Today we woke, as usual, at 6am … since Kel had forgotten to turn off the alarm.  First thing we noticed was that the fridge temp was a bit warm … since we we’re out of gas.  “No problem”, thinks I, “we’ve got 2 gas bottles”.  Typically, swapping over to the second gas bottle I discovered a leak somewhere in that side of the system.  This meant physically swapping the gas bottles over which also meant folding up the bed to get to it.  Morning exercise with variety in Karajini…

A quick brekky and hike preparations saw us ready to get stuck into the other major gorge system of Karajini, Weano Gorge.  We were just getting ready to leave when Blake let out a scream.

Spider!!  It bit me !!

It had been hiding in his sandals and took exception to his big toe invading its new home.  Once it had convinced Blake’s foot to leave the sandal it took off pretty quick under the van and vanished.  3 people saw it and none of them agreed on what it looked like.  The general consensus was that it was some sort of wolf spider aka huntsman.

I’m coming to get you Blake !!!!

To be safe, the ranger suggested that we take him to Tom Price hospital.  She radioed them to let them know we were coming and gave us an ice pack for the chewed toe.

The doc at Tom Price said that there weren’t really any dangerous spiders around here apart from Red Backs … and it wasn’t a Red Back.  Blake was overjoyed that he wasn’t going to die.  The hospital gave us some cortisone cream for the itchiness and advised to keep an eye out for any infections but refused to give us anything to otherwise sedate the children with.

Back on the road to Karajini we made good time without our house on our back and were at the Weano area by about 12:30pm.  Blake had all but forgotten about his toe by this time.  Nevertheless we started out by the short walk to the Junction Pool Lookout, just to try him out.  This overlooks where Weano, Red, Joffre and Hancock gorges meet.  Just a little bit spectacular… Blake wasn’t complaining about his foot at all so we decided to step it up a notch.

There’s a class 3 trail down into Weano Gorge.  This then takes you about 200m along the gorge floor in about 10 minutes.  That’s where the going gets slow.  To continue along any further is a class 5 route over naturally rough terrain.

Everybody was keen.  The route starts off by getting about thigh deep in water through a rocky section.  This quickly turns very narrow with a small stream trickling through it to a good sized pool.  From there it gets even narrower and you need to scramble down a handrail over the waterfall to get down into handrail pool.  Kel wasn’t keen on this, so stayed up at the smaller pool.

It looked too narrow for me to get through with the backpack on (now with 5 litres of water, first aid kit, lunch as well as the usual junk), so I left that with Kel.  By the time I got back to the handrail the kids had already climbed down and swam across to the other side and were posing for photos!

Looking back towards the handrail

The next section looked a bit dicey, but the kids were still keen.  This involved effectively swimming down a narrow gorge for about 10m.  The water was freezing!  I put the camera under my hat and just paddled my way through.  The achievement of getting to the end and the view there made it all worthwhile though.

Follow this path …

Down through here …

All along this path other people got to each new obstacle and had decided that they’d had enough and turned back.  Very proud of my munchkins for getting to the end of this track.

and this is the end of the line without ropes 🙁

Then we had to do it all again in reverse!  We got back to the car at 3pm.  A quick lunch (that Kel had prepared earlier) saw us refuelled and ready to tackle the last major gorge walk of the area, Hancock Gorge.

Back up the handrail to see if Mum is still waiting for us

Back out through the ‘easy’ bit

We nearly didn’t want to do this one as it sounded a bit full on right from the start, but we were glad we did.  The walk starts out as a steep class 4 down into the gorge.  Then there is a series of ladders that signals the start of the class 5 section.

Used to the paparazzi

Scrambling around and through some shallow pools soon brought us to a 100m long narrow bit with quite deep water in it.  Your choices are either to swim the distance or cling onto the ledge and inch along.  We chose to inch along.  This took a while …

At the end of that, the gorge opens up into a lovely little beach section and then onto a feature called the amphitheatre.  This is well named as it resembles one quite a bit.  The amphitheatre overlooks another small pool.

The water from that drains down another narrow pathway that the kids used as a natural waterslide, this is the spider walk section that leads to Kermits Pool.

The kids had a good dip at Kermits Pool and we watched a group of abseilers continue their journey onto the class 6 section leading to Regans Pool and Junction Pool.  No chance of us going any further.

By this time light was fading, so we retraced our steps and got back to the car with about 30 minutes of light left in the day.

We had 60kms of dirt road ahead of us before we got back to Dales and as it was on sunset I wasn’t looking forward to all the roos along the way.  We saw the first one just as we were leaving Weano and it was shaping up to be a long slow trip.

Along the way we stopped at Joffre Waterfall as it’s a quick stop with only a 100m walk to the lookout.  Spectacular at sunset!

Joffre Falls sunset

The trip home was spent discussing whether we should spend another day here or not.  We could easily tackle some of the longer walks into some of the less popular gorges … or swim all day in Fern Pool.  We’ve still got a day up our sleeve that we need to spend before getting to Broome on the 18th.

Apart from the first roo, we saw no other roos for ages … so the speed kept creeping up until we were doing 90kmh on super smooth, 3-4 lane wide dirt road.  Not a single other roo was seen for the whole trip.  They’re a bit rare in here we later found out.

In the end we went to bed undecided but 50/50 on leaving.  Figuring that we’d leave tomorrow and head for 80 mile beach as planned, the alarm was set.  We can either stay an extra day there or find somewhere else before Broome.

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