Karijini National Park and Wittenoom

Tuesday September 27th we left Port Hedland and headed to Karijini National Park.  We stayed a night a Bea Bea Creek free camp then headed off again, calling into Wittenoom on the way.

 The Wittenoom Tragedy

The CSR mining and milling of blue asbestos at Wittenoom, Western Australia, is the greatest industrial disaster in Australia and is comparable to similar catastrophes such as Bhopal, Seveso and Minamato.
At Wittenoom thousands of workers and their families, visitors, tourists, consultants and Government officials were exposed to lethal levels of blue asbestos a thousand times higher than occupationally regulated at the time.

Mr Lang Hancock commenced mining blue asbestos at Wittenoom in 1938. 

During the 1970s Dr Janet Elder, Senior Chest Physician at the University of Department of Medicine at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, was horrified by the speed with which the new cases of mesothelioma and other asbestos-caused diseases were developing amongst the former Wittenoom workers. "The dreadful tragedy," she recalls, "was that so many of its victims were very young and very fit when they went there [Wittenoom]."

Now there are only a handful of people still living there who refused to leave when the government recommended it.  At the mines peak there were 20,000 people in the town.

Three photos of Wittenoom Ghost Town

                   
                              I found this poem on the internet - thought some might be interested in it.

Wittenoom
A melancholy little town
half dead and half alive
Polluted by a deadly waste
it struggles to survive

A mining town where workers came
from here and overseas
They never knew their lives were touched
by fatal lung disease

They toiled beneath a clear blue sky
through rains and through the heat
A town in deadly paradise
asbestos on their feet

Much later when the men grew sick
and then began to die
The company denied their claims
but knew it was a lie

In court they dragged the cases out
until the bitter end
and wives now widows went without
their lovers and their friends

The deadly dust lies everywhere
but some still struggle on
The pub is standing empty now
the petrol station gone

The miners ghosts are wandering
the silent lonely town
Their spirits haunt the empty streets
that they had once walked down

(C) 1995

On our arrival at Karijini National Park we booked into the Dales Campground.    Wednesday and Thursday we walked many km's down into the gorges along the bottom and up the other end. We walked Dales Gorge, Fortescue Falls, Fern Pool, Weano Gorge, Junction Pool Lookout, Oxer Lookout, Knox Lookout and Kalamina Falls Lookout.  By that time we were 'Gorged Out' so we had an easy afternoon Thursday. I found a few leg muscles that protested loudly because of all the climbing up and down!!!!

All photos below are different sections of Karijini National Park taken from in the gorges and from lookouts

A different way to have a shower!!!

Isn't he cute!!!!!

and the path goes up!!