Well, where to start is the problem! A vineyard owner, in the Swan Valley, advised us that Kalbarri was underrated and that we should stay at least a week. He assured us there was plenty to keep us occupied and so it turned out to be!

Kalbarri is on a 179km loop road detour off of the main highway. We had already decided to go there but the above recommendation made us a book a week instead of the 2 or 3 days originally planned. And are we glad we did!! On the way in we stopped to look at Hutt Lagoon, otherwise known as the Pink Lake. This one was completely different to the one we stopped at in Dimboola, Victoria, where we could walk out onto the salt lake. This was water, pink water, and it changed from hues of pink to hues of blue and purple, depending on the sun and where you were. It was beautiful!

Kalbarri itself is a small coastal town at the junction of the Murchison River and the Indian Ocean. There is a reef offshore that causes spectacular waves to break, but means the water at the beach is like a millpond. There is also a renowned surfing break just outside town. The turquoise river meets the sea at the reef and the scenery is just awesome. As we drove over the hill into town for the first time we both went 'wow'! There is a grassy foreshore, a few shops and cafes, and a very laidback atmosphere. Indeed we were left to ponder another meaning of WA while at one café. We had been told that it meant Wait Awhile and indeed it did! The caravan park was over the road from the beach so what was not to like?! There were even tennis courts and yes, we did have a game before we left!

The National Park here is split into two sections. On approaching from the south you pass the Coastal Cliffs section. We drove down to Shellhouse and Grandstand and were awestruck. We were so close to the cliff edge with amazing views of the red sandstone cliffs and the various rock formations. It reminded us of the Great Ocean Road but with no tourists! We also visited the Natural Bridge and Island Rock (do I need to explain?!). The other section is on the inland side of Kalbarri where the Murchison River has carved deep gorges into the soft sandstone. The first place we visited was the iconic Nature's Window. Oh my God, I just couldn't believe that you would be signposted out to walk around a ledge over the gorge, just feet from the edge. I still can't believe I actually walked round it, and it is even harder to believe the lack of railings - here, the onus is on personal responsibility. The Japanese tour buses had reappeared and so it was quite hard to get a photo opportunity -we had to queue! But we did it and I managed to get off safely!! We also went to Z-bend where the river goes though a ?? - you got it! The views from the lookout were stunning and there was a safety railing of sorts. It only covered part of the drop, the worst part admittedly, but there were plenty of other edges to walk off of! There was also a Grade 4 River Trail walk (Grade 5 is the most difficult), where you could walk down into the gorge and sit by the river. We could see the people there from the top but no obvious way to get down! However my nerves were shot and the warnings of "Trails are rough, moderate to high levels of fitness required, should be self-reliant because there are few encounters with others, weather can affect safety, this is a demanding hike, expect loose rocks, steep descents and ladder climbs" did not help. However, once we got back to Winnie and I'd recovered from the Nature's Window ordeal, I was quite keen to give this a go as where else could we do something like this? On the proviso that, if it was too difficult or there were steep drops, we could turn back I surprised Bob by suggesting we do it the next day. So off we went. Well, it started off ok, but then it turned into a real hike and scramble, down a boulder-strewn gorge. There were ladders, up and down, to help traverse the biggest rocks and the path was hard to find at points, as it wasn't obvious. I froze at one bit between two ladders, where the rock to be crossed was at an angle and I felt I was slipping down it into a crevice below. But, after resting and watching two kids do it easily, I gingerly, very gingerly, crossed it. That was followed by walking through a narrow corridor between huge slabs of rock and then climbing over more huge boulders. Sometimes it was hard to see where the sign meant you to go as there was no obvious 'path'. When we arrived at the river and looked back to where we had come from it just looked like a rock wall and we wondered how we had even got down there! It was rather hot, we were told the temperature in the gorge could be 10 degrees higher than at the top, so it was a relief to take our walking boots off and plunge our feet into the cool river. We sat and just looked around us in awe. The white trunks of the gum trees stood out against the red and yellow sandstone cliffs and their green leaves enhanced by the deep blue of the sky. Add in the clear, green waters of the river, the fish, the rocks and the views down the gorge and it was just stunningly beautiful. We sat there for ages just taking it all in before setting off back. I had to admit that my hands and backside were used in the climb back to the top!

The next day we went to Hawks Head, another lookout with views over the gorge, and to the Ross Graham lookout. Here there was a Grade 3 walk to the river. Easy, we thought, we've just done a 4!! On the whole it was, although we still had to climb boulders and rocks. On the way down we realised that the debris caught in the trees, and all around us, was from when the river floods. The whole track would have been well underwater. It is so hard to imagine that a hardly flowing, quiet river can turn into a roaring torrent 10-20m higher in places!

We were sad to leave Kalbarri but we then headed up to Denham, a small place in Shark Bay, a World Heritage Site. It is very hard to explain the journey. It was 375kms, the same as from London to Blackpool, but we only travelled on 3 roads - the one out of Kalbarri, the main road and the one into Denham (a sat nav or map was not needed!). All three were dead straight for long sections, single lane with overtaking lanes at places, but we were only passed by a handful of other cars, 10 at most. The speed limit is 110km/hr, which is 68mph, so everyone does the speed limit that keeps any overtaking to a minimum and is much safer. There is absolutely nothing between the two places apart from 2 roadhouses and loads of trees- no houses and no buildings. We passed the occasional station, or large farm entrance, but you couldn't see the homestead. All you can see is the straight road, the occasional bend, a deep red soil, trees and bushes punctuated by drainage paths into the bush to steer the water away from the road when it rains and a surprising amount of drinks bottles and cans thrown from people's windows. What is the matter with people?!! A lot of them were beer bottles, which may explain why Bob was randomly breath-tested (his second while being in Oz!) just after leaving one of the road-houses! The driving is not at all hard, and doesn't require the same degree of attention as when negotiating the M25. There is no speeding up, slowing down, negotiating sharp bends, stopping at lights, getting stuck behind a slow-moving lorry, having to pull out into another lane etc etc - you just set your foot at a constant speed and drive. This is why people here in the West think nothing of driving 600-700kms a day! It also explains why, when people ask on the forums about crossing the Nullarbor, some answers, presumably from those 'out East' are very tentative whilst some, obviously from those out here in 'the West' think it's a breeze!!

So here we are in sleepy Denham. We stopped on the way in to see the Worlds' oldest living organisms, the Stromatolites in Hamelin Pool. A lovely boardwalk takes you out over the water to view them from above. The water was so clear, and still, that you could take perfect pictures of the fish swimming around the stromatolites from above. It was only afterwards that I found out that, because of the extra salinity in the water, sea snacks (or snakes, for those of you who missed the early blogs from Vietnam!) can also be seen there! Denham used to be the centre of the pearling industry and boasts that it used to have the only main street paved with shells. That has gone sadly but our caravan site, which is huge and on 3 levels, is completely white as the gravel is not gravel, but white shells. It is really bright on the eyes! Apparently at Shell Bay, which we are visiting on the way out, the whole beach is made up of the tiny shells of only one type of bivalve mollusc. Over time these have compacted and formed a cement like structure. People used to cut blocks of this and used them to build their houses. There is one house in town, now a restaurant, that is still built entirely of these shell blocks. We had a look, and I couldn't resist touching it expecting some of the shells to be loose, but they were firmly cemented together!

The weather seems to have picked up for us and the wind, which has followed us for so long and for which Denham is famed, has surprisingly stopped!! The temperature has risen into the high twenties, low thirties again and last night we managed to eat outdoors for the first time in a long, long time! Long may it continue!!