Qualla: Karijini National Park

Karijini National Park: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geowarner, CC BY-SA 4.0. Somewhere beneath your feet, the rock is older than the moon. The Pilbara craton — the ancient foundation beneath Karijini National Park — is a fragment of Earth's original crust that somehow survived the planetary violence of 3.5 billion years without being swallowed back into the mantle. Other cratons were ground up and recycled by the milling of plate tectonics. This one endured. It became the Hamersley Range, and the range eroded into the gorges that now cut forty metres deep through banded dolomite and shale, their walls striped red and cream and purple by the chemistry of an early Earth where photosynthetic bacteria were still in the business of rusting the oceans and building an atmosphere.

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Image: Geowarner | CC BY-SA 4.0

Karijini National Park: Written in Stone

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Evan Pickett, CC BY-SA 4.0. About 2.5 billion years ago, the region lay under a shallow sea. Iron ores settled onto that seafloor, interlayered with volcanic ash. The atmosphere held almost no oxygen — the iron was being oxidised not by the air but by marine bacteria performing photosynthesis. Only once all...

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Image: Evan Pickett | CC BY-SA 4.0

Karijini National Park: The Gorge Country

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graeme Churchard from Bristol (51.4414, -2.5242), UK, CC BY 2.0. The northern edge of the Hamersley Range drops away in a series of gorges where seasonal creeks have cut down through the banded rock over millions of years. Fortescue Falls tumbles into Dales Gorge, where ferns grow incongruously lush in the canyon shadow. Weano Gorge narrows un...

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Image: Graeme Churchard from Bristol (51.4414, -2.5242), UK | CC BY 2.0

Karijini National Park: The Human Thread

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phil Whitehouse from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. Aboriginal people have lived in this country for tens of thousands of years, long before the geological name 'Pilbara' was applied to it. The Hamersley Range held water in its gorges even through the driest periods — the rock pools that make the gorges so striking to visitors wer...

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Image: Phil Whitehouse from London, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

Karijini National Park: Desert Rules

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Binarysequence, CC BY-SA 3.0. Summer temperatures in Karijini regularly exceed 40°C. The gorges offer shade and water, which is why hikers descend into them, but those same narrow canyon walls become funnels in flash-flood conditions. Lives have been lost when rain fell kilometres away and the water arrived w...

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Image: Binarysequence | CC BY-SA 3.0

Karijini National Park: Finding the Place

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geowarner, CC BY-SA 4.0. The nearest town with fuel is Tom Price, 80 kilometres west, or Auski to the east. There is no public transport to or within the park. Most of Karijini's gorges are reached by turning off the Great Northern Highway onto Karijini Drive, a good sealed road. The Hamersley Gorge requ...

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Image: Geowarner | CC BY-SA 4.0