Paddling in Karlamilyi National Park

Karlamilyi National Park sits in the western edge of the Great Sandy Desert, east of Newman in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is the largest and most remote national park in the state — 1.

3 million hectares of spinifex plains, desert dunes, salt lakes, and sandstone country cut through by the Rudall River. Water here is not a given; it is the reason everything lives where it does. The Rudall River is the spine of the park's water.

It runs the length of the park and, in a landscape this arid, its permanent pools and waterholes are the anchors for any paddling visit.

Desert Queen Baths is the most-referenced of these — a bush campsite within the park and the natural staging point for time on the water. Tjingkulatjatjarra Pool is another named waterhole in the park.

Kalkan Kalkan Soak is noted as a stop along the river corridor. These are not continuous paddling runs; they are discrete pools in a desert river system, and the water between them may not connect except after significant rain.

Rainfall is erratic and falls mainly between December and May. What that means practically: water levels and pool extent shift dramatically with the seasons, and conditions that make paddling possible one year may not exist the next.

Plan around recent rain, not the calendar alone. Getting here requires serious preparation. There are no facilities in the park. Access runs via the Talawana Track and Kintyre Track — remote four-wheel-drive routes where self-sufficiency is not optional.

Fuel and limited supplies are available at the Martu communities of Punmu and Parnngurr inside the park, but visitors should not rely on them. A trip to the Rudall River waterholes realistically takes ten days or more to do properly.

This is desert paddling in one of Australia's most isolated places. The water is quiet, the pools are clear, and the river red gums along the banks mark where the river has carved something lasting out of the sand.

Come prepared for the country, not just the paddling.