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Happiness Is The Road
We slept to the comforting rumble of road trains hurtling past on the highway. After brekky we headed off towards Karijini National Park which was about 60 kilometres away. On the way we stopped at a lookout at Munjina Gorge which is the gorge that the highway winds it's way through. The view from the lookout was spectacular and gave us a taster of how dramatic and gorgeous the scenery would be today. Our experience here though was hampered by a couple of things. Firstly when we got there an early twenties French lad was acting like a d*** and skateboarding up and down the path. He looked our way as if wanting our acknowledgement of how impressive he looked. He looked like a knob.We looked the other way and hoped that he'd soon go away. Luckily he did. We then had the place to ourselves for a while and we managed to peacefully soak up the view until some more people arrived in the most tasteless vehicle we have seen on the road. It was on hire from Wicked, a company that specialise in renting to backpackers and plastering their vehicles with graffiti and slogans which are sometimes funny, sometimes rude and sometimes just plain unnecessary. For example we have seen campers bearing the words 'Men have two emotions-Hungry and horny...If you see him without an erection make him a sandwich!' and 'Save a tree eat a beaver '!. These are pretty funny but the slogan we saw today was just unnecessary. It said 'Dad's Dead....House Party!' next to a picture of Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea since his father's death. Now there's one thing by just having a general laugh with a slogan but they shouldn't be poking fun personally at people even if they are perceived by the 'sheep' to be mad. Wicked campers should be looking closer to home to take the **** rather than make nasty comments about someone who has after all suffered the loss of their father. After this we drove to the National Park and having paid our entry fee at the self registration station we went to explore. There was a basic camp ground here with pit toilets and I was in two minds as to whether we should stay here or go and stay elsewhere outside of the park. We went to see what the camp ground was like first so we would know how to plan our day. Before we got to the camp ground I had a strange feeling that we wouldn't like it. I don't know where this feeling came from but I'd had it since yesterday. Jay had picked up on this feeling. It's weird as usually we rock up to places without that much thought. Maybe I could preempt what was going to transpire because we didn't like the camp ground. We had a bad vibe from it. We didn't want to stay here if it was full of annoying looking people or just generally horrible so we had a drive around to check it out. We have done this at other National Park camp grounds on many many occasions before and it has never caused any problems. We either drive out having hated the place or we note the good spots and then go to the reception to check in and get the spot we like. No one before has ever had a problem with us doing this before. Today though it was different. The camp ground was split into various loop roads with different names. We had just driven around Kangaroo Loop and really weren't feeling it when we were stopped by an old guy on a bike who was at the entrance/exit to the loop. We don't know where the hell he had come from. He was wearing a badge which said volunteer. More accurately it should have said jobs worth or stealth *******! His opening line was 'Can I help you?' which certainly wasn't his intention at all. I said 'Yes, we're just having a look round to see if we like the camp site and want to stay'. Whilst I was speaking he had a sarcastic grin on his face and was shaking his head. Then he said 'We don't like you to do that for security reasons'. What!!!!!! We didn't like the insinuation or the tone in his voice. Just because we were in a slightly dirty little camper did he think we were on the rob or trying to stay without paying? Was he grouping us in with all the young, shifty, dirty backpackers in their ****** 'Wicked' vans that would probably do this. He was offhand and rude to us and making assumptions that weren't right. We didn't like this. I reiterated that all we wanted to do was check that we liked the camp ground before we stayed. We didn't want to commit to staying if we didn't like it. Which we thought was fair enough. I said that we had done this on numerous other National Park camp grounds before without it being a problem. He said 'Well we don't like it because you could take the space of someone else who has actually paid' as if we weren't going to pay. The cheeky *******! Then I said 'We would never do that, we were just driving round to see if we liked the site'. He then mumbled something. We'd had enough of this rude man so we drove off. This guy had absolutely no people skills and ought to learn some. He was obviously one of those 'sheep' who likes walking over everybody else and upholding his own stupid petty rules. We felt sorry for him as he has to put up with his pathetic **** all the time. We only had to deal with it for a couple of minutes thankfully. We thought about reporting him but couldn't be bothered with any further hassle so we went to find the walking trails. We parked up at Dales Gorge and went to check out if Karijini was as good as we had been told. It was actually better. The walk started by taking us around the rim of the gorge. The views down into the gorge with pools and waterfalls was stunning. The weather was perfect today and we were really enjoying ourselves. After the downer earlier caused by the 'stealth *******' we were uplifted to be amongst such breathtaking scenery. After walking a section of the rim we descended some steep steps into the gorge. At one point we had to go down some ladders. It was great to be down at the bottom and we followed the walking trail through the gorge marvelling at what we saw. The walk involved some rock scrambling which we love. The path hugged the side of the gorge in places alongside big shimmering pools which had to be crossed on stepping stones. When we got to the end of the gorge we reached a big pool. In order to reach the path to get out we had to paddle through the water and then climb up the rocks on the other side of the pool. It was massive fun. Just as we started to climb the steps leading out of the gorge a guy approaching said 'Here's trouble!' What had we done now? Was someone taking a disliking to us taking up too much of the path?! It was in fact little Paul and Ruth, the really lovely people that we'd had drinks with at Pardoo. It was really great to see them again and we talked about how beautiful Karijini is. Soon after big Paul and Anthea came down the path and we talked with them for ages. Although by now we had almost forgotten the 'stealth *******' talking to these lovely people removed him from our thoughts completely. We felt so much better after talking to the two Pauls, Ruth and Anthea. Our faith in the humanity had been restored. For now at least anyhow. After having said our goodbyes to the lovely people again we scrambled up the steps out of the gorge and back to the car park. This had been one of the best walks that we have been on. Karijini is certainly an area of outstanding natural beauty. We had some lunch in the campervan and then we went to find somewhere to stay the night. Our plan B had been to go to the caravan park at a town called Tom Price so that is where we headed. The scenery on the way was incredible. It took just over an hour to get to Tom Price and we went past turn offs for mines and saw lots of mine traffic on the road. We both had a horrible feeling that Tom Price was going to be like Mount Isa and that we'd hate it. We had to stay there though whatever as we didn't have a plan C. We arrived at the edge of Tom Price with some apprehension. What we actually found was a really lovely and well kept town. It had a lovely vibe about it. We just hoped that the caravan park was as lovely. It was!!! We got a nice spot, chilled out and watched all the beautiful birds. There were absolutely loads of galahs here flying and roaming about and generally being hilarious. One galah in particular had hold of a twig and was rolling about with it as if doing gym exercises. It was hysterical and had us laughing our heads off. The day had ended well.
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