2006/07 Australia trip - Dales Gorge, Karijini |
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Monday July 17th
We were still in the Tropics – just, 50 miles north of the Capricorn, but it was a cold and windy morning. We weren’t allowed to stay any longer in the overflow campground so we drove over to the Dales area and paid for a campsite there. Nearby is Fortescue Falls at one end of the Dales Gorge. The falls looked pretty from the top of the gorge, but we had to go down and 
take a closer look. The rocks in the gorge walls are hard and horizontally layered so they make a natural staircase down to the floor of the gorge. The falls drop down the staircase into a blue-green pool. We climbed around that area for a while, taking pictures, and then took the trail behind the falls back to Fern Falls and Pool, a really pretty spot with small waterfalls dropping into a pool. Apparently the water in the falls is quite warm as it’s passed over sun-warmed rocks, but first you have to swim across this icy-cold pool in the shade to get there. We didn’t bother, leaving it to the young people on the adventure tour to shriek at the cold water and flounder their way across.
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Karijini (11.02) |  |
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The trails in the Karijini park range from flat and paved to near vertical and extremely dangerous, so they’ve all been graded with little roundels that both point the way and say whether this is a class 1 (easy) or a class 6 (you need to be licensed). Most of what we were doing was in the 3 and 4 range, climbing over and around boulders.
The main feature at the other end of the gorge is the Circular Pool, fed by a great waterfall in the wet season, but 
now kept topped up by a spring. Yet again, we climbed down to the bottom of the gorge, and made our wayacross the layered rocks to the pool. The whole area is fed by little waterfalls springing out of the rock and creating a cascade down to the valley floor. The rocks are so flat and right-angled that the area almost looks to be faked, like those concrete waterfalls in shopping malls and luxury hotels. There are even little shrubs on the ledges, which look like they’ve been planned by an interior designer . The trail went straight up the waterfalls so it was a trickyclimb on wet rocks until we got to the pool, another of those magical spots: great soaring red cliffs, ferns around the edge of the 
pool, a small waterfall springing from the rocks, and the blue of the pool. We were lucky enough to get there when it was empty of bathers, a few serene moments until the next tour group arrived.
It was a long climb back out up the rock steps, but a short trip back to the campground and a quick sunset.
Tuesday July 18th
We had a surprisingly cold night, just above freezing, and then the wind came up just after dawn. The word “windchill” came to mind. Windchill in the tropics!