Inside Karijini: A perfect electric drive through an ancient land

In 2015, a headline in Conde Nast, perhaps the trendiest of travel magazines, said ‘Electric Car Road Trips are the next big thing’. Ten years later, here in outback Western Australia, my fellow grey nomads still look quizzical or dismissive, at best curious, when you join a conversation about cars, costs and distances – what else would you talk about on these open roads?

Watching your first sunset with a bunch of other tourists at Joffre Gorge, just 5 minutes walk from your glamping tent, you are just grateful to have this view.

All the way from Cheela Plains I have had a Bangla folk song buzzing in my head:

গ্রামছাড়া ওই রাঙা মাটির পথ আমার মন ভুলায় রে। That red earth path out of the village is making me forget myself, says the refrain.

If you are driving an EV, you are most likely to enter Karijini from the western side, having fully charged up at Tom Price. Your first lookout, Mount Sheila (pictured above), its table-flat top surrounded by memorial stones, invites a contemplative silence. Makes you appreciate the silence of your car, without an engine that roars or heats up!

If, like us, you have booked at Karijini Eco Retreat, back your car into the driveway of your glamping tent and enjoy your expansive back-yard all the way to the horizon.

It is hard not to gush when you talk about Karijini. Even its name is sweet on your tongue, as if belonging to some fairy-tale princess in an exotic land. Use a little imagination (we grown-ups like to call it planning) and just like that fairy tale, Karijini will let you into her magic.

Fully charged up at Tom Price, incidentally at 747 metres elevation, the ‘top town’ in Western Australia, we rolled along 80 km of beautifully sealed, mostly flat roads, into the National Park, with more than 300 km still in the tank.

With one exception (Hamersley), the gorges and pools that draw visitors to Karijini are within 50 kilometres of our accommodation. So, there is plenty of range to take in all the main attractions.

You park on the top of the gorges, then walk to the look-out. Or if you are like me, you will want to walk down the marked and graded trails, into the waterways below. “Whatever else you do, do NOT miss the Fern Pool,” says a lovely attendant at the Karijini Visitor’s Centre.

The only problem is, every one of the gorges is mesmerising. Even the carparks provide photo opportunities, like anthills as large as our car and taller than basketball players, and tiny Spinifex Pigeons which won’t stay still for a photo!

And then there are the walks, the edgiest down into Weano, which goes from level 4 to level 5 as you scramble and wade and when necessary swim and eventually squeeze between rock walls to the red stone and grey-green waters at the bottom.

And before you know it, your three days are gone. And you realise that Hamersley Gorge will take more time and planning.

Having gone to most of the places that any car may go (and beyond where only feet will do) in Karijni National Park, we returned to Tom Price with more than 20 per cent still in the battery.

With better planning or less time spent taking photos, it might have been possible to get to Hamersley Gorge – the road is partly unsealed but accessible without 4WD in most seasons.

But after two full days and three starry nights at Karijini, we are booked into Exmouth, the gateway to yet another famed West Australian National Park.

Sadly, an EV cannot help with time management!

See Hurry’s earlier post: “Good luck with your EV in outback WA!” On the slow road to stunning Karijini