Kalbarri and Cervantes

The amazing Nature's Window

Two nights in Kalbarri – a quick trip to the national park, a spot of walking to the window on nature and then on to the next stop.  That was the plan and unfortunately with the car ready soon that was the way it had to be.  Who knew that Kalbarri was so lovely, the beaches so fantastic, the national park so amazing.  We needed more time here – but we didn’t have it.  This was our 36 hours in Kalbarri.

Beaches and Sunsets

 

Kalbarri felt like a seaside resort town like we are used to on the eastern seaboard coast.  I think that this is because here they don’t talk about the wet and the dry, here the tourists come all year round, the population feels more settled and stable.  But that could just be my feeling, I don’t have a lot of evidence to back it up as we were in and gone so quickly.

We didn’t get time to even swim at the beaches but they looked stunning.  We were lucky enough to score two amazing sunsets with very different colours and textures.  Our second sunset we enjoyed on the point overlooking the river mouth eating a pizza from a local shop (mmmm things can’t get much better than that).  But wait they did – we also scored a moonrise over the town of Kalbarri as it was a full moon.

 

Kalbarri National Park

Kalbarri National Park was a surprise.  We had heard about the window on nature in a our West Australian tourist brochures, which was one of the key reasons we had stopped here. But we hadn’t realised how large and how diverse this national park is.  There are 14 different sites inland and along the coast.  As we only had a day we concentrated on one small part of the inland region of the park with its amazing gorges and rocks.  

We started with the iconic Natures’ Window but only walked a very small part of the 8km loop hike (enough to encompass the Loop Lookout and some amazing rocks and a shallow cave).  As we had seen further north the rocks were red and gorgeous.  The rivers here have been carving these gorges for up to 400 million years.  Nature’s window was every bit as amazing as all the brochures show it to be.  Having more time in Kalbarri we would have loved to spend a sunset there.

  

View from a cave!

After a picnic lunch at the West Loop Lookout (the truck picking up the sewerage prevented us from hanging around the Nature’s Window picnic ground) we headed off to another gorge with the appealing name of Z Bend.   We were well rewarded for our short walk to the lookout, this gorge was truly spectacular.

 

WA Wildflowers

Since Karajini we have been seeing some of WA’s famous spring wildflowers.  Unfortunately we are late in the season for the most spectacular displays (and we don’t have time to go in search of some of the best places).  But Kalbarri National Park put on quite a display for us.  There aren’t carpets here as you can see in some of the brochures but continuously interspersed in the scrub and bush are an amazing array of flowers.  I have inserted a couple of the standouts for us here, but I think the array and variety of flowers on this side of Australia deserves it own blog post – so stay tuned for a page of flowers coming your way in the (hopefully) near future.

Pelicans and a really Pink Lake

Kalbarri had two final treats in store for us.  Everyday on the foreshore volunteers come down and give a talk and feed the pelicans.  For us this was a great way to start the day and unfortunately our journey south.

A short drive south of Kalbarri is the famous pink lake.  We weren’t quite sure what to expect but had been told at our lodgings that it was looking really pink at the moment.  They were absolutely right, we had expected a pinkish tinge to the water a bit of a hue,  what we got was full on pink:

The Pinnacles

Cervantes Beach

What else do you need after you have moored you boat in the sea - your bicycle of course.

Getting to see the pinnacles was really important for our “Are We There Yet” boy (Mr L).  We had seen the NSW pinnacles at our first stop on this journey in Merimbula so he had been waiting a long time for these ones.  With our car due to be picked up the next day I hadn’t worked out how we were going to manage fitting them in our schedule (David and I were working out if we would have to come back up  from Perth).  But then the rebuilt car failed its first drive test so they needed another day.  Luck was on the side the Pinnacles (maybe less so regarding the car – but that had been the case for awhile).  After our lovely morning with the pelicans and stopping at pink lake we decided to stay overnight in Cervantes and see the Pinnacles in the morning.  We had a quick stop at Cervantes beach and a play at the nifty park next to the caravan park and then set off.

The Pinnacles are a true wonder of nature even more so because scientists don’t know how they were formed. We started at the discovery centre which was up there with one of the best we have seen.  The interpretive hall had lots of great information on the pinnacles and surrounding dessert.  It also had a great gift shop with some really nice pieces from local artists (we added to our growing pile of Christmas gifts).  To see the pinnacles there is a 4km one way drive and a 1.2 km signed walk.  These make their way through the thousands of ancient limestone pillars of all shapes and sizes.  We were truly amazed by the sheer number of the pillars they went on and on and on.  A bit like our journey maybe - onward to Perth and a hopefully happy reunion.

 

 

The best place in Australia for a game of hide and seek?