Off to See the Wizard - Albert Tognolini Lookout to Tom Price

Our plan for the day was to visit Karijini National Park. You could spend days in there exploring and doing bush walks, but we decided to just visit a couple of the main lookouts.

On our way we continued to see lots of stunning hills.  This is all a part of the Hammersley Ranges.

Our first stop was Dales Gorge at the eastern end of the park.  Of course, as usual, we had no idea what to expect.

Circular Pool is the first lookout.  Wow!  A great big sink hole. We didn’t expect that.

A short walk further along brought us to Three Ways Lookout.  Impressive, but not as unexpected as the first one.

We then drove the 70kms to the western end of the park, past Mount Bruce.  It has an elevation of 1235 metres above sea level. That is higher than Oberon and Black Springs!  It doesn’t seem like you are very high, but the general area is about 1,000 metres above sea level.

We were surprised to see another dingo trotting along the side of the road and even managed to snap a photo.

Joffre Falls was our next destination.  The lookout was even impressive.

As were the stone stairs down to it.

Another Wow moment.  Yes, that is people down there.

You access it by climbing down all those stairs and ladders.

Then you have to scramble over the rocks beside the water. (This was just after one of them fell in.  Fortunately, it was the deeper part and he didn’t land on the rocks just under the water.)

Not for this little black duck!

The obligatory photo.  We haven’t had one of those for a while.

Back on our way, we continue to play the game when we come to places like this - Which way will the road go?

Ooh, to the right and with a hill.  We haven’t see anything like this for a while.  Fortunately, we didn’t come up behind any trucks and none came up behind us.

Our destination for the day was the mining town of Tom Price.  Once again, nothing like we expected.  It is nice and leafy, clean and tidy.

There were some lovely bronze sculptures near the small shopping centre. The Coles supermarket was one of the brightest and best stocked we have seen.  We enjoyed a nice fresh lunch from a food van near the visitor’s centre. The town just had a generally nice feel about it.

The history is that Lang Hancock discovered iron ore in the area, but couldn’t get anyone interested in it. He approached a man by the name of Tom Moore Price in the USA who was very instrumental in getting backing for the project.  The mining started in 1962 and the town, which is a bit of a distance from the mine, was initially just a mining camp, not open to the public, but as things grew, the town was gazettes in 1965.  

We settled in at the one caravan park and were soon accosted by some galahs.  They even ate out of your hand. We haven’t seen any for ages.  We also saw a magpie earlier in the day for the first time in ages.

We had seen a couple of 2CV Citroens during the day and they were also camped there.  There are eight of them on a drive from Perth to Lake Argyle, mainly on dirt roads.  Mick was fascinated, as they are his favourite classic car.

We had a lazy rest of the afternoon and I completed another EPP unit.  I’m making great progress.

The highlight of the day was the township of Tom Price.