Day 52 22/10 (Fri) – Newman to Karajini

Up early again (seems to be impossible to sleep in with the rising rapidly of a morning) and ready to go by 9am with a quick trip in to town to replenish a few grocery items. Temperatures climbed up to the mid-high 30s by mid-morning (thank god for air con!). Stopped at the only roadhouse (or other sign of civilization for that matter) on the way north for an early burger lunch (outrageously expensive but got to eat them in air conditioned comfort while catching up on the TV news so all good). Arrived Karajini early afternoon and first stopped in at the visitor centre. Great building and lots of interesting information about the history and natural features of the park. Next section to the Eco Retreat campground at the other end of the park was the 33 km or so of dirt road, which turned out to be teeth shattering corrugations that brought us to a juddering halt pretty rapidly. Gritted the said shattered teeth and started off again, accelerating with eyes shut to try to get enough speed up to hopefully beat the effect of the juddering. Actually worked! Worked even better once we reduced the tyre pressures a bit further down the road (Chris out in blazing sun, me in A/C car). 60 km / hr seemed to be the ticket, although bit difficult to maintain through dips and bends.
Arrived Karajini Eco Retreat ~ 2 pm. Quite desolate looking – shrubby trees and bushes, burnt looking (from a fairly recent controlled burn), dusty and hot. Not an attractive place to camp on the face of it, but they did have access to slowish internet (no mobile coverage of course) at $5 per half hour (Chris was ecstatic) and the cold beer at the bar went down pretty well. Got ourselves set up at camp site 92 then sat down to contemplate life, the universe and everything (including how long we could cope with the conditions and what we might do while in the park). Some tours still running (none after 1st November and restaurant closes as well) so eventually decided this might be the way to go, on the basis that a tour would take us to gorges not open to the average tourist and we would get to see a selection of things all in the one day if we decided to move on, rather than stay longer. Had dinner in the restaurant that night as blurb had sounded good, although the experience of ordering your barramundi and then cooking it yourself on a hot barbie was an interesting one!