Pilbara - Karijini National Park

We have travelled down from Eighty Mile Beach to Pilbara Coast and our first stop is Port Hedland. It is a bit of a shock to strike this full on mining settlement after spending time in the beautiful north west although there was evidence of the impact of mining on the area most of the way down. We stopped in Hedland and stocked up on supplies and agreed that we would not spend the night here and drove east to the Karijini National Park to camp the night and take a look around.  On the way out of town our front windscreen was showered with rocks from a passing road train leaving it badly chipped and cracked across the drivers side.

Karijini is the second largest national park in WA  and features plenty of amazing gorges, waterfalls and pretty rock pools all contrasting with the red terrain. We camped at Dales Camp which was great but the flies were abominable! And it will probably take a decade to get all of the red dust out of our belongings.

The next day we hiked down to Fortescue Falls and had a refreshing cool swim in the plunge pool beneath the falls and also in the quieter Fern Pool which the backpackers hadn't discovered yet.

The following day we set off to view some more gorges a little unprepared and without checking road conditions and 10 Ks down the road the rear windscreen exploded into tiny pieces of glass!

By the time we reached Tom Price the interior of the car had a 2 inch layer of red Pilbara dust and we couldn't recognise the kids. I think this was my first cry of the trip!