Millstream Chichester National Park

We left Wittenoom just on 8am after a very sleepless night and were now on our way to Millstream Chichester National Park. 

The van was continually buffeted by quite strong winds funnelling down through the gorge. We could have driven over part of the road we came in on yesterday but decided to choose a different route past Mulga Park and Mt Florence stations. We drove beside the Tom Price railway for 28 km before turning onto the Pannawonica road for 18 km to the access road into the national park. This section of road and the 5 km into our campsite at the Stargazers campground were very ordinary with corrugations and rocky sections.

We chose this campground because it was generator free but later during the day we drove into the Miliyanha campground which we found to have a much nicer lookout and with newer facilities.

For the life us we cannot understand why national parks would provide better facilities so that people could run their generators. As a result, our planned four days stay turned into just two days.

It was also interesting to find out that the towns of Karratha, Roebourne and Dampier receive their water supply from this national park. 

Deep Reach Pool is part of the Fortescue river that runs through the park. It's very wide and also very deep and ideal for swimming providing you have some form of flotation device like a noodle. I was surprised to find that fishing was permitted and the area adjacent to the waterhole was surrounded with gas BBQ's, shade and toilets.

We visited the Millstream Homestead built-in 1920. 

The lease on the pastoral property was taken out in the 1800s at one stage there were over 20,000 sheep grazed here. 
A walking trail leaves the homestead and meanders through groves of date palms and huge paperbark trees. This whole area is covered by lovely fresh running streams and wetlands covered with water lilies. 

Our camp host Burnie suggested we take a trip out to Python Pool. Our original plan was to call in there on our way out of the park tomorrow. However, it was 19 km off the main road and absolutely nowhere to park the van so his advice was spot on.

All up it was a round trip of 116 km. The drive-in was spectacular with the sun in the right location and the hills covered in spinifex, with the added bonus of some speckled cloud adding to our photos.

Of course, the waterfall into the pool at the base of the cliffs was not flowing this late in the dry. However, we could only imagine how wonderful it is to see it like this.

On our return, we were lucky enough to witness one of the ore trains returning to Tom Price.