Gorge-ous Karajini

Warning: This edition contains excessive adjective usage.

Impressive is an understatement. In order to give Karajini the credit it’s worth, I have to describe it succinctly. I’m conscious I overuse the word amazing – which is exactly what it is. Absolutely amazing. It’s so grand, it’s majestic, magnificent, beautiful – visually outstanding. The expanse is relentless. It just keeps on going and going and going. It is definitely spiritual – in those rare moments I’m alone in a pool without the kids shrieking their cajoulies are freezing. Floating in clear, fresh and refreshing pools, it’s cleansing, rejuvenating (maybe) slimming (wishful thinking). You just keep looking up, up and up. Those cliffs plunge 100m metres into the water. We are in absolute awe of it. It’s spectacular.

Snakes alive

For the kids awe is in seeing snakes. Massimo has wanted a pet snake for years and now seeing them in the wild, he’s a boy on a mission to spot them all. After the first one, a black headed python, we bought a Snakes in Western Australia handbook so he could keep a log of them all. The second was an Olive Python and he deems himself lucky talking to other campers who haven’t seen any at all in their months on the road. These excursions make home-schooling enjoyable as he’s eager to research and write a report on it with Rio in on the action too. Their hikes are so slow trying to look around every rock and spinifex to try spot one, or at the other end of extreme, running and jumping over the rocks. As a parent I’m torn, wanting them to go slow and be cautious not to trip and get hurt, but also proud of their ninja-warrior style agility and prowess to meander through the obstacles.

Ninja Warrior

Hiking the gorges is exhilarating, exciting, fascinating. You have giant rock steps, a ladder, a wade through water, a climb along a cliff edge, a swim through a deep pool, clambering over huge boulders, sliding down a vertical drop, cautiously gripping your feet over the slippery rocks, squeezing through rocky cliffy walls and toeing narrow ledges all to be rewarded with a spectacular waterfall and pool at the end. Where they could rock climb, the kids did. Where I could swim I did. We’d stop on a rock ledge and they’d mix water on the iron ore rock to make coloured mud pies and smear themselves in it. Each night, the red dirt washing off my feet down the drain is such a simple delight. It’s the little things that bring as much joy as the adventure that made them dirty in the first place.

Sights to be seen

Everyone is keen on the gorge-ous action. Along with the super sexy foreign models performing their insta-worthy poses in the cave waterfalls, there are parents holding their babies above their heads as they wade through chest high water – it’s slippery and scary. Crazy. Then there’s the oldies, I don’t know how their knees can make it up those giant rock steps. I incurred a recent injury falling off an irregulation height campsite bouncy pillow hurting my shoulder getting hip and shouldered off by a footy-missing Johnny on my first attempt up the 2m high mound (seriously, every other campsite bouncy pillow is 80cm high I swear). On my second attempt I couldn’t get the jump momentum going and took out my knee. Those bouncy pillows are dangerous and yet they don’t have the same ‘High risk area’ signs seen at the gorges.

On the long drives between gorges we’re playing the game of You vs Wild where you have to choose your own adventure:

Short cut = Bumpy road over corrugations where all you can see is red dust in your wake.

Long cut = Over 100kms extra to drive.

Of course we take the short cut, Johnny taking great pleasure in overtaking the slow, still-white cars to bronze them up a bit. Then, when we come along to a stretch of bitumen, you just want to jump out of the car and kiss the road to thank it for its’ smoothness.

At one with nature

All the driving is greatly compensated with each gorge more striking than the next. You really appreciate the colours of each, the changing landscapes, some so green, some so dry, the varying gradients of rock colour – deep red, burnt orange, copper, brown. It’s so vast, silent, still. Only it’s not. There are very distinct sounds – a cricket, a bird cheep, a dingo howling in the early morning, the water streaming. You see the occasional dragonfly – they’re red or blue here. Not the usual ones we see at home. The thrill of the bush rattling and seeing a tiny lizard rush across the path on its hind legs. This is what it’s like to be at one with nature. It’s incredible.

We had the time of our lives (and got a bit dirty) - watch the full video here.