Hammersley Gorge 

Please click on the photographs to enlarge them.

Hamersley gorge is in the top North Eastern corner of Karijini National Park in the Pilbara.  Access is from the Nanutarra Wittenoom Road either from Tom Price or via the Great Northern Highway then Munjina Wittenoom Road where the last service station for fuel is at the Auski Village Munjina Roadhouse if you were coming from Port Headland in the north.

I really enjoyed visiting this gorge, its further out of the way, but worth the effort to get here.  Its different than the other gorges and I truly felt we had entered the centre of the earth.  I went with my 10 year old daughter in late December and not a single person came here in the 24 hours we spent there.  It was inspiring just to be there!

These are remote areas and you must take full responsibility for your vehicle and yourselves.  

Be careful with your fuel consumption out here, you may need to go into Tom Price first even though its out of your way if you are coming from Karijini Road and the other gorges.  If you are continuing further north to Millstream-Chichester National Park there is no fuel along the way and none until you go further north to Roebourne on the North West coastal highway.  I did 407km from Tom Price through Millstream to Roebourne without running the air conditioning, remember all vehicles are different in their fuel consumption. You also need two spare tyres, plenty of water, extra food rations and some form of shade to cover you for when you get a flat tyre as the roads have a lot of sharp rocks in this area.  
The road conditions change all the time when there's been rain so you must check the day you want to travel what the road conditions are like.  We found this very frustrating, Hamersley Iron couldn't tell us the conditions of their own private road and the service station in Tom Price couldn't even tell us the name of the street they were located at, so you must know your maps thoroughly and keep persisting to find out current road conditions.  If you decide to use the Hamersley Iron private road you must go to them in Tom Price or Dampier, sit through a video (no comment) and fill in the paper work, it doesn't cost anything but time.

What hits you straight away when you get here is the tectonic plates.  You will read about them a lot if you are doing your homework in preparing for a trip like this, but seeing them for yourself will take your breath away.

The incredible forces of nature.

A close-up of the layers of time

To get down into the gorge you go down these steps.  They are suitable for young children.  Depending on how much you want to explore will determine how hard it gets.

Go Here to see our video of inside this gorge.

The common termite mound can also be seen here.

We came here in late December to try and catch some water flowing but before the heavy rains or cyclones.  Some small amount of water was flowing.  The brown water may not look that attractive on the photograph but out there it didn't matter, its the red dirt washing its way down through the gorge and we swam in it.  Go Here to see my daughter sliding down the smooth wall into a pool.

The temperatures at this time of year can range from the mid 30's Celsius-low 40's.  In the gorge its cooler.  It was around 38-40 degrees the day we were there.

Here you can see the rocks smoothed from the years of flowing water over them.

Yellow Spotted monitor or Gould's monitor

Well, you might think it would nearly be impossible to not see a monitor of this size (around 11/2metres in length) in front of you, but I didn't!  I had just come down into the gorge and was awe struck by its beauty when I suddenly saw in front of me this gorgeous monitor.  It knew I was coming and stayed still so it would not be detected, well it worked, I stopped just about a metre from it.  We stared at each other for a while, I regained my breath, it stood its ground and so I gave it space.

If you kept going further along the gorge to your right climbing over the rocks you come to this lush cool area with Northern Paperbarks and reeds.

Go to our REPTILES OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA section to see a cute skink that we saw here.

We spent several hours sitting here and watching the many dragon flies, damsel flies and water spiders.  Go to our CREEPY CRAWLY section and look at our Dragonfly and Damselfly pages.

Later in the afternoon we went for an amazing swim down through the gorge in the other direction.  The water was brown but it didn't detract from the feeling that you felt you were the only people that had ever been here.

 The water was deep and we rested several times hanging on to the sides of the walls.  We saw several skinks and one even fell in it got such a fright to see us.  Don't worry it could swim and it scrambled its way back up the rocks to dry off.
Our voices echoed off the walls and although we got exhausted it is an experience neither of us will ever forget.  (Never swim in gorges if there has been recent rains or if its about to rain as water can come down and flood a gorge with incredible speed and flash floods do occur in these regions).

This was the spinifex that dotted the land although fires had been through this area too.  Some people may see spinifex as a prickly plain clomp but I see it as domed houses supporting a whole eco-system.

In the car park area there is a little peak, take the short walk up the path to the top and sit there on sunset and you can see the gorge and surrounding area.  It wasn't a particularly good sunset but the view was fantastic.

As the day very quickly came to an end we decided to sleep the night in the car.  You are not allowed to camp here or light any fires.   We were heading in the other direction to Millstream-Chichester National Park the next day.

In the night I could hear and see the bats diving around our torch light for moths and grasshoppers and a large centipede crawled over my foot.  Unfortunately I was too exhausted to stay awake to see what other night creatures came out.

The next morning when I visited the 'long-drop' toilet, I found this cutie already using it!

We have not been able to get it identified yet but we think it is a Desert Tree frog or we call a 'loo frog' as we have found other Desert Tree frogs in the toilets at Mt Augustus in the Gascoyne.

In the morning as we left we saw a Euro and her joey.

Go to our FROGS OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA to see a lot more photographs and information on these and other frogs.

Well remember I told you to always check the roads?  This is a section of road that was washed out.  Well I should say the bridge was washed out which we didn't know until we went down it about 1/2 a kilometer and saw there was a bridge signpost but no bridge in sight.  We needed the 4WD to get through here.  This was the Nanutarra Wittenoom Road.  These road conditions also slow you down.  It took us 7 hours to go from Hamersley Gorge to Millstream-Chichester National Park.  I'm so glad that we hadn't attempted to do this stretch the night before.

And yes we got a flat tyre soon after leaving the rough patch, it was around 40-42degrees and my daughter held the silver window shade over us both as I changed it.  I wont tell you how long it took.