It was an uneventful drive back to the highway and then south down to the Kalbarri turnoff. Somewhere along the way, I looked up and suddenly there were trees around us. It’s been a long way looking at scrubby desert country. Then just 65km to the coastal town of Kalbarri. This road passes through the Kalbarri National Park where the Murchison River has carved some magnificent gorges, and the natural features are unique. Unfortunately, Parks staff have decided to close the road to all of this while they resurface and build new car parks. They have chosen the entire tourist season of June to October. Needless to say, the local tourism industry has suffered enormously, and I don’t think the rangers are on their Christmas card list. They are allowing access to just two commercial operators, but we are not inclined to pay $170 for the privilege of joining a tour. Kalbarri National Park will be added to our “next time” list.
The National Park isn’t the only good thing in Kalbarri though. There’s the famous Jakes surf break, just near town. We went to have a look, where the waves break right on the rocks.

You have to keep your eyes open so you don’t get washed away.

Just to confuse all the tourists, there’s another Red Bluff here. It’s redder than the one further north where we camped on Quobba Station. And the surf break here is actually at Jakes, where I took this photo from.

The Murchison River flows out to the ocean here, and the cray boats negotiate a vicious set of waves via a channel. It’s a good fishing spot – or so the fantasy makers say. The boys came back empty handed again.

While we were in this diverse World Heritage listed neck of the woods, we decided to venture out to Cape Peron. The peninsula was first visited by Francois Peron, whose name the National Park bears. He recorded the state of the environment at the time of his visit, and today, Project Eden aims to rid the peninsula of feral animals allowing the reintroduction of native species that once lived here such as the bilby, malleefowl, and bandicoots returning the region to the way it was before the Europeans arrived.
The whole peninsula west of the road to Monkey Mia was a pastoral lease which was returned to the government and declared a National Park in the early 1990s. We visited the old (not quite historic yet – but one day it will be) homestead. The wool sheds were really interesting. They aren’t that outdated really, and they look like the shearers just walked out last week.

There’s also an artesian bore fed hot tub. The water was about 40 degrees! It would be just awful on a hot day, so lucky we were there on an overcast, cool day.
Once you leave the homestead, the track is deep soft sand. So it’s 4WD only and very low tyre pressure. We drove right to the end of the peninsula – Cape Peron. There’s a short walk to do called Wanamalu Trail from Skipjack Point to Cape Peron. The views are just sensational.

The red, red sandstone cliffs against the blue water and white sand are stunning.
There are cliff top lookouts where you can see down over the water below and see the marine life of sharks, dolphins, dugongs, turtles and the thousands of trevally – called skipjack here, hence the name of the point.

From the cliff top walk, we could see down to these cormorants (hundreds of them) lined up along the water’s edge.

The boys found time to stooge around for the camera…….

We finally got to the turnaround point – Cape Peron – after longer than it should usually take to walk just 1.5km. The sand was soft and slow, and very unkind to a walker’s gait. We paused for a rest above the beach.

John suggested we walk back via the beach (instead of back through the thick sand), and claimed he’d seen a path leading from the beach to an earlier lookout. So we descended to the shoreline and wandered back this way. It was here we met with all those cormorants. Actually they call them ‘darters’ in these parts. Same thing.

And yes, Fergus and Harry ran up to them and made them all fly away. Who wouldn’t?
We also saw dozens of crabs zipping across the sand. One didn’t zip fast enough to avoid Harry.

We finally came to the area below the lookout. This is where John claimed there was a path to return to the top. There is no path here. He now says he saw a “navigable route”. This meant scrambling up an insanely steep slope of spinifex and sand (read: no hand holds) with no definable route except to progress up the not quite vertical side of the cliff, rather than down. Anyway, we made it. But we trust John just a little bit less.
We camped at one of the three areas available in the National Park, a spot called Gregories. It was a nice quite place. The boys took the kayak, dive gear and spear gun out to the edge of the reef. It turned out to be just an exercise in unpacking and packing the gear. Say no more. Chicken for dinner.
Wildflowers are everywhere here, and I snapped a heap more photos for my collection. When the sun had gone down, we could see the beacon flashing from Skipjack Point and hear the ocean smashing the shore. Another cool place to camp.

Everyone’s heard of Monkey Mia, and most have probably been there. I’ve been before – travelled the 25km on the deeply corrugated road to stand waist deep in the water and pat the many dolphins that swim up to the shore line each day for a feed of free fish. Not anymore! Now there’s a Nomad friendly bitumen road, an Interpretive Centre full of Parks staff who manage the Dolphin Interactions, and this season’s record number of visitors on the beach seeing the dolphins was 750! I’m glad our visit wasn’t quite that busy. There were about 100 people at Interaction 1.

About six dolphins came to shore today. They are all females and were nursing their calves at this time of year. They all have names, and they know the drill when it comes to a free feed.

The staff make sure each individual dolphin only gets a certain amount of fish, so that they still know how to survive in the wild. They really look after the dolphins’ wellbeing.

Despite the reputation of Monkey Mia, I have to say that I’ve had so many much better experiences with these very intelligent animals. Like watching them surf the waves at Tallows Beach, just near the Byron Bay Lighthouse. Or seeing them compete with the surfers for a wave just last week at Red Bluff. I like the natural habitat for them.
As for Fergus and Harry, they said they both preferred seeing the pelicans that day! There are a few that hang around the beach there, so we did our share of picture taking with the pelicans.

We started our trip out to the Peron Peninsula where you find the famous dolphins at Monkey Mia, the town of Denham, and Francois Peron National Park leading to Cape Peron. It sits in Shark Bay, a World Heritage listed area reaching from Kalbarri to Carnarvon. The marine life thrives on the rich sea grass beds of the bay. The road out there is rather long and devoid of much vegetation, but this helps make it so spectacular with red cliffs and white sand beaches. We stopped at Hamelin Pool, where there is the world’s best known colony of the ancient life form of stromatolites. Now these are pretty much rocks in the water, but at 3.5 billion years old, they take credit for producing the oxygen that makes life as we know it today possible. (Not these particular rocks, just their forebears) They’ve built a great viewing platform to walk over the area, so I’ll show you that because the actual stromatolites are pretty boring.

Next stop along the peninsula is Shell Beach. Another random naming effort – it’s a beach made of ……shells! It’s 120km long and up to 8m deep – all shells.

They mine some areas of the beach and use the shells for feeding to chickens, topping for pathways and formerly for bricks to build houses.
It’s pretty spectacular, and you definitely need your sunglasses and a thick towel if you’re baking here.

On the beach, we ran into our fellow Torquay travellers that we first met in the Northern Territory. We also saw them in Kununurra, Broome, Tom Price and Coral Bay. It’s a small world for a big country.
We arrived in Denham and found a pretty little seaside town, home to many fishermen. It started as a pearling town, and the streets were once paved with pearl shell. Note – they aren’t anymore. Denham is also Australia’s westernmost town, giving local businesses the added marketing tag – “westernmost (insert whatever you want here)”.
Whilst exploring the area round town, we saw this echidna crossing the road. He was fairly camera shy.

Things have been pretty lean on the animal front so far this trip, with just one snake and the usual ‘roos and wallabies, so the echidna really brightened the day.
It was finally time for that shower – it was a beautiful thing. We went out for dinner at a seafood restaurant made entirely of shells to celebrate my first 50 years. It’s going a bit yellow now (the restaurant I mean), but it was a memorable place to have a great night.

Ferg has reminded me that I missed adding this gallery to the posts from back at Red Bluff. He was a very dedicated son watching from the rocks for hours. Not a comfortable place to sit! He caught one of John’s tube rides.