Heading up the West coast
After all that desert and rocks it was lovely to come across a little gully on the outskirts of Perth which is home to the Araluen Botanical Park. We happened upon the spring tulip festival; particularly pretty against a backdrop of lush native forest.
Tulip festival at Araluen Botanical Gardens, WA
We were a little early for our planned arrival at the home of Jess and Tom, our next door neighbours from Howard Springs, so we headed for Perth’s City Beach to have our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean. It was lovely to se people of all ages enjoying this beautiful clean beach in the city. Our friends warmly welcomed us and we had a restful couple of days with them and Tom’s dad, Leon. It was quite a treat to be able to lounge on a sofa and sit on the edge of the bed; it was especially lovely to sit down to dinner in such great company.
City Beach, Perth
City Beach, Perth
Without a specific plan, we headed North in search of more warmth and pitched up at Sandy Cape, about 10km North of Jurian Bay. This campground has a main area with toilets and sites suitable for all vehicles, beyond which a 4WD track winds amongst the dunes opening into many small sites taking 1-4 rigs. Some are right on the beach others between the dunes around a gently curving bay of white sand and crystal blue water. It’s not possible to book and a ranger collects the $20 fee daily; what a job that is, chatting to fellow travellers all day! The couple who were doing the job were from the U.K. and had been in Australia for 11 years, initially working full time then travelling and picking up jobs like this as the fancy took them.
We shared our first evening round our fire pit with a delightful young couple, Travis and Jaymee, and their two dogs, exchanging stories of our travels. They were heading home the following day so we moved into their beach front position and stayed a further three nights. Surprisingly, we had really good phone signal, probably because we had direct line of sight to a mast about 20km on the other side of the bay and it was really nice to have video calls with our family from such a beautiful spot.
Our rig at Sandy Cape
The view from our doorstep
Lucky Bay is about midway between Geraldton and Kalbarri, although apparently many other ‘Lucky Bays’ are available. There is a large main campground, again with basic facilities and suitable for all vehicles which was pretty crowded when we arrived in the middle of the school term break. At the far end of the site, there is a sinister looking gap filled with soft sand between huge dunes that leads to a long, wide, gently sloping beach. We aired down our tyres to 20psi and set off to Lucky Bay North where there is a partial lagoon separated from the ocean by a narrow rocky ledge.
The beach and dunes were really cut up after a bank holiday weekend which had attracted many 4WDs testing their sand driving skills, or lack thereof like us. Deep tracks and massive undulations partially caused by people not airing down sufficiently then driving too fast and bouncing their vehicle from ridge to ridge through dips which grow progressively larger the more traffic there is.
Turning off the main tracks in the sand to pitch up with a view of the sunset promptly got bogged in the sand; something we were very worried about. Immediately, another camper stopped, got out his shovel to help move the sand and advised on pulling away in 2nd gear in low 4WD ratio over our Maxxtrax boards. Despite feeling like novices with ‘all the gear and no idea’, we have only ever been treated with kindness by people offering help. The general response is that everyone has to start somewhere and it’s better to ask for help than pretend you know what you’re doing when you don’t. We gratefully received the help.
We had been expecting to carefully drive to a cared-for spot, like Perlubie Beach, but this beautiful environment was being used as a driving play ground. People were charging up and down the beach and all over the 40m high dunes. There were tracks everywhere right from the waters edge and not a single dune was left untouched, some had even been used as toilets, despite the requirement that campers must have self contained facilities. There was also a fair bit of rubbish around and Ian half filled a sack just in the area around our site.
The sunset was great and we settled for the night after people eventually stopped driving around. After a delightful early morning swim in the lagoon we set off along the coast road travelling North
Sunset at Lucky Bay
Early morning dip in the Lucky Bay lagoon
Just North of Kalbarri we called in at the Western Australia Parks Authority HQ to buy an annual pass allowing entry to almost all parks in the state for a year for $120. The wild flowers covering vast areas on either side of the road had a gentle scent and sturdy but delicate blooms, all unfamiliar but nevertheless beautiful.
The Murchison River meanders for many miles through the Kalbarri National Park along the base of a deep gorge cut into the red rock. This area was once inhabited by several tribes of indigenous peoples, some of whose decedents worked with the WA park authorities to design and build the Kalbarri Sky Walk. This pair of cantilevered platforms extend out from the rim of the gorge in the most unobtrusive manner providing a fabulous vantage point to observe the path of the river below. The structure is solid without any movement in the wind, but the slatted metal floor where I can see miles below my feet triggers a ridiculous internal battle.
Kalbarri Skywalk looking North up the Murchison River
Kalbarri Skywalk looking South-West
Stepping out onto the metal grill floor, one part of my brain, in the grip of spinning vertigo where I am sure I will plummet to my death, is in direct competition with the other bit logically telling me what magnificent piece of engineering this is and a fabulous view I will have from the furthest tip. I forced the latter to suppress the falling spin by tapping on my face, a technique a therapist taught me when I was being crippled by vertigo on my own staircase after a close call with a coach on a mountain pass while on a motorcycle trip. It doesn’t stop the battle, just allows me to experience occasional exciting stuff, but I do wish it would stop altogether.
The information boards tell the sorry story of how white settlers almost entirely wiped out the thriving population of people who had lived on and cared for this land for hundreds of generations. They were still forcibly removing children from their families in line with the Federal Government Child Removal Policy as recently as the 1970s. Widely known as the Stolen Generation, the last their mothers and fathers heard were their distressed cries as they were driven away to government or missionary institutions where they were treated in the cruellest manner, many suffering sexual abuse, mostly never to return to their family. I cried for those mothers, how desperately helpless they must have felt. Every Australian government website and document, including National Park information leaflets, caries a carefully worded acknowledgement about the indigenous peoples. Just now, this feels very uncomfortable and wholly inadequate, somewhere between ‘tokenistic’ and ‘a bit sorry’ but I don’t know enough about the development of such statements and I would like to understand better from the perspective of indigenous peoples before passing judgement.
Driving further around the gorge, a rocky walk of just over 1km took us to Natures Window, apparently other natures windows are available too. This is a weathered rock formation that provides a perfect frame for the view down the Murchison River. Looking back to the Sky Walk platforms allows the vast space to be scaled as they now appeared to be no more than a couple of dots just below the distant horizon.
Nature’s Window, Kalbarri National Park, WA
View of Kalbarri Skywalk from Nature’s Window
Our last stop before reaching Shark Bay was at a lovely free camp on the North side of Galena Bridge at Four Mile Pool. There are camp grounds on both sides of the bridge where Highway 1 crosses over the same river we saw from the Sky Walk. There are more sites on the South side but the North has more trees and easier access to swim in the river, both have loos and a dump point. Despite being near the road, it was remarkably quiet and I had a lovely meditation sit just after dawn amongst the wild flowers and birdsong.
My morning meditation spot
