We arrived at Kalbarri after a quite cold night but a reasonable nights sleep after the wind died down. On the way into Kalbarri we crested a hill and we were back into the wind again, we just can’t escape it at the moment. The morning temperature was 10.1 when I woke and I think we have aclimatised to the tropical conditions more than we expected as we felt cold. I even had my jumper on again!

One of the main reasons to visit Kalbarri was to walk the gorges in the national park. Utter disappointment as we arrived to find the whole national park is closed to the public from July to October. You can access it with tour operators still however if you want to pay all the extra $$’s, it seems a bit rude to me to have to pay over $100 to do the walks! Not sure why you can’t renovate the access or facilities and still have some access for the public? We had a look at the gorge lookouts at the other end of the park on the way in but they are just a drive to a lookout and one had a very short walk down to the river. We did spot another Micra Wicked Camper though and took a picture for Paul. The road is starting to be lined with all manner of wildflowers now that makes for a colourful drive.

Gorges lookout

Rooftop tent is as big as the car!

Wildflowers are starting to increase in numbers

The wildflower centre was closed to the public and when we arrived at Kalbarri the visitors centre was also closed as well. I did get a tank full of fuel at the BP though so something was open. Kalbarri looks a nice place with the Murchison river flowing through town and out to sea. The sea had a decent swell running and I don’t think there would be too much going out the channel till it calms a bit, it looked pretty wild, the jetski was enjoying it though. We found a fantastic snorkelling area at the Blue Pools where the reef protects the foreshore and it has some excellent holes and reef you could potter around in. Unfortunately it was blowing too hard and the water temperature required a steamer wetsuit so it was not going to happen today.

Blue Holes.

We drove around a few of the sights of Kalbarri and stopped for some lunch on the shore of the river outlet. We watched heaps of people fishing but nobody reeled anything in. We decided to go back out 10Km to the Murchison Station for camping tonight. Hardly anybody here so we have a nice little bush tv going (fire) and our neighbors are quite a distance away. I tried a spot of fishing in the river here which is tidal as did the three guys further down. Not much doing but plenty of small fish jumping. Two of the guys have a net that must be for crabs in the water so I will be interested to see what that turns up in the morning. A few things to do in Kalbarri tomorrow and we may spend another night here, we will see where the wind takes us.

Kalbarri, mouth of the river

Camp Murchison, the river is just visible in the trees behind us

Sharons damper experiment, hmmmm crunchy (Don’t use chickenfeed foil for damper!)