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	Karijini Photographs
Karijini National Park, WA.

Joffre Gorge from Oxer Lookout. Karijini National Park is in the Hamersely Range between the mining towns of Tom Price and Newman in Western Australia's Pilbara. This is that state's second largest national park with an area of 627,445 hectares. This remote park offers spectacular, rugged scenery with massive mountains, dissected plateaux and red gorges. Much of the southern part of the park is inaccessible. The northern part, accessible to visitors, is 200 kilometres north west of Newman and 96 kilometres north east of Tom Price (distances to the Visitor Centre). Roads to the park and from one entrance to the visitor centre and to Dales camping ground within the park are sealed; other roads, including that to Savannah camp ground and the lookouts and walking tracks, are gravel. The Visitor Centre in Banjima Drive, opened in 2001, displays information on the natural and cultural history of the park. Showers, toilets and telephones are available near the visitor centre. Facilities elsewhere in the park are limited. Petrol, diesel or autogas are not available in the park. Rubbish is not collected within the park, visitors are requested to save their rubbish for dumping in the rubbish trailer outside the park entrance. Joffre waterfall. Annual rainfall is about 300 millimetres making this a semi-arid environment. Heaviest rainfall is in February. December is the hottest month (mean daily temperature 40°C to 25°C), July is the coolest month (mean daily temperature 23°C to 9°C). Elevation of the accessible parts is about 700 metres. Creeks flow more strongly during the Wet Season; permanent pools are maintained between May and November by water from springs and by groundwater seeping out of fractured and permeable rocks. Rock formations visible in the park were laid down over 2,500 million year ago as iron and silica-rich deposits on an ancient sea-floor. Over millions of years these deposits were subjected to pressure from additional deposits laid on top of them. This pressure forced out the water and converted the sediments into tough, well-bedded rock. Horizontal compression later buckled the rocks, causing numerous vertical cracks (called joints) before lifting the rock out of the water to become dry land. A sharp drop in sea-level then gave the rivers added impetus to cut down through the land and create gorges. Three types of rock in the gorge area each add to the colour and contribute to gorge development. Banded iron formation is a hard, brown-weathering rock made up of thin bands of iron-oxide and fine grained quartz. Dolomite is a grey or pale brown rock similar to limestone; it can be easily scratched with a knife. Shale, a soft, purple or pink rock that is sometimes faintly banded, is also exposed in the gorges. These deposits are stacked on top of each other like layers of a cake. Creeks running through easily eroded dolomite and shale have been able to cut deep into the ranges resulting in narrow gorges, waterfalls and plunge pools. Some gorges have vertical sides from the stream in the bottom to tableland at the top. More often, the upper gorge is sloped and covered with vegetation including spinifex, button grass and snappy gum, as well as large red termite nests. These upper slopes are generally formed of shale and dolomites. Harder rock of the iron formation form notches and steep cliffs below the upper slopes. In the northern part of the park quite shallow valleys containing small creeks, which are dry for most of the year, suddenly plunge down vertical cliffs into narrow gorges up to 100 metres deep; the resulting waterfalls are yet another feature of this remarkable park. Further downstream, gorges widen out to steep slopes before the streams emerge onto the Fortescue Valley as alluvial fans. Walking trails in the park provide access to the bottom of gorges as well as to views of waterfalls and lookouts carefully placed overlooking more scenic gorges. After sufficient rain, wildflowers are profuse; acacias are present in various forms and colours as well as other common flowering plants. On the upper slopes of some gorges, and between gorges, white snappy gums contrast with green spinifex and red termite nests.

Top left: The tops of many gorges are sloped with termite nests, spinifex and snappy gums. Top right: One of the many acacias in Karijini National Park. Bottom left: Lizard basking on the sun-heated hot rock. Bottom right: Red dragonfly commonly seen in the gorges.

Information ¶  The Department of Conservation and Land Management publishes a leaflet describing Karijini. ¶  Photomaps of the Weano and Dales Recreation areas are available from the Visitor Information Centre. ¶  Geology of the Gorges by Alan Thorne, pages 26-30 in The best of the North West, LANDSCOPE special edition, pub by Department of Conservation and Land Management.

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