly the local SES here is the busiest search and rescue unit in WA doing 40-50 rescues in Karijini each year extracting people out of the gorges. There are permanent anchor points scattered around the place for their ropes. There is a plaque here for an SES volunteer who was swept to his death while doing a rescue here in 2004. A flash flood came through during the rescue and several were swept away but unfortunately he did not survive.

From the lookout, 100M to the bottom

Plaque to the SES volunteer who died here

Back on track and grumbling about the poor signage again we came to the information sign with all these warnings and stuff about fines and abseiling gear and the like. There is a section of the gorge you can not go into without a permit and the right qualifications or being under the direction of a guide. The gorge becomes very dangerous at this point and people have lost their lives in that section.

We powered down the steps into the gorge and we were off. The walk is only 1.5Km but you have to wade and or swim some sections. The last section is very narrow and you have to ‘spider walk’ the walls to get through to the other side. At the end there is VERY deep lovely small pool waiting for a refreshing dip. There is a rope at the end of the pool and the end of the line for us. We had a great swim all by ourselves again for quite a while till another couple turned up. With ledges all around and VERY deep water I could not help myself but do a few ‘A bombs’ of the ledges, cool fun and huge splashes. The other guys girlfriend told him he couldn’t do any, he did in the end but he shouldn’t have bothered they were pathetic.

The first significant wading section

Getting acquainted with the water

Getting deeper!

Spider walking now

Some idiot doing A bombs!

Good ones though!

After getting back out safely we ventured into the next gorge Weano. The length and features are very similar to Hancock so we loved this one as well. Plenty of wading till you come to a huge pool that has hand rails to get down into. Then there is more swimming or wading up to you chest and above to get to the stop point with another rope the same as the last gorge. Here we saw the Darwin theory at work with a bunch of idiots past the rope and jumping the 5-10M into Jade pool and then trying to get back out again on the narrow rock ledges. We all left before we got stuck for 13Hrs if something went wrong, this is the fastest you will get rescued out here, usually much longer.

Weano main pool, handrail next to the waterfall

Back for lunch at the truck with big grins on our faces and tired bodies. We drove on to Joffre gorge at a very slow pace. The access road to Joffre goes onto Knox falls as well but it was so heavily corrugated we decided to give that one a miss. As it turned out it was 4PM by the time we got back to the car anyway and we had at least an hour drive back to camp and that would be sunset anyway. Joffre had a great viewing platform high above the gorge and it was very impressive. We then ventured down a very steep goat track down to the base of the second pool from the waterfall. Here we got wet again and waded around to either ends of the gorge. Another great place to experience.

Part of the waterfall feeding Joffre (spot Sharon?)

Joffre from the lookout

Down in Joffre gorge

The Locke Ness monster?

Bit woosey on this one, it was a bit colder!

Back at camp after another very frustrating drive back on the gravel road and to my amazement the last shock is still attached to the car. The fridge was still working after my efforts yesterday so lets hope it keeps going for another 4 weeks. Packing up tomorrow and leaving Karijini after a great few days here and heading for Exmouth for hopefully a few days snorkelling and maybe a fishing charter out onto the reef?