Wondering if Knox Gorge in Karijini National Park is worth visiting? If you’re on a Perth to Broome road trip and considering the seven hour plus detour to the national park, you might be wondering which Karijini gorge to visit and whether you should put Knox Gorge on your list.
Having visited there myself, I’m going to share everything you need to know about the spectacular panorama on the gorge floor as well as all the things I wish I knew before visiting, ie can you bring a camera etc.
1. Where is Knox Gorge
Located in Karijini National Park, Knox Gorge is situated near to Karijini Eco Retreat and Joffre Gorge. It’s best to visit this gorge when if you’re staying at the Eco Retreat so you can save on fuel. We planned our trip to visit both Knox Gorge and Joffre Gorge while we were staying there before we went onto Dales Campground the following day.
To get to Karijini National Park, you need to drive 7h30m from Exmouth or it’s a 15 hour drive from Perth. It’s a long drive but totally worth it and in my mind, it’s easily one of the best national parks in Australia.
2. What makes Knox Gorge special?
While many people miss Knox Gorge because it has been said that there is no swimming pools here, there are infact a couple pools (abeilt one is small), but the walk is so much more than a swimming hole.
As the favourite gorge I visited, it is honestly jaw dropping from the moment you reach the gorge floor. The views are so incredible, you would be crazy to miss out on this incredible Karijini National Park walk.
Expansive shelves tower over you to the point that you’ll need to stop every few minutes to take in the incredible red cliffs and wonder whether you are still in fact in Australia.
3. Can you get to Knox Gorge in 2wd car, motorhome or campervan?
The big question I had about the entire trip to Karijini National Park is whether you can come here in a normal car, aka a 2wd, or even a 2wd motorhome or campervan. Considering we were diving our amazing Star RV van (you can get 10% off your booking by entering the promo code ‘LIS10‘) we very nearly booked a tour from Tom Price because we were unsure how easy it would be to get around.
Turns out you’ll be fine in a 2WD, even to Hamerlsey Gorge too. The only gorge was tried to get to and turned around was to Kalamina Gorge. The road was just a bit too corrigated for us and there’s hills involved too so we just stopped after about 5 minutes and turned around.
The drive to Knox Gorge is fine and you could technically do both Joffre Gorge and Knox Gorge in one day as they are both near each other.
Read: 12 Tips for Visiting Joffre Gorge in Karijini National Park
4. How long is the walk
The walk took us 1h30m to walk to the end and just under 1 hour to walk back up to the Knox Gorge car park. To be honest, it could easily take you about 30 minutes to walk back up as it doesn’t feel that far. We just spent most of our time stopping to take photos and take in the spectacular views.
You’ll know when you come to the end of the walk as you’ll see the famous view of the crack in the canyon with a chain at the bottom stopping you from going any further. It really is an incredible sight and if you turn around before, you’ll totally miss out on it.
5. How hard is the walk
The walk is a class 5 walk which means it is difficult and we were worried about how hard it was going to be. But, to be honest, it’s not that hard at all. The beginning of the walk will take you down a lot of rocks. Now this section you need to be careful because it’s not like Joffre Gorge which has a metal staircase. You’ll need to wear hiking boots for grip and just take it slowly, but it doesn’t feel dangerous. This section takes about 30 minutes at most to walk to the bottom of the gorge.
When you get to the bottom of the gorge, you can either turn left or right. Turn right to see a beautiful turquoise pool which is honestly just beautiful. It’s only like two minutes to walk to it. Once you’ve finished seeing it, turn back on yourself back and take the left walking track from where you climbed down the gorge.
You’ll then follow the class 5 blue markers which are easy to spot to find your way on the gorge floor. As the trail descends into the gorge, you won’t need to climb any rocks, it’s flat the whole way. You’ll then come to another beautiful pool and a path where you’ll need to walk on the rocks to get around, or you could swim it instead. If you swim, you’ll need to leave your stuff there before you get in which you won’t be able to keep an eye on as you’ll have a good 10 minutes of hiking to do yet.
