Hamersley Gorge, Tom Price

Wednesday 14^th May 2008

Apparently it had been about 9C last night so I’m glad we’d been prepared both girls slept a little bit later due to being warmer but Holly wasn’t any more cheerful when woken by Katie!

I made pikelets for breakfast but the girls had already got up and gone off to play with their friends so it was more like an early morning tea by the time they ate them!

Quite a lot of people left the campsite with us today – all heading towards Karijini. I wanted to take the Access Road down to Tom Price (this section is open but I hadn’t thought about it while in Karratha and hadn’t got the permit) but Paul wouldn’t do it and in a way I was glad because it meant we got to go to Hamersley Gorge and it would have been tragic to have missed such a fantastic place.

First we had to drive through a narrow gorge with a very dodgy dirt road and as we emerged from this part we met a huge truck with two trailers heading into the gorge. He had missed his turn off and was going to have to go on in through the gorge and out the other side before he could turn around – he was going to need some superior driving skills and a lot of luck. I was extremely grateful that we hadn’t met him five minutes earlier!

The trip took longer than we’d anticipated (I’d forgotten we had to go slower on the dirt roads) so by the time we got to the Gorge, the girls were starving (Katie had been asleep for an hour which she probably desperately needed). I had to delve into the camper trailer with the roof raised a couple of centimetres (just enough to open the door!) and find some supplies to fortify us.

We did have a little scare as we pulled up into the car park – water was running out of the trailer – had we split some pipes somewhere? Luckily it turned out to just be the tank overflowing as we were parked at quite a severe angle (the car park wasn’t really designed for campers but we are taking ours to its 4WD limits!).

Paul was more than a little distracted because as we’d started to head down to the car park we had suddenly come into mobile phone range and three text messages from Duncan came through – Bristol City had made it into the final playoff for promotion to the Premier League!

The climb down into Hamersley Gorge was steep but spectacular (once again Paul only had his Crocs but the going wasn’t quite as tough). The pool at the bottom was a beautiful green colour and very ‘refreshing’! It had to be dived into and Katie took a lot of persuading. After a very quick swim the girls were up and over the top of the waterfall to go and find their friends (we’d seen their vehicle in the carpark and super-sleuth Holly had spotted their towels beside the pool). There were several pools one above the other, each almost more beautiful than the previous and all with different kinds of rocks surrounding them.

Paige and Cate and their parents left shortly after (but not before the girls had done a few rock paintings of their own with the many colours of the Kimberley palette) so Holly and I (and then Paul) swam on down the gorge for a couple of hundred metres – that is the most beautiful pool I have ever swum in (also cold and deeper than I cared to check!) with huge cliffs on either side made of thousands of layers of multicoloured rocks and a pristine blue sky above.

We struggled up and out of the gorge – much steeper than it had seemed on the way in – and retrieved our still leaking camper trailer – lucky we’re not planning any bush camping tonight!

The drive into Tom Price was comparatively short and we were soon pulling up outside the visitors’ centre to book a tour of the iron-ore mine for tomorrow. The one garage we passed looked like it was out of diesel so we weren’t impressed to hear that it was the only one in town. Luckily as we drove back past it to see when they might get some more we saw a pump around the side and filled up quickly before that tank ran out, too – as happened earlier in the week.

At the caravan park the worst shock came – the quantity of red dust that had found its way inside was horrific – it seemed to be everywhere – and indeed, it was! I spent a very long time first brushing some out, then trying to wipe it away. It didn’t help that at some stage our bucket had managed to get itself a big crack in the bottom and was rendered completely useless. The other hindering factor was that when we connected up the water we found we had a fountain coming out of the tap mounted on the A-frame at the front. On closer inspection, it became apparent that the constant barrage of small, sharp stones had had a negative impact on the plastic piping that supplied it. In fact, the whole front of the van was covered in small indentations (and red dust!) which I suppose we should have expected.

Also inside the van, one of the cupboard doors had managed to loosen a couple of screws and abandon a hinge – we checked the other doors but it was only that one – why?

Showers, washing, dinner – all the usual activities on arrival in a caravan park. Katie made another new friend and Holly finished her second book in three days (pretty impressive given that yesterday she didn’t have time to read anything).

It’s cool here but nowhere near as cold as Crossing Pool.