Karijini is one of Australia's great secrets: an otherworldly landscape hidden in the heart of the Pilbara, the mining region of north-west Western Australia. Here, the endless red spinifex plain suddenly splits open into deep, narrow gorges, carved over millions of years into iron rock that is among the oldest on Earth. At the bottom, far from the scorching sun, waterfalls, ferns and pools of cold emerald-green water await, looking impossible in the middle of the desert.
Exploring Karijini means literally going inside the earth: climbing down stairs and paths cut into the rock, wading rivers between hundred-metre red walls, swimming in pools like Fern Pool or Handrail Pool and peering over dizzying lookouts like Oxer Lookout, where four gorges meet. It's a serious, remote adventure —extreme heat in summer, no mobile signal and some trails of high difficulty—, but the reward is one of the most spectacular and least crowded landscapes in the country.
This guide prepares you for Karijini with concrete facts: how to get there from Perth, Tom Price, Newman or Paraburdoo airport, how much the vehicle pass and camping cost (in Australian dollars, verified July 2026), which gorges to see and how difficult they are, and how to do it safely. And we tell its story: that of the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga peoples, custodians of this Country for more than 20,000 years, for whom every gorge and every pool has sacred meaning.
Karijini is Country of the Banyjima (Banjima), Kurrama (Kurama) and Innawonga (Yinhawangka) peoples, who have lived in the Hamersley Range for more than 20,000 years. 'Karijini' is the Banyjima word for the range and means 'hilly place'. For these peoples, the gorges, waterfalls and pools —such as Fern Pool (Jubura), home of the Creator Serpent— are sacred sites, and their traditional land management with fire shaped today's vegetation. The arrival of European settlers and of iron mining, which made the Pilbara one of the richest mining regions in the world, transformed the area in the 20th century. The national park was created in 1969 (as Hamersley Range) and renamed Karijini in 1991. Its full story is told on the history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Few places on the planet let you look so deep into time as Karijini. The park's gorges are carved into banded iron formations that settled on the floor of a primitive ocean some 2,500 million years ago, when life on Earth was little more than bacteria and oxygen was only just beginning to build up in the atmosphere. Every red and grey stripe you see on the gorge walls is a record of that remote era, layer upon layer of iron oxide and silica.
Over aeons, those rocks were compacted, folded and lifted to form the Hamersley Range. Then patient rivers cut through the stone over millions of years, opening up the narrow, deep gorges that amaze visitors today. In places such as Hamersley Gorge, the folds of the Earth's crust lie exposed like waves of stone, an open book of geology for anyone who knows how to read it.
The same iron that makes Karijini so ancient and so red is also the reason for the wealth — and the transformation — of the Pilbara. Beneath this land lie some of the largest iron ore deposits in the world, the engine of Western Australia's economy. Karijini is therefore a place where deep geological time and present-day industry sit just a few kilometres apart.
Karijini is the living Country of three Aboriginal peoples: the Banyjima (Banjima), the Kurrama (Kurama) and the Innawonga (Yinhawangka), Traditional Owners of this part of the Pilbara. The word 'Karijini' itself comes from the Banyjima language and is their name for the Hamersley Range: it roughly means 'hilly place'. Archaeological evidence shows that these peoples and their ancestors have lived in the region for more than 20,000 years, adapting to an environment of extremes, from the scorching summer heat to the cold of winter nights.
Far from being an empty desert, for these peoples Karijini is a deeply cultural landscape. The gorges offered permanent water, shade and shelter; the spinifex plains provided game and plants; and traditional fire management — controlled burns carried out over generations — shaped the vegetation we see today, boosting the park's biodiversity. Every gorge, every pool and every outcrop has its name, its story and its place in a web of knowledge handed down from generation to generation.
Among the sites of greatest spiritual significance is Fern Pool, which the Banyjima call Jubura: a calm, shady pool where, according to their tradition, the Creator Serpent (Warlu or Barrimirndi) lives — the ancestral being that wound its way across the land, creating the rivers and gorges of the Pilbara. It is a women's place and a sacred site, so visitors are asked to swim quietly and respectfully. Recognising this sacred dimension is an essential part of visiting Karijini.
European contact with this region came in the mid-19th century. The explorer Francis Thomas Gregory travelled through the Pilbara in 1861 and named the range 'Hamersley' after one of his expedition's sponsors. His reports of grasslands suitable for livestock opened the door to pastoral settlement: over the following decades, European settlers set up huge sheep and cattle stations (pastoral stations) across the Pilbara.
As in the rest of Australia, the spread of the pastoral frontier came at a terrible cost to Aboriginal peoples. The occupation of land and water sources, the arrival of livestock that competed with native wildlife, disease and episodes of violence profoundly disrupted the lives of the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga. Many Aboriginal people ended up working on the stations — often in exploitative conditions and for tiny wages or none at all — which at the same time, in some cases, allowed them to stay on their Country and keep their connection to the land alive.
The Pilbara was also the setting for a milestone in the fight for Aboriginal rights: in 1946, hundreds of Aboriginal workers from the region's stations walked off the job in a historic strike (the Pilbara strike, or 1946 strike), demanding fair wages and better conditions. It was one of the first major collective actions by Aboriginal workers in Australia and an important forerunner of the civil and land rights movement of the following decades.
The 20th century changed the Pilbara forever. Although the existence of iron ore was known, for decades its export was banned. When that ban was lifted in 1960, an iron rush broke out: some of the largest deposits in the world were discovered and developed, and entire mining towns sprang up, such as Tom Price (1966), Paraburdoo and Newman, along with ports, private railways and gigantic open-cut mines. The Pilbara became the engine of Australia's export economy, with iron flowing mainly to Asia.
In the midst of that industrial boom, awareness also grew of the need to protect the extraordinary landscape of the gorges. The national park was established in 1969 under the name Hamersley Range National Park, to preserve the scenic heart of the range. In 1991, in a gesture of recognition towards the Traditional Owners, the park was renamed with its Aboriginal name: Karijini National Park. Over time it became the second-largest national park in Western Australia.
Today, mining and conservation coexist in the same region, not without tension. From the summit of Mount Bruce, for example, you can see both the age-old vastness of the range and the huge pit of an iron mine: two faces of the Pilbara. Mining expansion has also sparked conflicts over the protection of Aboriginal heritage, as was dramatically shown by the destruction of the sacred rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in 2020, an event that shocked Australia and reignited the debate on respect for First Peoples' sites.
Today's Karijini is at once a natural treasure, a sacred place and a booming adventure destination. The park is managed through agreements involving Western Australia's Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) and the Traditional Owners, in a model that seeks to combine conservation, respect for Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga culture, and the development of tourism. Karijini Eco Retreat, for example, has been linked to the involvement of the local Aboriginal community.
Every year, more travellers discover these gorges: they swim in Fern Pool and Handrail Pool, peer into the abyss from Oxer Lookout, climb Punurrunha and sleep under one of the starriest skies in the country. The annual Karijini Experience festival celebrates Aboriginal culture, art and food in the park itself, giving visitors the chance to get to know the place alongside its custodians.
Visiting Karijini responsibly means understanding that it is not just a spectacular landscape but a living Country. It means respecting sacred sites such as Jubura, swimming quietly where asked, leaving no trace, taking care of the scarce water and recognising that these red gorges — carved by time and inhabited by culture for millennia — belong, above all, to the peoples who named them. Exploring Karijini is a privilege: that of walking through one of the oldest and most sacred corners of the planet.
