Karijini National Park, Western Australia
As lockdowns and border closures encroached far further into 2021 than ever anticipated, the team at YOLO Traveller continued to make the most of this opportunity to explore more of Western Australia and Australia than ever before. And while WA began to open up in early 2022, and international travel became possible once again, uncertainty and airport chaos made some final WA travel just that little bit more appealing. So rather than cancel our planned local adventures, we embraced them with gusto, rounding out our WA explorations with an epic road trip from Perth to Broome, with the marquee destination en route being Karijini National Park.
Karijini National Park is one of the undersung highlights of WA. It is wonderfully remote, but not hard to get to; untouched and unspoilt but not without infrastructure. While it is becoming more well known by both West Australians and travellers from further afield, it remains remarkably uncrowded and a real opportunity to experience iconic Australian wilderness at its finest.
1500 kilometres north of Perth, Karijini National Park is in the heart of WA’s Pilbara region. This is ancient land, with millennia of geological upheavals vibrantly on show in gorges and canyons, punctuated by waterfalls and waterholes. Plateaus of spinifex and white gums end abruptly in vivid red cliffs, with stark layers highlighting billions of years of ecology and erosion. Deep in the chasms, another world is revealed, full of meandering brooks and quiet pools edged with ferns. Overhead, the vast sky of the Pilbara is piercingly blue during the day, while at night the Milky Way is revealed in all its glorious majesty. It is an other-worldly landscape and one we were delighted to find lived up to its superlatives.
A visit to Karijini National Park is all about immersing yourself in this incredible countryside. There are cliff-top walks and panoramic lookouts, hikes through chasms and along canyon floors, cascading waterfalls to bathe under and rockpools to explore. Here’s how to plan your visit to this ancient wonderland.
Getting to Karijini National Park
We travelled to Karijini National Park as part of our road trip from Perth to Broome, driving in from Coral Bay and out to Karratha. But if Karijini National Park is your sole destination (and it is very worthy of this), the nearest sizeable towns are Paraburdoo and Newman. Because of the mines in the Pilbara, each of these towns is actually extremely well serviced by airlines, with multiple Qantas flights a day to both Paraburdoo and Newman and several Virgin flights per day to Newman. It is actually far easier to get here than most other parts of WA.
There are several hire car companies in both Paraburdoo and Newman, and we highly recommend a four wheel drive – although not essential, it makes driving on the gravel roads inside Karijini National Park much more comfortable and easy going. From Paraburdoo, it is a 108 kilometre drive on a sealed road to the western entrance of Karijini National Park, while from Newman it is 186 kilometres, again on a sealed road, to the eastern park entrance. The accommodation of choice within the park, Karijini Eco Retreat, is 31 kilometres from the western park entrance, the last 3 kilometres of which is on an unsealed but graded gravel road.
If you are including Karijini National Park as part of a road trip and are entering or departing via Port Hedland or Karratha, we can highly recommend making the journey via the Rail Access Permit Road that heads northwest from Tom Price. This is a private Rio Tinto rail access road that runs parallel to the huge railway lines that link the Pilbara iron ore mines to the seaside shipping ports. Permits can be obtained in advance by completing a simple online course (or at Tom Price visitor centre). The road is unsealed but well maintained, and driving this route gives unsurpassed view of some of the largest trains in the world (up to 2500 metres long and 200 carriages) – a fascinating insight into this huge part of WA’s economy and an unexpected highlight of our road trip.
Where to Stay in Karijini National Park
There are not many options for where to stay in Karijini National Park, and for most readers of this blog, there is only one – Karijini Eco Retreat.
There are options outside the park, in Tom Price, but this adds 60km each way just to get the park entrance, in addition to the significant driving within the park itself. Within the park, there is also a campground in the eastern side of the park, near Dales Gorge, but with unpowered sites, pit toilets and no showers, it did not register on our radar on this occasion 😉.
Ideally located in the centre of the national park, Karijini Eco Retreat offers a range of accommodation options, from camping to simple cabins to several classes of eco-tents. It is near all the highlights of the park, being adjacent to Joffre Gorge, a short distance from Weano and Hancock Gorges, and easily manageable drives from the Visitor Centre, the Dales Area, Mount Bruce and Hamersley Gorge. We provide our full review of Karijini Eco Retreat here.
When to Visit Karijini National Park
Karijini National Park is open year round, but visiting in summer is less recommended due to extremely high temperatures (average maximums of 39-40 degrees), flooding and the potential for both road closures and gorge closures. In March and early April, the days can still be hot (34-37 degrees) but the waterholes are still lovely to swim in and the evenings are comfortable. Peak season is May through to September, with perfect daytime temperatures in the mid to high 20’s, but nights are cold and sometimes drop as low as 0 degrees, and waterholes can be icy.
Another factor to consider is school holidays. Karijini National Park is a very popular family destination and is often fully booked during school holidays.
We visited Karijini National Park in the first week in April and found this to be perfect. It was the week before the Easter school holidays, and Karijini Eco Retreat was less than half occupied, although it was fully booked out in the subsequent weeks. And the park itself felt almost deserted – on many occasions we had whole gorges and waterholes to ourselves, or saw just a handful of other visitors on our walks.
Weather-wise, the days were stunning, with temperatures rising gradually over the morning to the low to mid 30’s. While warm on the exposed parts of the walks, large parts of the hikes are spent within the cool of the chasms. And the waterholes were a blissful temperature – cool but not cold and just perfect for swimming. Having experienced the (some times painfully) icy waterholes of El Questro and the Gibb River Road in late May the previous year, this made a wonderful (and wetsuit-free) change.
How Long to Stay in Karijini National Park
The accessible component of Karijini National Park is not huge, but it does take some time to travel between the areas, and a plan of attack is necessary if you want to visit all the main areas and hike all the gorges without too much doubling back or missing anything.
Knowing that we wanted to hike each of the gorges without having to skip any, we planned an itinerary of four nights and three full days inside the park, which was perfect. It balanced a good amount of walking each morning and each afternoon, with enough time to laze at waterholes without having to rush to the next hike. We didn’t hike to the summit of Mount Bruce, but if we had wanted to include this, we would have added an additional day.
See our upcoming post for our suggested itinerary to maximise your time in Karijini National Park and not miss any of the park’s best highlights. And our tips and tricks for what to pack and what to take when exploring the park.
Grass surrounding the Karijini Eco Retreat as the sun sets.
