Day 112 Karijini National Park part 2

After having a look around the eastern part of the Karijini National Park, it is time to explore the western part as well. Stuart wanted to get an overview of what there is to see in the western part, so we went to the lookouts first: Oxer Lookout is an easy walk and offers great views of the Hancock Gorge as well as Weano Gorge. The nearby Junction Lookout was closed, but you could have a look into the gorge just a few steps next to the marked lookout.

For today, we decided to explore the Weano Gorge further: on the way down, we found a red beetle on a yellow wildflower. The way through Weano Gorge was over some rocks, but not through water. The clouds appearing in the sky made us worry that today it would rain, not only in the afternoon and at night like the other days, but maybe also in the morning....

But as the clouds passed by without any rain, we decided to also walk down to Handrail Pool. The way is a bit more adventurous along the edge of the water, small walkways, and near the end a steep ladder (with a handrail) down to the Handrail Pool. To actually get to the end of the walk, you need to swim through the (very cold) Handrail Pool, climb over some rocks, swim again through some water until you reach a steep decline, where a small waterfall goes deep down to the next pool.

Warmed up by some sunshine and the way out of the Weano Gorge up to the car park, Stuart wanted to visit more Lookouts. So we drove on and went to the Joffre Gorge Lookout: you can see there is a pool down in the gorge, but after already swimming in the cold Handrail Pool, it was not tempting enough to walk down the steep decline for another cold water swim.

Instead, we drove to the next gorge along the way: Knox Gorge. Stuart enjoyed the views over the gorge and was really strenuously looking for koalas, although we told him there would be none. From the lookout, you could see what was meant by the signs that you have to navigate through some pools and water: there was more water than walkways visible, so not very tempting as the water is probably very cold like in the other gorges in the national park...

As we already drove on a part of this gravel road, which was in pretty bad condition to Knox Gorge, we drove on to the last gorge: Kalamina Gorge. From the lookout, you have a nice view down into the gorge. As the signs said, it is only a short steep walk down over stairs to the Kalamina Gorge with a small waterfall, we walked with our last strength for the day into the gorge and were rewarded with a quiet gorge and a beautiful little waterfall.