Spirited away
In the Karijini National Park in remote Western Australia, Jonathan Camí discovered a sacred Indigenous location.
Tasked with capturing the scenic gorges, pristine waterfalls and rugged landscape of the Karijini National Park in remote Western Australia, Jonathan Camí discovered a sacred Indigenous location that has resonated with him ever since. Words and photographs by Jonathan Camí.
In the heart of the Pilbara region, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, there is a harsh and unforgiving land of mostly red dirt and prickly grass – a land that looks like it was shaped by a giant being that had scratched the surface with enormous claws to reveal the ground beneath.
This place, the Karijini National Park, is a vast and hilly wilderness in the Hamersley Range of Western Australia, which covers more than 6,000 square kilometres. It is the traditional home of the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga peoples, and ‘Karijini’, meaning ‘hilly place’, is the Banyjima name for the Hamersley Ranges.
Arriving at Karijini National Park, my first impression is not what I expected. Having been commissioned as a photographer to capture the landscape, I was told I’d be travelling to one of the most beautiful parks in the country, but sitting outside my tent, exhausted after the long trip, and taking in the view of a few termite mounds and a scattering of gum trees, I didn’t feel very excited.
Perhaps the odyssey from the east coast had taken a toll on my mood. To get to this remote area of Western Australia from Sydney, I had to fly to Perth and wait a couple of hours for the next flight – a single-corridor plane, mostly occupied by burly men – heading to Paraburdoo, a mining town between Broome and Perth.
At Paraburdoo’s dusty airport, surrounded by fly-in fly-out miners, all wearing steel-toe boots and fluorescent clothing, I felt conspicuous in my black attire. I picked up my four-wheel-drive mining truck (the only option available), preset for the minefields,