Located in the Pilbara mining region of Western Australia, Karijini National Park is one of Australia's most incredible regions. The amazing colours of natural minerals are displayed throughout the park, most noticably in it's beautiful gorges.
As stunning as it is, it’s not a place for the faint hearted. High cliffs, venomous snakes, falling rocks, flash floods and slippery rock ledges have unfortunately accounted for countless injuries and a number of lost lives over the years.
I captured this unique photo of a rarely accessed location deep in Karijini National Park on my second trip to the region, earlier this year.
Waking at 5am, I prepared my gear, met up with Geoff & Josh, 2 legendary guides from West Oz and drove together to the entrance of this gorge.
We hiked for an hour through the treacherous canyon slipping and sliding through cascades as we neared my target location.
We eventually arrived at a huge boulder that had fallen into the gorge, unfortunately it was blocking our path. The only safe way to pass was to climb on top of the boulder then abseil down.
I harnessed up, locked in and abseiled 6 metres directly down into the waterfall. Once I had landed and been safely secured to the canyon wall, I immediately saw this composition. It was not easy to setup my tripod and even harder to keep my camera gear dry with the water rushing through the narrow gorge, thankfully I had remembered to bring my dry bag along which made the job a little easier.
To the best of my knowledge this specific location has never been photographed by a professional so I was excited to capture a totally unique photo of one of Australia's hidden gems.
I took some time to perfect my composition and captured this stunning scene.
Once I was done, I packed up my gear, released myself from the canyon wall and began carefully walking, slipping and sliding further down the falls. As I neared the end, I dropped onto my backside and slid the rest of the way before launching off the final 6m high waterfall, free-falling and landing in the beautiful green pool below!
Thankfully it was so deep that I didn't even touch the bottom...
