Karijini National Park 3rd - 7th August

Everything was red. The landscape, was dominated by a rich red. And by now every fibre and crevice, including the interior of the car, had been penetrated by red dusty dirt. Our faces, hands, arms, soles of our feet, hair, shorts, t-shirts were all red. The red seemed to penetrate our skin and however hard we tried it could not be washed off. Clothes remain red, more than a week later, after two or three washes.
Karijini was a stark contrast to the beach camping we had enjoyed at Coral Bay and Cape Range.
We camped at the Karijini Eco Retreat. The campsites were separated by trees and we had a lot of space. There were basic solar showers, necessary to wash the dust off.
Some highlights:
                         - Walking down Dales Gorge and swimming under the waterfalls at Fern Pool.
                         - Imogen and Lisa went to a night sky viewing. A local astronomy enthusiast set up a high powered telescope and on their night their was only Imogen, Lisa and two others. He shared his knowledge and gave them time on the telescope. The highlight was a clear vision of Saturn and many stars and satellites.
                         - Boyd shaved off his facial follicles
                         - Walking down and along Kalamina Gorge. A watercourse at the bottom was a small creek (in the wet season it contains much more water). We traversed the creek several times as we made our way down the gorge. We sat to have lunch and floated sticks, leaves and shoes down the creek and small rapids over the rocks.
                          - We went on a tour of Rio Tinto's mine at Tom Price. Everything was on a huge scale. We felt very small alongside trucks, machinery, processing plants, piles of ore and one huge hole in the ground. Whilst in the town of Tom Price after this tour we were able to buy a new gas stove at the small local hardware.