Perth to Darwin - Days 7-10 - Kilbarri National Park

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Our next destination is Kilbarri National Park where a huge river gorge meets the sea.  Our drive will be a bit over 300 kms.  We departed early with a list of stops along the way.   The holiday park was empty this morning...only a few campers and cars parked at holiday cabins...the end of Easter week seems to mark the beginning of the winter season.  Things will pick up again in July when the wildflowers start to bloom.

We chose the coast road and have decided that traveling at 90 kph (55 mph) is a good plan; helps with the fuel economy and we don't need to go fast.  When we hit the unsealed roads that will drop to 60 kph or less.  It was a short drive to the village of Port Gregory where we viewed a peaceful harbor, a small lobster (they call them crawfish here) fleet, and some nice buildings from the late 1800's.

Then it was on to Geraldton, a city of 40,000 and the LAST big development between here and Darwin.  The city is thriving with a well established mining and fishing industry.  We made use of the stop to visit another big grocery store where we purchased lots of canned and dry goods for the next four weeks.  From here on out it will be small, small villages with even smaller markets.  Gasoline prices are starting to climb as well with a gallon running about $8 USD.

The city has a grand waterfront with loads of greenspace and lots of childrens' play area.  At the visitor center we got a map of the street art trail and went for a walk.  The city is famous for its wall murals and street art...ala the Melbourne alleys.

We had lunch at a roadside rest area and then pushed on to the Pink Lake near Kalbarri.  The lake is truly pink and even in the high sun of the day the color was vivid.  The "pink" come from the algae that exist in the highly alkaline water.

We arrived at Kalbarri a short time later.  Kalbarri is the site of the famous Batavia shipwreck of 1639 and presumably resulted in the first European settlement in Australia.  It is rich in aboriginal lore and of course home to Kalbarri National Park.  We finally got to use some of our free room nights accumulated from Hotels.com.  We have about 50 saved up from the last two world travel club tours.  We used four of them to get an executive sweet at a time share resort.  Our four night stay would have cost over $600.  We got all four nights for $12 USD in taxes.

We chose the highlands for our first day in the park and drove the 35kms to the park entrance.  The landscape changed quickly and there were lots of controlled burns. 

Our first stop was the viewpoint where we had a grand panorama of the city and coastline below.

This is a realtively new park, established in the 60's and beautifully maintained.  The roads are all paved and there are sealed walkways to most of the viewpoints.  There are lots of trails as well and we picked a few for our day's adventure.

Our first stop was at Nature's Window and we chose the less traveled route along the edge of the cliff.

The "window" is a natural phenomenon and a big tourist site.  Even though you must traverse a few rocks it doesn't stop many from getting this far for the famous photo.

We continued along the rim for a while more enjoying the views of the river on boths sides far below.

Next up was Z-Bend, names for the way the river winds through the gorge.  The trail to the river far below is a Class 4.  That meant lots of rocks and ledges to maneuver and ladders to climb.

There seems to be a fox and ferral cat problem...not rabbits...and there are plenty if signs warning about poison bait traps.

The trail was easy for us, although there were a few places that required a bit of caution.

Climbing down through this chute was fun and there were ladders at the end to take us even lower into the canyon.

The last big effort was traversing down this huge rock wall.  The trail wound through and over the boulders and there were a few places that required us to find handholes to lower us down to the next rock.

The reward was the river and this great swimming hole.  We stripped down to our skivvies and enjoyed the cool water.  Bobbie took off her bra and the folks around seemed to handle that well.

After our rest and swim we climbed back up the same trail and then over to the lookout far above.

At the top we realized that there was probably a guy with a telephoto lens getting good shots of the folks in the swimming hole far below...smile.

It was hot and the flies where relentless.  The nets we bought worked fine...although we did look a bit geeky walking around with them on.  We went back to the resort to enjoy the pool, air-conditioning, and the rest of the day.

On our second day we toured the coastline sites.  Lots of great lookouts and views of the coastline.  It was like seeing Utah meet the Pacific Ocean...sorta.

This company is called Hippy Vans and they rent "colorfully" painted vans on the cheap.  This one of course caught my eye.

We walked a few of the trails along the rim taking in the views.  It was a really windy day with gusts up to 30 mph.

Our last day in Kalbarri was a stay-at-home day.  The pool got some use, we caught up on laundry and reading.  I worked on another art piece.  Tomorrow we head north to Monkey Mia and the dolphins!