Karijini Day 2

Day 2 we went to the Visitors Centre to see which walks would be the best for young children. The woman working there was spectacularly unhelpful. Really quite disgraceful how little assistance she provided. She was very negative, telling us "not to bother" with one whole part of the park as there was nothing that the kids could do. Luckily we met up with some people we stayed next to at Cable Beach who had arrived the day before us and they were able to suggest some things that the kids could do. If we had listened to the advice from the Visitor Centre we may as well have packed up right there and then and gone home. So we drove for about 20 km on a very rough dirt road to Kalamina Gorge. This was a bit of a tricky walk down some more steep steps but it was short so we managed it. The swimming hole was smaller but still very refreshing.



After climbing back up to the carpark and having lunch we drove another 20km on the dusty red road to the Weano Gorge Recreation Area. Most of the walks here were too hard for us to do but we checked out a couple of the lookouts. Spectacular scenery here. It reminded me of the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale.



The heat was getting to us all again by this stage so we went back along the rough dirt road to check out Circular Pool. The unhelpful visitor centre lady had told us this may be a possibility for our kids but it looked a bit tricky so we went back to Fortscue instead. Lucky we didn't try as it turned out it was an hours walk into Circular Pool and it was only 800m so it would have been another Jim Jim Falls walk - very difficult.

I am glad we made the effort to see Karijini but we have found that National Park camping is very hard work in this heat and with this many flies around. Had it been about 10 degrees cooler we probably would have enjoyed it more. It was very spectacular but just too hot to go on any of the walks. Having young children also makes it hard. Anyway, we are off to Tom Price tomorrow and then on to Ningaloo Reef which everyone is very keen to get to!



All the kids at the lookout.