To Kalbarri and beyond

Gosh this is a big state with a very looong coastline with not much between places. The scrub is short and at the moment quite uninteresting. We can see the beginnings of buds on the trees and it will likely be quite beautiful in a month or two.

Richard and I enjoyed the sunrise over Shark Bay before we had a quick breakfast and left. It is a long way into Monkey Mia so it was a long way back out to the highway. We drove to Eagle Bluff where it was VERY windy and threatening to rain. We still enjoyed views over the water on a boardwalk around the bluff.

Next stop was Shell Beach. This beautiful beach was shells, just tiny shells! Some 8m deep in parts. It was beautiful.

After having a lovely time on this beach we started the drive to Kalbarri only stopping to have a lunch at a rest stop. Here we saw the biggest motor home rig we had ever seen.

Kalbarri had 60-70km winds and after checking into the Gecko, our quirky hotel, we went to look at Natural Bridge, Red Bluff, and Island Rock. It had a beautiful boardwalk all along the cliff edge.

We watched the sunset from Natural Bridge before having drinks at Rachel and James’ unit and then dinner at the pub. Most of us choosing lobster mornay. It was delicious.

Our full day in Kalbarri was spent exploring the mighty Murchison River and the gorges just inland from the coast. We saw

• Natures Window
• Kalbarri Skywalk
• Z-Bend
• Ross Graham Lookout
• Hawkes Head

All of these blew us away with the sheer grandeur and beauty of red cliffs. Here where it was a little warmer we started to see the wildflowers bloom.

We had another late lunch sitting alongside the beach before climbing up to the lookout and watching the wild surf.

Our dinner that night was not quite as uneventful as I thought it would be. The Tavern that we rang and booked a table for eight simply said that they did not get the message because they don’t have the staff to listen to the messages. They said that we could not order as a group of eight as they had one chef and we would have to order 25 minutes apart. This was going to take a long time and essentially they just said we don’t have time for you go away. So we tried the local fish and chip shop which most were able to get a meal at except for us because they ran out of everything and had already turned off the grill so a third fish and chip shop was the next stop where we got a meal but on our way to Rachel and James we got abysmally lost and couldn’t find their place. We ended up all over town.