Taster of the Karijini

Our running shoes lost their coating of white beach sand, which was replaced by the red dust on our morning run. We ran up the only hill in sight, skirted the mining truck graveyard and then followed a random vehicle track into the flat scrub. On returning to the station, we had a coffee at the Red Plain Cafe while patting Milo the pet cow.

We enjoyed this well set up station stay and were very glad to have stayed there. On through Paraburdoo the sealed road took us before arriving an hour later at Tom Price. I had hoped to catch up with my brother who is a FIFO worker. Anyhow we failed to make contact due to the lack of reception and the pay phone at the Information Centre being out of order. I suspect thought his roster was not kind to our itinerary - we missed him in Perth and we missed him here.

At Tom Price we were impressed that the Coles was almost a 'normal Coles'. The availability and variety of produce whose pricing was considerably less that in Coral Bay and Exmouth. We helped the local cafe, The Pickled Bean by having lunch and coffee while connecting to the real world once again.

From Tom Price, the drive to Dale's Campground in Karijini was an hour. We skirted the rolling and rugged ranges of what was previously known as the Hamersley Ranges and now called Karijini. As Mt Bruce, WA's second highest peak at 1,235m, stood out on the horizon, Andy was in love and wanted to go up there! Somehow we would need to fit that into our itinerary.

The Visitors Centre was on the way in so we visited there to see what new information we could gain about the area. Despite Dale's Campground having 150 sites and was fully booked, we felt like we camping with only a handful of people. The campground has 5 loops. We were on Kangaroo Loop site #48 one of the smaller loops where generators were banned.

Still with a few hours of sunlight Andy, Katy and I walked to the Circular Pool Lookout and then on to the Three Way Lookout. Both views were impressive and a good indicator of what was to come for tomorrows explorations!