Friday 22nd August

Today we had an early start when we joined a trip to Kalbarri National Park to see the Gorges, Z-bend and Nature's Window - very spectacular scenery with sandstone cliffs together with a fossilized trail of an ancient extinct giant scorpion Eurypterid. Because there had been a rain shower the previous night the flowers were beginning to bloom – smoke bush, lamb’s tails and many pink, yellow and orange flowers that we were told the name of and then promptly forgot! It was then a relaxing afternoon, another superb fish dinner and an early night!

We are now into our third day although it seems a good deal longer! Our onward flight to Perth was uneventful and our passage through customs much quicker and easier than we anticipated. We picked up our hire car and after a bit of practice driving around to find the exit we eventually exited the airport and promptly got lost again! We righted ourselves after a while and enjoyed the almost empty roads and wide sweeping vistas of scrub and countryside. The problem is that when you take a wrong turning there are many kilometres before you see a road sign - so a two hour journey took twice as long and we arrived in Cervantes around 6pm. A lovely motel and the food was superb! By 8.30pm we crashed and had a reasonable night's sleep, interrupted only by the wind whistling in a nearby gunnel. Another wonderful meal at breakfast set us up for the day and the four plus hours driving to Kalbarri. Before this, however, we retraced our steps by 17 Km to go and see The Pinnacles. These were well worth the detour - a whole sandy plain in the midst of the scrub with a myriad of outcropping limestone pillars of varying shapes and sizes.

When we neared Kalbarri we diverted to see Shellhouse Grandstand and Natural Bridge on the coast which were worth a few photographs. It was also nice to stretch one's legs a bit!

Kalbarri is a small linear coastal town where the Murchison river opens into the Indian Ocean. We had an amazing good evening meal with scallops with salted cashews and garlic butter and pink snapper with mixed salad at the Black Rock Cafe.