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28 March - 5 April 2012
What an amazing place!!
The further north we travel, the more stunning the landscape becomes.
We took the coastal road to Kalbarri which is an awesome little town with scenic coastal cliffs, a beautiful national park and a picturesque river running though it all the way to the mountains of the national park.
We stopped off at most of the lookouts along the Coastal Cliffs, fished off the jetty, went four wheel driving through the bush along the river, took the boys to the daily pelican feeding on the foreshore (where they both got to feed the local feathered friends), went swimming in the park pool every afternoon to cool down, and spent a day in the national park. The national park was as amazing as people had told us it was. We walked to Nature's Window and got a fantastic view of the Murchison River slicing through the mountains and then on to Z Bend where we decided to do the hike down to the gorge many metres below. It was a challenging walk over huge rock boulders and up and down ladders but we made it to
the water and had a well-earned dip.
On our way out of Kalbarri to the next destination north, we stopped in at the national park once again and walked to the Hawk's Head Lookout which was another stunning view before leaving this wondrous place. At that stage we weren't to know we were headed straight into the highlight of the trip so far....
Shark Bay Marine Park!
No words can describe the beauty of this area and no photos can possibly do it any justice. You just have to go there in person to believe such a paradise exists.
It was a long hot drive up to Shark Bay from Kalbarri but we made it to a free camp right on the beach at Eagle Bluff before sunset with not another soul around. We had the bay to ourselves and and finally realised that night that we had broken our fishing drought. We caught, cooked and ate our meal that night - so I guess there are still a few fish in those waters!
After Eagle Bluff we had four nights up our sleeve before being booked into Denham. We had been told about this
little national park called Francois Peron National Park that was only accessible by four wheel drive with some very soft sections of sand along the way up to the cape. We stopped in at Denham for supplies and were basically warned not to take the camper up to the cape but we had our heart set on Francois Peron so we wanted to give it a go. At the entrance to the national park there was a tyre air pressure station with large signs indicating to drop tyre pressure or fines will apply. Well, we've dropped the pressures plenty of times (down to 10psi in one desperate incident, which happened to be enough to get us out) but we'd never been faced with possible fines for not dropping tyre pressure. Somehow I secretly thought we'd be spending the next few nights in Denham but the track really wasn't too bad on the way up so we managed to get to Bottle Bay near the cape without too much trouble. What a magic place, such fond warm memories of our short time there. We camped in a fairly secluded campspot with our own little track leading straight to a lovely little
beach - great for both swimming/floating and fishing. We watched the sunset each night, went fishing several times each day and explored both sides of the national park. We did the walk up to Skipjack Lookout for the best view in Australia (according to me!). From there we saw dugongs, sharks, turtles and even a manta ray flying out of the water into the air a couple of metres high.
Such a beautiful part of the world, the contrast of the red cliffs falling away before the clearest of clear turquoise water was stunning.
At Francois Peron, there was nothing to do but relax, enjoy the surrounding landscape, go fishing (we caught dinner every night!), go swimming and be thankful there are still places like this untouched treasure still existing on this planet. There are no facilities, except bush loos, so you must truck everything in which just adds to the unique, raw experience of the place.
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