GORGEous spider walks in Karijini

Karijini National Park! Finally! One of the most expected highlights of the Western Australia part of our trip. What does it offer? Mainly amazing gorges – but not just viewpoints! You can basically hike into each of those many, many red gorges.

Colorful gorges in Karijini NP

The Aussies use a scale of 1 to 5 for the severity of each hike. Luckily, even for a class 5 hike you don’t need to be Crocodile Dundee himself, just expect to climb some ladders and cross some ponds. Or should I say pool? Yes! Many gorges offer a natural swimming pool, and you’re absolutely invited to refresh yourself in the clean and clear water. Handrail Pool, Kermit’s Pool, Kalamina gorge / Rock Arch Pool. 3 x check.

Best natural refreshers!

Oh, one of those highlights involved a “spider walk” between the walls to reach the next point. Amazing.

Spider walk

The honest reviewer should also mention however that it is often a bumpy ride on unsealed roads. And today we used our fly masks for the first time before dinner, which we had prepared ourselves on the gas grills provided by the Karijini Eco Retreat, where we also parked our camper van for the night.

Karijini Eco Retreat Savannah Campground

Nameless 4WD Fun

That day we definitely left the coast and drove around 500 km into the Pilbara region.

GPS in OZ is for distances, not directions

The last 44 km before our destination Tom Price was on unsealed roads. However, that was just a warm-up: we decided to drive upon Mount Nameless (official name!) to get a good sight over the town and region, especially at some mining sites.

View from Mount Nameless

Yes, we read that it’s gonna be a steep way up, but honestly, we underestimated it a bit, we didn’t expect to come across such big holes, rocks and jumps. But we reached the peak (1128 m), the highest vehicle access in Western Australia. Check. But we also reached the highest temperatures so far: 40° C even under a cloudy sky with a few rain drops.

4WD camper and Pinnacles

After a short introduction (in German) about our 4WD campervan, the long-awaited road trip to the north could start. One of the first things of each camper vacation: stocking up with food, drinks and other camping utilities. On the way to Westfield shopping mall we could already get used to the left-hand traffic. Our camper had manual transmission (common for 4WD), but we also managed that quite well. Pedals are identical to our cars at home, but more than once we hit the windscreen wipers instead of the direction indicators.

Early evening, we reached Nambung National Park, famous for its thousands of limestone needles (pinnacles), some of them up to 3.5m in height. Scientists still have multiple theories about their formation. Oh, and we also spotted our first “real” kangaroos there.