today we drove from kalbarri to carnarvon – 440 km with just a few roadhouses in between. not even a small village, no houses or farms either. just road.
a last look at the mouth of the murchison from the zuytdorp memorial.
the boat ramp is inside the river and it is pretty clear that the entrance to the river should only be navigated with due care. aussie official signs can be a bit patronising but in this case i don’t think they’ve overdone it.
judge for yourself. you can just see the markers that identify the channel, but it is still almost impossible to escape the shore break, which would end up being expensive. george grey found that as well, when he and his party were wrecked here in 1839 when their boats were destroyed by said shore break here in kalbarri.
that said the view over the murchison gorge near kalbarri is fantastic. on the way there we stumbled (nearly) across this puggle (a juvenile echidna) doing what it does second best: curling up into a spiky ball and hiding. his best trick of course it eating ants.
last time we were here there was no ‘visitor center’ with a coffee shop – ok that’s a trailer with a rather noisy generator providing the necessary energy, but you can get a real (!) espresso there.
no red-blooded australian would attempt to walk the 500 m to the ‘natural window’ with out a quality cuppa.
unfortunately i didn’t manage to get a picture of the natural window. the issue was not that i was undercoffeinated, i just didn’t fancy getting my eye poked out by a group of selfie-stick wielding overseas visitors. check kris’ photos later when she finds the time to upload some of her impressions.
the murchison isn’t the colorado river, even though this time around there was actually enough water to almost simulate something akin to flow. it’s still magnificent to see the canyon the river has managed to cut into the ancient red rock.
this time of the year the flowers are not as plentiful as during spring, also called wildflower season, but the banksias are always magnificent.
after the billabong roadhouse the highway becomes pretty flat and very, very straight.
there is a lot of open road, with the odd car overtaking or coming the other way. every 5 minutes or so. are we there yet? seriously: if you have not been to outback australia you have not idea how lonely it can feel to travel something called ‘north west coastal highway – 1’.
the storm that rattled our van in geraldton must have come through here was well, there was a fair bit of water on the floodplains.
moonrise over the plains near carnarvon. the light was magic.