The walk around the rocks is pretty easy but just follow other hikers and take it slowly. We didn’t see a lot of people in the gorge, but there were probably around 10 people or so (the least amount out of the four gorges we visited – Dales Gorge, Joffre Gorge, Hammersley Gorge and Knox Gorge).
When you walk around the rock walls you’ll then come to the end of the walk within about 10 minutes which is an incredible sight and will give you a true appreciation for nature to see an unusual slot canyon formation.
At the end, there is a little swimming spot which we saw a few people jump in here. We didn’t go in as we didn’t bring our swimmers (something we regret).
6. Visit Knox Lookout
You can visit Konx Lookout to see through the gorge but at the time of visiting it was closed. We did however see the Joffre Gorge lookout and I can say that although with that one you can see through the gorge, the lookout does not at all resemble the experience of being down there in person. You really need to walk down to appreciate the scale and beauty of this incredible national park.
7. What to bring with you
There are a few things you need to bring with you to Knox Gorge, here’s what you need to know.
Swimmers
I’ll start off by saying do not forget to bring your swimmers with you no matter what any other website tells you. There are three swimming holes you can take a refreshing swim in here, and I wish I brought mine to experience that feeling of floating in an insanely amazing gorge. At the time of visiting, the water in Karijini national park in general wasn’t too cold. We heard it can be so cold that people can get hyperthermia. That wasn’t the case when we visited in May.
Reef shoes
If you’re going to go for a swim, wear reef shoes as the rocks can be super slippery (well they were at Hammersley Gorge).
Hiking Boots
You’ll need to wear hiking boots to scramle down the inital section of the walk. While bushwalking experience is a bonus, you don’t need to have gone on a thousand hikes to do this walk. The awkard scrambling at the beginning is a bit of a pain, but you really need to take it slowly on the steepest paths.
Bring your camera
After visiting Hammerlsey Gorge and Joffre Gorge without a camera, we decided to bring ours down into this canyon and I’m so glad we did because you’ll be wanting to snap away the entire time. We met another tourist on our hike who was so upset she left her camera in the car because she didn’t think she could bring it in.
This is the problem with finding out information about Karijini National Park. The gorges are all so amazing, you’ll want to take photos, yet it’s hard to find out information about whether it’s OK to bring your camera in because of wondering if you’ll be wading through water.
You won’t need to wade through any water on this hike. We didn’t get wet at all. You can swim through one section rather than walk around the cliff walls, but we didn’t see one person do that. In all four gorges we went to, you could totally take your camera in for sure.
8. What time of day to visit
It has been said to visit either early morning or late afternoon to see the light come through Knox Gorge, but we visited around mid day and it was spectacular. The gorge system is so so beautiful, the deep chasm at the end of the walk is absolutely worth walking to in thie awe inspiring landscape. If you visit later in the day, make sure you start your way back to the car park
9. When not to visit
Do not visit any gorge in Karijini when it is raining or if it starts to rain, turn immediately back. This is because flash flooding can occur in minutes because there is nothing for the water to soak into. People have died in these gorges so please be very careful when visiting.
10. Other gorges to visit
Hancock Gorge is nearby and while we were so excited to visit this one and Weano Gorge, both were closed at the time of visiting. You’ll probably see a couple of gorges will be closed when you visit too, they are just working on the roads mostly and maintaining the tracks.
If you are thinking about visiting Wittenoom Gorge, it is illegal to do so and is has blue asbestos in it which is cancerous.
We also visited Joffre Gorge (pictured above) nearby which is absolutely incredible to swim through the gorge. It’s a must see that you won’t regret! Read our 12 tips for visiting Joffre Gorge before you go to avoid the mistakes we made.
Hamersley Gorge is a bit of a drive away, so make sure you visit here either first or last. We visited first as we were coming from Exmouth, so we did a day trip to Hamersley Gorge before staying in Tom Price for the night. Then we fuelled up and stayed in Karjini Eco Retreat to visit Joffre Gorge and Knox Gorge before staying at Dales Campground to visit Dales Gorge.
You could visit both Joffre and Knox Gorge on the same day, but we did them over two days instead.
More Karijini National Park Guides to read
If you’re looking for more tips for the incredible gorges to visit, check out our following guides.
- 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
