Nothing prepares you for Karijini, not even the photos everyone shows you before you go. We’d seen the pictures, heard the raves from other travellers at every stop since Broome, and still stood at the top of Dales Gorge on our first afternoon genuinely stopped in our tracks. The Pilbara plain runs flat and red in every direction, and then it just opens up — dozens of narrow, deep gorges cutting straight down through 2.7-billion-year-old ironstone, waterfalls and swimming holes at the bottom of all of them.
What It Is
Dales Gorge campground puts you within walking distance of several of the park’s best gorges. It’s well-designed and eco-certified — flush toilets, cold showers, no fires or generators — and by this point in the trip we’d stopped minding the lack of a campfire in the evenings. The gas stove had long since become second nature.
Circular Pool and Fortescue Falls
Both walkable straight from camp via a track that descends through rock layers older than almost anything else on Earth, arriving at a permanent waterhole that stays cool even in peak summer. The falls run modest in the dry season but the pool is deep and genuinely inviting — swimming here on a hot Pilbara afternoon, kids shrieking at the cold water, is one of the better things we did on the whole lap.
Hancock Gorge’s Spider Walk
For the more adventurous — us, reluctantly, egged on by James — Hancock Gorge’s signature spider walk takes you through a narrow slot canyon where the walls close to shoulder width and you wade and brace your way through knee-deep water along the rock. Bring shoes you genuinely don’t mind getting wet. It’s physically engaging without being dangerous if you take it slowly, and it’s the kind of thing that gets talked about for the rest of the trip.
Weano and Knox Gorges, in a separate part of the park but still 2WD-accessible, offer similar deep-slot experiences — Knox involves swimming across cold, permanent pools in near-darkness. We saved those for a second day; one gorge system a day was plenty with two kids and a lot of scrambling.
Gear Notes: What Earned Its Keep
Temperatures in June and July here can drop to single figures overnight — properly cold for a desert park, and colder than any of us expected packing back in Perth. A 0°C-rated sleeping bag each is genuinely the minimum for the Pilbara in winter; ours got real use here, doubled up with a cheap fleece liner on the coldest nights.
Mornings meant cold hands and a desperate need for coffee before anyone was fit to talk to — our stovetop pour-over coffee dripper got real workout duty here, boiled and poured before we’d even properly opened our eyes most days. Simple ritual, made a cold morning bearable.
Practical Info
Location: Dales Gorge Campground, Karijini National Park, Pilbara Access: 2WD Sites: ~80 unpowered Facilities: Flush toilets, cold showers, picnic tables, eco-certified Fires: Not permitted — gas/stoves only Nearest town: Tom Price (90km) — Woolworths, fuel Book ahead for: June–August (peak season) through DBCA Bring: A proper sleeping bag — nights get genuinely cold
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We came a long way south from 80 Mile Beach. Next: Ningaloo, and the campsite bookings that vanish within hours of opening.