Karijini at last

Our van at Tom Price

Today started with a Tour of the Tom Price Rio Tinto mine. It was a bus tour with a brief time at the top at the lookout. The bus driver was very knowledgeable about mine operations and gave lots of details about the day to day running of the mine. Everything was so enormously huge. It is strange to be up the top and see the yawning hole in the middle of the mountain. The technical details were bit over by head but Geoff enjoyed hearing it all.   

Afterwards we headed off to Karijini National Park for our 5 day of gorges. It was only an hour and we were soon set up at the Eco Tourist resort. Eco resort we have found is code for very rough, no power, drop toilets and expensive. It did have a shower though and a few ordinary toilets. The sites however were roomy and bushy. 

After lunch we set off to explore. We walked down to the Weano Gorge and walked both up and down the creek. 

       

 

Geoff walked further up Upper Weano and had to swim some of the way. 

 

Then we explored around the rim of the gorge and found a lookout which overlooked the meeting of the Weano, Hancock and Oxer Gorges. From Oxer Lookout you get unsurpassed views out over the junction of Weano, Red, Hancock and Joffre gorges. You can see the tiers of banded iron formation that tower over a pool at the bottom of the gorge.

 It was spectacular and incredibly difficult to get good pictures due to the setting sun, so I 'borrowed' some from the net. Even these don't convey how spectacular this view was! 

 

The drive home had some beautiful soft scenes in the failing light. 

Early night as we had no data or TV!