During the last school holidays (July 2019) we got away for 10 day trip with our new camper trailer (Ultimate Odysessy), our new 4WD (LC200), and our two teenage kids.
For my 50th birthday last year, I wrote a bucket list of "50 things to do in my 50th year". Whilst I did complete 50 things during that 365 day period, there was 1 place to visit on the list that didn't happen so this trip was about making that happen.
David and I last visited Karijini in 1999, in late October (in a lifetime before kids...). During that visit, we struggled with the oppressive heat and flies and didn't make the hikes down into the gorges and only went to the lookouts so it's always been my dream to get back there and do all the hikes - and since our kids are great little hikers but almost too old to be travelling with us, I really wanted to make a family trip there.
From
Perth to Karijini is about 1400km of travel so isn't that hard to manage but is best done between May - September when it's not too hot. If you have school aged kids and need to keep your travel during school holiday periods it's a little harder to organise. As usual, we didn't plan this trip very far in advance and were a little worried when we realised you have book your
campsite (by nominating a site and dates) in advance. Ekkk... we have managed to avoid this for the past 20 years so although it went against the grain to book and pay for camping, I insisted that this was Karijini - it was special, we would love it, it has to be done (ie. do as I say, you have no choice). Booking a site during the peak of the school holidays was impossible - fully booked out but I discovered that by booking our site in the 3rd (last) week of the school holidays we were able to find an available site that suited our needs (no generator). Luckily, our school goes back later than most so this worked for us so we made a trip plan that gave us 10 days in total, working around the 3 booked days in Karijini and 1-2 days to drive
home.
The image below was the route we planned...,
well actually, this is the Track Log extracted from our Android (using Positions Manager from our start date to end date) after we finished the trip (following our trip plan).
Please zoom to enlarge the detail of the Track Log. You'll see
grey icons for photos, and blue dots for overnight stops. The map data becomes more detailed as you zoom in - to max. zoom at 18K (on Level 16). This map data is
EOTopo (without
Places overlay).
I've split our travel journal into 3 parts (separate
blogs). So just page through by pressing the NEXT button at the bottom of this page.
The 3
blogs cover 10 days, and are named Karijini Loop Part 1, Karijini Loop Part 2, Karijini Loop Part 3. I hope you enjoy the read!