Yardie Homestead to Coongan Long Pool

On the way to Tom Price we overnighted at the House Creek Rest Area which is well placed between Exmouth and Karijini National Park. It's a free camp and we've been there twice before. It's a busy place but there's room for everyone.

Tom Price is a mining town, as are most towns in the Pilbara. This means besides being full of miners their services are very good and the water excellent. They even have a Coles Supermarket, hardware store, a pharmacy, 3 coffee shops and a clothing store. We were pretty excited to do some grocery shopping and have mornos before we headed off into Karijini National Park.

We've been to Karijini in 2005 and 2012, and we were looking forward to revisiting this spectacular park again. It's changed since our last visit, and since 2024 all roads within the park are sealed, so no dirt driving to visit the spectacular gorges.

Australia’s hottest town!

Because the town is full of miners earning big money, and the fact that Marble Bar is in the middle of nowhere, everything is expensive. $50 for steak and chips or lamb shank and mash at the pub. The night we went, everyone besides a few tourists (us) were dressed in their High Vis clothing, still dirty from their day at work. There were also quite a few young Irish and French backpackers, also employed by the mines. This seems strange to us, but obviously it works for the companies running the mines.

The publican was a woman who didn’t pull any punches. She yelled at one young Irish guy and sent him to the back of the beer garden to smoke his cigarette. It was a bit like your Mum telling you off and sending you to your bedroom.

We weren’t going to be anywhere near a town for a few days, so got some supplies from the General store. $9.00 for 9 mushrooms, and $11.00 for a kilo of bananas! At least they had fresh baked bread.

Like many places in country or outback Australia, these shops are owned or run by Asians who want to create a new life for themselves here and are encouraged to go bush, rather than settle in the major cities. This is great for the small communities, but Marble Bar, the hottest town in Australia? Temperatures get to 50 degrees C in summer and the poor Korean woman we talked to said she’d been here for a year already and wasn’t looking forward to summer with the heat rash, flies and sweat.

The wackiest situation we’ve seen was a family of 4 Japanese looking for a tree change. They moved from Tassie (where the Dad was a doctor) and were running the general store/fuel station in Yuendumu, an Indigenous community 300 km from Alice Springs. The young son told us they’d been there for 6 months and he hadn’t been out of the shop yet. Nowhere we’d want to spend any time (check the news on what happened recently in Yuendumu).

Free camping by the river — cows, grass, and firewood smuggled from NSW! Free of bark which is a requirement of the WA border control.

Not the best river/gorge camping here, but close to the second best!