Karajini and Ruddall River National Parks WA

[BillsGU]

Went to Karijini a couple of years ago. Paid the entrance fee and when we drove the 12 km? to the camp it had a sign out front "CAMP FULL". You would think the dicks could have put the sign out on the highway or at least at the pay booth!

Was not happy.

[pearcey]

Went to Karijini a couple of years ago. Paid the entrance fee and when we drove the 12 km? to the camp it had a sign out front "CAMP FULL". You would think the dicks could have put the sign out on the highway or at least at the pay booth!

Was not happy.

Bill old mate, if the park is full there is an overflow park near the cultural centre, this allows for a night. I knew of the problem and was in the Que at 8.30 in the morning, was back about 5, so abit late getting there, but had a great site and stayed aweek as there is so much to see and do.

[stevemc181]

Dales camp ground was pretty empty, maybe 7 or 8 others in the Euro Loop we were in. I try and avoid these places in the peak period if I can.

[Cuppa]

Dales camp ground was pretty empty, maybe 7 or 8 others in the Euro Loop we were in. I try and avoid these places in the peak period if I can.

It looked quite different when it wasn’t burned out! We prefer ‘uncrowded’. Having a place to ourselves is better still. Discovering wonderful places is just not the same when there are coachloads of tourists milling about noisily.

[Cuppa]

G`Day Cuppa and Mrs Tea.
I dragged a camper trailer the length of the CSR a few years back only getting stuck once, ran tyres at 15psi, I don`t think you would have any trouble with your set up. I spent nearly 5 months, on my own dragging an 1800Kg off road van all over WA last year, and on some of the tracks you mention. The trick (well not a trick) just commonsense, is to take it slowly and don`t be a hero. I also dragged the van up the Balladonia track with out any issues.
Can`t wait for your trip I bet.

Thanks Pearcey, I already do slow quite well, but plan to do it even better in the future!

[stevemc181]

Another short video I've posted on youtube. This covers the track from near Telfer down to Desert Queen Baths. https://youtu.be/yVO8v3_Szl0

[Cuppa]

Another short video I've posted on youtube. This covers the track from near Telfer down to Desert Queen Baths. https://youtu.be/yVO8v3_Szl0

Ta again. Interesting, nothing there to worry me driving-wise. All the pics I've seen before have focussed on the rocky outcrops & seeing you drive in, it surprised me that it wasn't all rocky/hilly.

[gubigfish]

Went to Karijini a couple of years ago. Paid the entrance fee and when we drove the 12 km? to the camp it had a sign out front "CAMP FULL". You would think the dicks could have put the sign out on the highway or at least at the pay booth!

Was not happy.

There is also the eco camp ground at the western end of the National Park however this is more expensive than the CALM/DEC/DPAW/what ever its called now

[stevemc181]

We packed up camp, with one last look at the view from Jimmy's Thunderbox. Gotta love a loo with a view





The objective today was to get to Hanging Rock, we approached this with some trepidation as this is on a seldom used track right through the Mulga and Spinifex country.

Our first stop was at this Pool, simply called No.11 Pool. It's a great little spot about 8km or so West of the main track. This would have made a better camp site than DQB in my opinion. We filled up a 10 litre water container for some shower water later and carried on.





After another few km's we came to another awesome pool, even better than the last one. Both would be very worthy camping spots. Don't ask me to pronounce the name of this one, but it's called Tjingkulatjatjarra Pool.

The next few shots are screen grabs from the Gopro, please excuse the quality.



There was a plaque embedded into a tree with a little bit of history inscribed: The inscription relates the story of some prospectors following in their old relations footsteps who had prospected the area in 1937/38 and 39 using camels.



We headed off to another waterhole along the way, called Watrara pool, but there were a few campers at this one who weren't the most sociable bunch. I'm not sure what the story was, but they were all traveling together but camped well apart, maybe they had a grumpy old mans fight or something? Anyway they weren't keen on talking to us so we left the grumpy old farts to it. Looked like a bloody nice place apart from the people.

From here we had some difficulty in finding the track West, so we back tracked a little and I noticed a small rock cairn trackside. This marked the track we were looking for, so off we went. It was probably around the 2:00pm mark by this time and the track was a pretty hard slog in sections. Heaps of Spinifex and Mulga and we lost the track numerous times. I was a bit concerned at the fact that we hadn't put some sort of radiator blind on, given the height of the spinifex. But we were committed now, so we pushed on.



After a couple of hours of pushing through shit, we came to a reasonable sized clearing near Curran Curran Rockhole. We at last had a chance to get out and survey the spinifex situation under the Patrol, the crap was everywhere and trust me, you don't want to bury your head in the sand and ignore this stuff. (We were told later of at least one vehicle destroyed this year not far away on the CSR due to a spinifex fire underneath it) I helped my partner Bren, clear the underneath and I then had a look at the radiator. It wasn't pretty, so I cleared what I could and made up a bonnet blind out of some shade cloth we carry for ground sheets. I closed it in under the bonnet and zippy tied it to the recovery points and whatever else I could find below. (Man I love zippy ties)







After taking a while to clear the spinifex, we decided it was getting on and we had no hope in hell of reaching Hanging Rock today as it was still around 40km of this crap to traverse through and it had taken us over 2 hours to do around 20km's. I was also concerned at our fuel use as we were chewing through it much faster than anticipated. We were thinking of surrendering and turning around the next morning in defeat.

