John and I have spent three days around the Karijini area. We based ourselves for four nights at the Tom Price Tourist Park, which at $49 per night for a powered site is more expensive then Broome at $47 per night. We will be in Broome in a week's time. The park is very clean and in nice surroundings. A mountain soars in the background. Tom Price township has a Coles supermarket, a chemist, a bank and various other shops including two cafes. The garage is closer to the caravan park.
The drive back into the National Park is 80 klms each way and the first day we concentrated on the gorges near the east entrance,the furtherest away from Tom Price. The landscape around the eastern Pilbara is a mix of vivid reds and greens. These against the blue sky are striking. The drive each day was enjoyable although the only wildlife we saw was a skinny dingo and an eagle. Both on the side of the highway on different days.
The three gorges and waterfalls we saw were very pretty. John wanted to do an easy walk while he was there but the uneven surface, rocky steps with no handrail and the fact you have to walk down into a gorge, turned him off when one stops and thinks of the safety factor. We tried driving out to some other gorges on our first day but the gravel road was so corregated we gave up.
We heard that a young German guy had fallen to his death at one of the gorges. At Hamersley Gorge a young woman had fallen 4 metres and had serious head injuries. An ambulance passed us on that day speeding towards the park as we were driving back to Tom Price . In such a remote area emergency services would take hours just getting to an accident site.
We drove onto the gravel road leading into Hamerseley Gorge, it was worth the 55 klms each way to see it. The walk down to the lookout was the best we had experienced at any of the gorges and the gorge itself was the best one of all of them.
John is doing the Tom Price Mine Tour this morning while I did grocery shopping. We will leave Tom Price tomorrow and head towards Nunutarra Roadhouse where we will meet up with Bob and Elaine in a couple of days
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