Karijini National Park

Put your palm flat against the rock. It is warm, even in the shade, and it is layered like the pages of a closed book. Thin bands of rust red, deep purple and dull grey run along the gorge wall, one on top of the next. Below you, somewhere out of sight, water drips into a pool. Welcome to Karijini, in the Hamersley Range of Western Australia's Pilbara region.

Those layers under your hand are banded iron formation. Geologists date these rocks to roughly two and a half billion years ago. That is more than half the age of the Earth itself. At that time, there were no plants on land and no animals at all. The seas held simple microbes. As those microbes released oxygen, iron in the water rusted and settled on the sea floor. Layer by layer, over immense spans of time, those deposits became the stripes you can see today.

Here is the first surprise. In a sense, you are looking at a record of the air we breathe. The oxygen that slowly built up in the ancient oceans and atmosphere left its signature in this iron. Much later, the land lifted. Rivers and seasonal floods then cut down through the old sea floor. They carved the deep, narrow gorges that make this park so different from the flat plains around it.

The name Karijini comes from the Banyjima people, and it refers to the Hamersley Range. The Banyjima, Kurrama and Yinhawangka peoples are the Traditional Owners of this country. Their connection to it reaches back tens of thousands of years. The park was first declared in the late 1960s under the name Hamersley Range National Park. It was renamed Karijini in the early 1990s, a change that recognised the people whose country this has always been.

The scale is hard to feel from the ground. The park covers more than six thousand square kilometres. That makes it one of the largest national parks in Western Australia. Most of it is open plateau. Rounded hills are covered in spinifex, a spiky native grass that grows in dense, pale gold clumps. Between them stand white-barked snappy gums and tall termite mounds, some higher than an adult person.

Then the ground simply opens. That is the second surprise for many first-time visitors. From the plateau, you often cannot see the gorges until you are almost at the edge. The land looks flat and dry. Then, a few steps on, a sheer drop falls away into shade, ferns and green water. The contrast between the hot red surface and the cool world below is the heart of the Karijini experience.

In the eastern part of the park lies Dales Gorge. A walking trail leads down to Fortescue Falls, where water steps down over terraces of layered rock. The ledges look almost like a staircase built by hand. A short walk upstream brings you to Fern Pool, which the Banyjima call Jubura. This place holds deep cultural meaning. Visitors are asked to swim quietly and calmly here, out of respect. In the other direction, a trail follows the gorge to Circular Pool, a round basin enclosed by tall walls.

Further west, the gorges grow narrower and deeper. At Oxer Lookout, a platform stands above the meeting point of four gorges: Weano, Red, Hancock and Joffre. Look down and you can see the separate channels joining far below. The walls drop in long straight lines, and the stripes of iron run across them like contour lines on a map.

Some of the walks in this western area are serious. In parts of Hancock and Weano Gorges, the trail becomes the creek bed itself. You may wade through cold water, climb over boulders, or brace against both walls in a narrow section often called the Spider Walk. At Handrail Pool, a metal rail helps visitors climb down into a deep, shadowed chamber. Signs in the park grade each trail by difficulty, and the hardest classes are for fit, experienced walkers only.

Water shapes everything here, and it can be dangerous. In the hot season, sudden storms can send flash floods racing through the gorges. The narrow walls give water nowhere to spread. Rocks are often slippery, and phone signal is limited or absent. Rangers close trails when conditions are unsafe, so it is worth checking with the visitor centre before you go down.

Speaking of the visitor centre, look closely at its shape. The building was designed with Traditional Owner input, and its long, angular form is said to represent a goanna, a large native lizard, moving through the country. Inside, displays share Banyjima, Kurrama and Yinhawangka stories alongside information about the park's plants, animals and geology. It is a good place to understand the land before you walk into it.

Keep your eyes open for wildlife. Rock wallabies sometimes appear on ledges at dawn and dusk. Red kangaroos and euros, a stocky kind of kangaroo, move across the plateau. Lizards bask on warm stone. In the gorges, listen for birds calling off the walls, where every sound carries and echoes. Above it all, on the park's edge, rises Punurrunha, also known as Mount Bruce. It is one of the highest peaks in Western Australia.

At night, Karijini changes again. There are very few lights out here, and the sky fills with stars down to the horizon. The rock gives back the day's heat for a while, then the air turns cool, sometimes cold in the winter months. Spinifex rustles in the wind. The silence is deep enough that you notice your own footsteps on the gravel.

So take one more look at the wall in front of you. Follow a single red band with your eye, from one side of the gorge to the other. It was laid down on a sea floor long before any living thing walked on land. As you climb back toward the plateau, notice how the air warms with every step. And notice how quickly the gorge disappears behind you, folded back into the flat red country, as if it had never been there at all.