31/03/07 – 01/04/07: Weano Gorge, Hancock Gorge & Junction Pool

This last weekend in Newman was the highlight of my time there. We started on the trip relatively late in the day, and actually stopped by a local water-hole before as well: Wunnamunna. A little pedestrian in comparison to a lot of other places I suppose, but I’ve taken some pictures nonetheless. Have a look. Most of the water had dried up, and there are some Aboriginal carvings on the rocks, but they’re not particularly impressive. It’s hard to tell how old or genuine they are as well. Have a look at the pictures.

Meanwhile, it didn’t take us as long to get to Karajini this time, as we needed to cut into the national park from the southern end to get to where we wanted to be anyway. There were several gorges in the area: Knox Gorge, Weano Gorge, Oxley Gorge and Hancock Gorge. They meet up at a point called Junction Pool. We scouted around the top of the gorges for a while before climbing down to Weano Gorge.

It’s one of those places that you have to see for yourself. There are certain areas that are easy to get to, and others that aren’t quite so easy. Basically what you have is a big, massive area of rock, which over time, gets cut through by a river of water. Millions of years later, the river has cut deeper and deeper into the massive area of rock, forming a gorge. What we did was climbed down the gorge face at one point and followed the trail of the river. This part was a little easier to climb I must admit, because the cliff-faces were still the red, jaggedy sort that allowed you to get a hand-hold or toe-hold. We did this until we had to head back because of the oncoming dusk.

We made camp off a track somewhere where there was basically nothing but Spinifex and rocks around us. Obviously others had camped there before, judging by the charred patches on the ground; but there was virtually nothing to use for firewood. Good this we’d brought a gas stove along. And good thing there were a couple of mozzie coils in the car too.

On Sunday morning, we headed back to the pathway that would lead us through Hancock gorge and finally into Junction Pool. Abso-bloomin’-lutely amazing stuff. I’m not quite sure how to put it all into words to be honest. Unlike the first bits of Weano that we had climbed down the day before, the further down we went, the rock strata changed significantly. No longer was it red, rough and jagged; instead it was incredibly smooth – like stones you find in river-beds sort of smooth – and didn’t allow one anything decent to hold onto. In fact, it was incredibly slippery, such that at most points, it was easier to just jump off the rocks and swim. Some parts of the gorge were incredibly wide – like where we stopped for a picnic lunch. Other parts were less than a metre across. See the photos. Then there were parts where you couldn’t actually climb down – you had to just jump off a waterfall into the pool below. Which turned out to be surprisingly shallow. And it turned out the waterfall wasn’t that far up either. But I couldn’t tell that from where I was standing – all I could see were rocks below me. Took me ages to jump. Even longer to climb back up again!

But made it to the end eventually. Despite the sheer beauty of the whole place, we didn’t actually end up staying too long at Junction Pool. Guess it was one of those ‘not-the-destination-but-the-journey’ sort of scenarios because it was going to take us a little while to get back again and we were both starving. I guess we didn’t actually realize just how onerous the entire trek / hike / climb thing was because we had to pull over half way home and take a nap, neither of us in any conscious state to drive.

As an aside, the air-conditioning system in Ash’s car had previously been called ‘temperamental’. Here’s what I mean: as I drove us home, it started snowing. I’m deadly serious! Somehow, it got itself so cold, that fluffy, white, icy flakes of snow were blowing out from the air-conditioning vents. Talk about weird!

As a second aside, there must have been something in those 40million year old waterholes because both of us found odd lumps and bumps on us a few days later that we’d never seen before. Didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects from them though.

The pictures do not do this experience justice at all; but check them out anyway. Well worth the cuts, scratches, scrapes, bruises, rash and weird puffy-abscess-looking bites that turned up on my arms, chest and legs the next day. In the words of one of the students: ‘Gwad miss! What HAPPENED to you?!’