Thursday 27th September: Newman – Karijini National Park 307km – Wendy lead

The camp is full of miners so we were awoken early by vehicles departing for the mines. Kath, of course, meet the office lady who was from Whangarei and whose father Kath used to work for! With the morning temperature at 20 degrees breakfast outdoors was rather pleasant. On leaving camp we backtracked 20km for a view of Opthalmia Dam and our first unsealed road. Continuing on we turned of from the Great Northern Highway to Karijini National Park where we stopped at the information centre and a late lunch. We took a short and steep climb down to view Fortescue Falls and then a short drive to view Circular Falls. Still in the park we travelled 40km on some of the worst corrugated roads I’ve ever encountered calling in at Kalamina Falls before making camp at Karijini Eco Retreat. Although the falls all had minimum water flow the gorges and surrounding vistas were well worth visiting.