Day 51 08/08/2013 Karijini NP to Tom Price

The mining town of Tom Price was named after an American man called Thomas Moore Price who was instrumental in convincing mining companies and the government that it was worth mining here. In recognition of his efforts in establishing a thriving mining industry here, the town was named after him. The Tom Price mine is one of the biggest in the world. Mt Nameless is 3km out of town.....in fact very close to the caravan park where we are camped....and is the highest mountain in WA which is accessible by road. We drove up there late this afternoon. It was a rough 4WD only track, but there were sensational views from the top. This weekend in Tom Price is the 'Nameless Festival', an annual event held in August. All the stalls and fairground equipment were being set up when we went into town to do some shopping.

But I have digressed. Let me start again!

We left Dales Campground in Karijini NP around 8.30am. We drove to the visitor centre, and while waiting for it to open walked around the trail at the back of the centre. It was a very pretty morning walk. Once I had made my purchases of a few souvenirs, we set off for Tom Price. This took about an hour and we booked into the only caravan park for one night. We set up camp, did our laundry and then headed out to Hammersley Gorge. This was about 70km away, but mostly on unsealed roads.

The scenery there was stunning with amazing folded rock formations.

Unfortunately, climbing down into the gorge, Dave took a bad tumble, cutting his knee and elbow and hurting his wrist. He was badly shaken, but recovered enough to continue with the rest of our walk over rocks, to the second pool, where we were able to swim to the little spa pool. I was even able to take some photos because we had packed the WickelFisch! There were no mishaps on our way out of the gorge.

We got back into town just before 4pm and as mentioned earlier, did some shopping and then drove up to Mt Nameless. Of course the Aboriginal people have a name for the mountain and it is Jarndrunmunhna, meaning place of rock wallabies. It was a slow, steep climb to the top over a very rocky road, but worth it for the views. Back at camp we had an early dinner, caught up with family by phone, checked emails, uploaded the blog and generally enjoyed having electricity and internet connection!

It is not as cold here and it was a beautifully hot day today. The weather has been perfect.....let's hope it stays that way. We are heading towards the coast tomorrow.