Kalbarri
I got up early and left Geraldton, after figuring out what other town in that area I could stay in to break up the driving on the way back down to Perth (there’s not a hell of a lot of choice in that section). Heading North to Kalbarri and the national park there. The day was quite hot and very humid, the most humid day I can remember since I was in Hong Kong, which was quite some time ago. I did get a campsite for the night (all the hostels in WA are booked for Easter it seems), and then explored the park. The main feature of the park is the river gorge with it’s red rock canyons. On my way there from the town you drive inland through vegetation like this.
And that’s all you see in every direction. Lonely, desolate area this. In spring it’s full of wildflowers apparently, this time of year just flies. As soon as I stepped out of the car for the first time since driving inland from the town of Kallbarri I was swarmed by flies immediately, after several attempts of applying my heavy duty insect repellent I concluded that it kept a significant percentage of the flies away, but only for a short period of time. I got to the most accessible (meaning I didn’t drive 25km on a bad gravel road to get to) viewpoints of the gorge and while it looks cool enough, standing there sweating in the heat and humidity and being constantly bothered by large amounts of flies is not my idea of fun. My original plan of hiking one of the trails around the gorge was killed off then and there.
Instead of hiking, I went to the other part of the national park which is back on the coast. It was cooler here, the coastline has some pretty cool cliff formations and from one of these I saw about 20 dolphins, pretty cool.
Another part of the coast has some very red rock formations by some very nice white sandy beaches. In amongst the rock pools there I saw more crabs than I’ve ever seen before, both in different kinds and total numbers, this one was eating a prawn…
After seeing the majority of the lookout points I headed to the beach at the mouth of the river for a cooling swim, laid on the beach for a while afterwords and then walked the whole length of town, sat on a sand dune and watched the sunset. Watching the sunset is great entertainment, there’s never two the same. Tonights version wasn’t as good as the pervious nights awesomeness but watching an orange ball of fire sink slowly over the horizon with waves crashing on the beach below isn’t too bad of an experience.
The town here, and indeed the caravan park I’m staying in, is full of mainly Australian families on holiday for the Easter long weekend and the river was full of people kite surfing, fishing, jet skiing, sailing and just about any other kind of watersport or beach related activity you can think of! I managed to get the next couple nights of the holiday weekend booked at another campground farther North, I’m slightly surprised at this fact, I guess most Australians are traveling in groups and have very large tents/caravans so just me sleeping in my car is easy enough to accommodate though all the hostels are booked out all weekend.
Tags: Australia, Travel
Adam
I love dolphins!
I’ve been reading backwards and catching up. You’ve taken some awesome pictures, and I really must compliment your writing style. It’s impressive. All that book reading rubbing off on ya now?
what book reading?