I was doing a bit of filming and noticed what I thought was a Dingo just disappearing behind the spinifex. No problems I thought, so we set up camp and got ourselves fed and watered and had an early night. At about 12:30am we heard growling and barking about 10-15 metres away from our tent, now I've never heard a dingo react like this so can only assume it was a wild dog/cross dingo. This thing meant business and my first thought was to listen to see if it was in a pack, luckily it was alone.

I yelled out at it in a pretty aggressive voice, but this only succeeded in making this thing worse! Shit! I thought, we had no weapons, the missus was with me and we were in a thin tent. I've never felt threatened in all my times camping all over Oz until this moment. This thing sounded like it was going to have a go at us through the tent. I ended up clicking the Patrols remote control and flashing the indicators, this was enough to scare it off for now. The bloody thing came back twice in the night at around 2:30am and 4:30am, and it was extremely aggressive every time. Needless to say we didn't leave the tent that night for a leak and it was one of the only times I wish I had a gun with us for protection. It rattled both of our nerves and we hardly slept that night!

So up and outta there once the sun rose, we saw no further signs of the dog, but I am sure it was watching us. We had decided to push on and achieve our objective of Hanging Rock, we were well prepared and we had a Plan B regarding fuel, where we would divert to Parngurr community and top up the tanks the next day.
We had much of the same country to plough through and the odd dry river crossing to cross. It was probably slightly better than the previous days driving, but we still had to search back and forth for the track at times.



Finally at around 11:00am, Hanging Rock came into view.







Well, what can I say, it was a long drive to see a rock! but I was totally satisfied we had made it. Not many people come out to this place and the modern day list who have seen it first hand wouldn't be too long. I'll finish off the trip report in the next installment as I need to get some work done now.

[stevemc181]

I'll wrap up the last section of this trip report which covers from Hanging Rock out to Parngurr then back home.

We had a good look around Hanging Rock and a nice cold beer while enjoying the view. We had intended on staying the night originally but as it was still pretty early, so we thought we would push on.

Our intended route was to head West and eventually make our way out to the Talawana track without needing to back track the way we came in. I really don't like following my own tracks back out of anywhere, admittedly its not bad on a defined track, but if going cross country I prefer to make a new track.
The reason for this is due to the amount of sticks and shrubbery that we have pushed over, and if going back the same way it is all now at perfect radiator or tyre piercing angles.

Anyway on with the story: The next stop was intended to be Tchukardine Pool, but unfortunately we lost the track at another dry river crossing. I only have a few gopro screen grabs from this section.

We followed the track into this riverbed, but we couldn't locate the exit: The wheel tracks you see in the pics are our own as we hunted around for awhile looking for the track.





We found a spot to exit on the other side and pushed back and forth through some scrub, but we eventually had to admit defeat as we just didn't have enough fuel to keep looking. Reluctantly we turned around and headed back towards Hanging Rock.







Continuing on our way we ended up driving up the dry river bed we had crossed that morning, this saved quite a bit of time and was a beautiful drive compared to pushing through scrub and spinifex. Unfortunately no video of driving the river bed as the flash card was full and I didn't realise the camera had switched off. We struggled a bit in the sand with the pressures we were running, but it was only about 5km or so.

We had missed this old sign the previous day, but made sure we found it on the way out: We certainly felt lost out here!



We took a different route on the way back and bypassed all the pools in favour of a more direct line back to the main track. Fuel was the main concern here, as we were gobbling it up pretty quickly in the slow stuff and using around 21lph.

Finally we saw some camels and in the usual fashion they jogged along the track in front of us for awhile.



We came across a huge clearing about 4 or 5 km's from the main track, and as it was about 3:30 we decided to camp for the night and go through the spinifex clearing routine once again. We didn't take any pics here unfortunately.

The next morning it was a pretty straight forward run back to the main track, where we removed the spinifex blind and headed off towards Parngurr community for fuel. We stopped at the Southern Hand pump, but do not rely on water from here as the pump is missing and out of action.



We arrived at the intersection of the Talawana track and the road out to Parngurr community: straight ahead would take us to Georgia Bore on the CSR, but alas we had to get home and back to work.



If you come into Parngurr from the Talawana track for fuel, just head straight down the main road, the fuel and shop is on the right. It took us quite awhile here to get fuel, but that's just the way it is in some of these remote places. $3.20 a litre for diesel, so we took on 90 litres which was more than enough to get us back to the Capricorn Roadhouse near Newman.



The fuel is hidden away behind the white doors, note this pic is after I did a U-turn and we are heading back the way we came..



All fueled up and we hit the road and were making a beeline for the Capricorn Roadhouse. We came across a rolled Prado which we only stopped at briefly as we had another vehicle in the distance behind us and I didn't want to be eating his dust.



I love the desert oak country! This was the first stand of them we has seen for awhile.
The Talawana track was a good 80-100kph run for the most part, with the odd washout here and there.



Well that's about it for the trip report, we camped just south of the Cappy in a big open area well off the road. Had our last camp fire of the trip and did an 1100km day to get home on Friday Evening. It's always good to get home at least a couple of days before heading back to work.

The Patrol has been well and truly christened and performed well where it counted. She averaged about 16.3lph for trip (4500km's), which wasn't as bad as I thought,considering the roof was loaded and she's running 33's. The Paj averaged 15.99lph on her epic cross country trip.
The Patrol has since had an ECU remap and I haven't done the figures yet, but it looks like it is using substantially less fuel than it was.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the read.

Cheers,
Steve