With so many gorges and walks to consider, you might be wondering if Joffre Gorge in Karijini National Park is worth visiting? I did too. It took me a while to get my head around the different gorges to visit, and after my recent visit, I’m sharing everything you need to know about this Karijini National Park walk and whether it’s worth your time.
You might be wondering various things like how long the walk takes, what you need to bring with you and how hard the walk will be as well. It’s all here in this guide.
1. Where is Joffre Gorge?
Joffre Gorge is located in Karijini National Park in the Pilbara Region of Western Australia. It takes a good 7 hours to drive here from Exmouth, or 15 hours from Perth. While it’s not easy to get to, this is by far one of the best national parks in Australia. Honestly, it is absolutely stunning here.
Located near to Karijini Eco Retreat, you could technically start the walk from here if you’re staying here. Otherwise you can drive to the Joffre Gorge car park and start it from there instead.
2. What makes Joffre Gorge special?
With six gorges open to the public in Karijini National Park, you might be wondering if Joffre Gorge is worth visiting? The answer is yes! This is a mind-blowing gorge and was easily the best swimming holes that we experienced in the park. While each gorge is incredible, this one is extra special.
The gorge is quite steep with a spectacular curved waterfall forming a spectacular natural amphitheatre that really is a sight to be seen. While you might not see any water flowing here if you’re visiting in season (April – September), there is something absolutely stunning about this incredible gorge that you need to put it on your list to visit.
3. Can you get to Joffre Gorge in a 2wd?
The majority of the road to Joffre Gorge is on a sealed road with a few hundred metres of driving on a gravel road. We were driving a Star RV motorhome and had no problems whatsoever (get 10% off your booking using our promo code LIS10). This road is suitable for all cars and doesn’t say it’s 4×4 only.
4. Is going to the Joffre Gorge lookout enough?
If you’re on a tight timeframe and don’t have enough time to see all of the gorges, you might be wondering if popping over to the Joffre Falls lookout will be enough. Truth be told, while the lookout is good, you really need to go to the bottom of the gorge to properly experience it. And yes, this is one of those gorges that really is incredible!
5. How long does the walk take to walk down to the bottom?
You may have read other articles about Joffre Gorge walk is a steep climb, but when we visited recently, there is now a metal staircase to get down to the bottom. I am afraid of heights and I managed this walk, especially as Steve (my husband) walked in front of me. I didn’t really worry too much at all about getting down as the staircase is in stages so it’s not like you have to walk down one long ladder.
It took us about 30 minutes from the car park to walk down to the bottom of the gorge, and that was us stopping a lot to take photos because it was is amazing.
6. What is the walk actually like?
This is a class four walk which is regarded as a hard walk. It’s not particularly hard as there is now a staircase in place. Anyone could complete this (with care obviously) and we saw families down here. As you leave the car park, you’ll start walking on the top of the gorge where you’ll see it from the top of the natural amphitheatre. We stopped multiple times to take it in as we didn’t go to the lookout first.
Within about 10 minutes, you’ll come to the staircase which you’ll need to walk down. There are spots to stop if you want to (we saw a guy reading a book here). It then takes about five minutes to walk to the bottom of the gorge.
When you get to the bottom, you’ll be faced with a pool in front of you. You can then scale the rocks to walk to either the narrow gorge to swim through or on the other side to go to the amphitheatre.
We walked over to the narrow gorge section and stripped off into our swimmers. It wasn’t a difficult walk on the rocks to get there.
7. How much swimming will you need to do?
You can swim through the gorge pools which takes about 10 minutes to swim to the end to an island in another amphitheatre. This gorge narrows during the swim but it is so incredible, it will really take your breath away.
During this swim, you’ll come to some weeds before the island which actually freaked me out a little, but we didn’t go to the end of the island because we didn’t have any floaties on us and it is a longer swim than we wanted to do. It also didn’t feel right to go to the end, we felt like that area didn’t want people there if that makes sense?
You’ll see loads of massive spiderwebs on the rock walls but we didn’t actually see any spiders here. The water is cold, but when we went there was a little pocket of sunshine and a little spot to stop and take a rest between the long swim.
8. Bringing cameras/phones
You can of course bring your camera or iPhone into Joffre Gorge! We actually only brought our iPhone and Insta360 in because we didn’t know how much swimming would be involved. But, you can easily leave your belongings on the side of the gorge while you go for a swim. You won’t really be swimming that far to be out of sight of it and you probably won’t see a lot of people down there anyway.
If you want to take photos on the swim through the narrow gorge, you’ll need to bring a waterproof case for your camera/phone.
9. What else to bring
Floaties – we had read about floaties in other guides and they are right! Bring a pool noodle or floatie to support you on the swim through the gorge.
Fly net – you’ll definitely need a fly net when walking down to the gorge. It’s not as intense the more you go down into the gorge, but you definitely need one when coming to Karijini.
Water – you’ll be in this gorge for at least 2 hours so bring enough water with you.
10. Safety info you need to know
As with all the Karijini national park gorges, they can become very dangerous when it’s raining because of flash flooding. If it’s raining when visiting, don’t go down into the gorge or leave immediately if you’re already there when it starts.
We did see families down in this gorge, but be careful on the staircase as you would on any other hiking trail in Australia.
11. Where to stay when visiting Joffre Gorge
The best place to stay near Joffre Gorge and Joffre Falls is at Karijini Eco Retreat which you can see from the car park. You can either walk in from the Retreat or park up at the Joffre Falls car park instead. We planned our visit to do the following:
Day 1: Arrive from Exmouth road (we stayed in Cheela Plains Station Stay) and visit Hammersley Gorge. Stay in Tom Price that night.
Day 2: Visit Joffre Gorge and stay at Karijini Eco Retreat
Day 3: Visit Knox Gorge and Dales Gorge, stay at Dales Campground
12. More Karijini National park guides to read
Check out these Karijini National Park guides to help you plan your trip to this incredible national park.
- 10 Tips for Visiting the Amazing Knox Gorge in Karijini National Park WA
- 12 Tips for Visiting Joffre Gorge Karijini National Park WA
- 13 Tips for Visiting Hamersley Gorge, Karijini National Park WA
- 7 Tips for Visiting Dales Gorge in Karijini National Park WA
- Ultimate Guide for Exploring Karijini National Park
