Adam Monk Photo Tours

Spa Pool Hamersley Gorge, Karijini National Park

This image was shot on my last trip to the Pilbara in the middle of last year, Spa Pool is a small rock pool (about the size of a big spa) in Hamersley Gorge which is part of Karijini National Park.  A lot of visitors to the park skip Hamersley Gorge since you have to drive quite a way outside the park to get there.  It looks inviting doesn’t it?  Like it would be nice to sit in, as the name suggests?  I have seen people swim in Spa Pool… Briefly. It’s very very cold.

This image was shot in the early pre-sunrise light of dawn, so there was no sunlight bouncing around causing havoc with the shadows.  At that time of day the light is still directional as the eastern part of the sky (where the sun is about to rise) Read the rest of this entry »

Another image from my favourite gorge in one of my favourite places, Hamersley Gorge Karijini National Park.  This image was shot in the early morning before the sunlight enters the gorge and burns out all the colours in the rocks and the water.  Because Hamersley Gorge is outside the main part of the Karijini National Park, not only does it receive less visitors, but they also arrive much later,  so few people see this spectacular gorge in the most beautiful light of pre sunrise or twilight.

I know a secret little campsite nearby, so I can get there very early in the morning and I usually have this gorge to myself (and the birds and wallabies) for many hours before the first visitors arrive for the day.  This feels like an enormous privilege, one I enjoy immensely.

This image shot on the Hasselblad H5D-50 with the HCD 28mm Lens

Karijini National Park is one of the true gems of Western Australia, or the world really.  It’s like nowhere else on Earth I have ever been, especially Hamersley Gorge, which is the place that visitors to Karijini often miss because it’s outside of the park and requires a considerable drive to get there.  That’s a shame really, since I think it’s probably the most beautiful gorge in a National Park full of beautiful gorges.  Hamersley Gorge is the location where the age of the rocks and the folded layers in the Earth are most pronounced and visible, it’s where I feel most strongly the brevity of human existence.

Shot on the Hasselblad H5D-50 with the 28mm lens, very early in the morning.

Another image from Rudell River National Park in the Central Pilbara Region, this one from the ridge just outside the Desert Queens Bath, a magic waterhole hidden away within the National Park (coming up in another post).  This was shot at sunrise across the plains into the light, which provides the glowing halo around the spinifex plant.

Shot with the Hasselblad H5D-50 and the 28mm lens.

Something a bit more local, from my quick trip to the Pilbara region last year.  This Image from Rudell River National Park, an amazingly isolated National Park in the Central Pilbara Region of WA, right on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert.  In fact, Rudell River National Park is WA’s largest and most isolated National Parks, and considering how isolated the whole of WA is that is really saying something.

This image is a very simple one of a couple of Ghost Gums in the twilight afterglow, it’s a 2 minute exposure, which is the practical limit for the Hasselblad H5D-50 that I borrowed for the trip (the H4D was having a holiday in Sweden).  If you look very closely you can see the faint pink clouds in the background.

This image was shot just on the way out of the Desert Queens Bath campsite a few minutes after sunrise.  If you click on the image you will be able to see more detail of the track leading in at the bottom of the ridge.  Rudell River National Park is extremely isolated and you need to be pretty self sufficient and confident of your vehicle and driving skills, it’s also stunningly beautiful, especially in the early morning and evening when the soft light makes the hard country of the Pilbara look more gentle, soft even…  It’s not.

This image was shot on the Sony A7-r and is a 20 odd image stitch

Eagle Rock Pool is a magic little waterhole not far outside Newman in the Central Pilbara Region of WA.  It’s a place I had heard talk of from locals for many years, so on my recent trip to the Pilbara I thought it was time to go and have a look.

Although I have current topographical maps, and even a GPS navigator, the track to Eagle Rock Pool seemed to have vanished.  I drove past the location where the GPS told me the turn off should be 3 times, before finally concluding that the track had actually gone…  Never one to give up easily I kept going up the road a few km til I came to a fire break that ran in approximately the right direction, and turned down that.  After a few km of bone jarring driving the fire break crossed an overgrown track, which my GPS navigator told me was the one I was looking for.  So off I went.

The track bumped along in the right direction nicely for miles and miles, until I was a couple of kilometres from my destination (according to the GPS), when suddenly the track ended in a huge windrow pushed up by a bulldozer, and a railway track… That wasn’t on the map either…  Lacking other options I followed the railway track , which was headed in more or less the right direction, until I ended up at the biggest iron ore mine processing and outloading facility I have ever seen!  That was a little intimidating I must say, lots of guys in reflective vests and hard hats looking strangely at me.

After lots of discussion over two way radios, and talk of being “escorted” off the facility, a friendly bloke in a ute (wearing a reflective vest and hard hat) turned up to do the “escorting”.  Apparently that’s the rule, that although I found my way onto the site, I wasn’t allowed to find my way back out…  In case I pinch some iron ore I guess, or a big monster machine squashes me…

When I mentioned Eagle Rock Pool to my escort, he said, “Sure, I can take you there”.  So off we went, all around this enormous scar on the landscape, all red and bleeding with no trees left.

Anyway, after another half hour of driving on mine-site tracks he led me to the other end of the track I had been following in the first place, the one that had been cut off by the mining operation and the railway, and left me there to make my own way.  I arrived finally just after sunset, about 2 hours after I thought I would get there.

The next morning I went for a walk with the Hasselblad H5D-50 that I had borrowed, as my H4D-60 was in for service (in Sweden I mean) and found the below image, which makes it all worth it really.