Wednesday 6thAugust - Kalbarri

Kalbarri Car Kilometres: 169,258

Distance Travelled: 366km

Total Distance Travelled: 1007km

We pack up quickly and set sail for Kalbarri, taking it easy driving as Dave now has a nasty cold.I even do most of the driving, as Dave is concentrating mostly on blowing his nose.The strangest view of the morning is the pink lake at Port Gregory - the water has been stained by beta-carotene and other mineral by-products of local industry, and we couldn't believe our eyes - it looked so odd - the photos don't begin to do it justice.

We arrive at Kalbarri, a small seaside town with a population of 2000, and check into a campsite for three days.After setting up shop, we walk along the river front before cuddling up in our warm duvet to watch a couple of films on the laptop before nodding off.

Our first stop on Thursday is a seahorse breeding centre - run by a husband and wife team of scientists.They breed seahorses here and export them all over the world as a sustainable alternative to them being fished from the wild, and we spend a fascinated couple of hours touring the nursery tanks - we see seahorses that are just half a centimetre tall, as well as more mature ones ready for export.Despite getting plagued by a very determined mosquito, we share a Devonshire cream tea and watch a video about the lifecycle of seahorses before moving on to explore the cliffs.

The rugged, red rock coastal cliff faces stretching south from Kalbarri are very accessible, but nonetheless dramatic and impressive.We visit several of the sites on the drive back into Kalbarri, starting at Pot Alley, where we spot a humpbacked whale playing around just out to sea.We follow its path through the various other cliff walks until it is too far ahead, and then sit on the coarse shell sand of Red Bluff beach, watching men fish off the rocks - glad to avoid another womble coach tour, who are busy crowding out the lookouts just after we leave them. We decide to drive back to Pot Alley to watch the sunset, and then take a bottle of wine to Finlay's Fresh Fish BBQ, where we enjoy some ridgy-didge-fair-dinkum Aussie tucker... we sample the 'arm and a leg', which certainly is that at $27 a pop, but we share one (huge) portion - there's prawns, steak, two different kinds of battered fish, chips, rice and veg.Feeling pretty stuffed, and a little tipsy, as I cracked into the wine on an empty stomach while we were waiting for our food, we drive back to the tent where Dave catches me up with a couple of glasses of crisp white wine while we play cards before bed.

On Friday we get up to watch the free pelican feeding over the road from the campsite.Only one pelican turns up, and he seems fairly appreciative of the 2kg of defrosted fish on offer... we think he's a bit overwhelmed, as he even lets a few seagulls get in on the act.The volunteer pelican feeder tells us that he's only a young pelican - he thinks that the older ones have got a whiff of some lovely fresh snapper being handed out from one of the fishing trawlers that have just come in, hence the small turnout.

We head out for the day to the Kalbarri National Park - it's huge, with over 1000 square kilometres of bushland, river gorges and coastal cliffs under its wing.After surviving the drive down a 20-odd kilometre corrugated dusty track, we arrive at a car park, and walk along the gorge to see Nature's Window - a natural rock archway that frames a view of the river.We bump into two girls who look to be taking photos, so we stay out of the way for a few minutes.However, on closer inspection we discover that they are trying to work out how to get past a hand-sized spider that has set up camp in a low web across the pathway... they end up doing a run and jump past it with a small scream in the middle... a tactic that we pretty much copy, after taking a photo of aforementioned spider for posterity.

We visit a couple of the other lookouts - the Z-Bend, Hawk's Head and Ross Graham - where we enjoy more beautiful gorge views, some wild goats and roos pottering about, and a couple of spiky lizards roaming the roads - check the blog photos out to see a picture of the lizard, they're otherworldly.

It's been a long, hot day - despite drinking copious water, slapping on the suncream, and religiously wearing our hats... it's only going to get hotter as we head up north, so we try to take it slowly and make sure we stick to the shade where we can.In the couple of kilometres that we've walked through the bush today, we've being imagining what it would like to be stranded out there in the heat of the day, especially in an isolated area... we're glad we're sticking pretty much to the tourist trail and have our satellite phone, but we wonder about how the first explorers felt when they arrived here.

On our way back down the bumpy track we see a young lad who has managed to total his Mitsubishi Magna, splitting the back half away from the front.It looks like he's lost control on a corner of the dusty road, and we're all of a sudden grateful to be keeping it at a slow 50 kilometres per hour.

After arriving back at the tent, we take another walk up and down the front to see what's going on in Kalbarri on a Friday night... it's about 8pm and apart from some quiet chattering coming from a restaurant, the town is more or less sleeping...it seems that the high concentration of grey nomads wins out on teenage backpackers with the volume control.

On our way back to the tent for the night, we peep into the camp kitchen to watch a bit of the Olympic Games opening ceremony, enjoying watching tiny teams from countries we've barely head of parading around the birds nest, thronged by identically dressed and enthusiastically clapping Chinese girls who will probably keep those smiles pasted on for hours.

It's time to leave Kalbarri, so we pack up and get the car ready to go.We decide to have another bash at viewing the 8.30am pelican feed before we go, and are rewarded when seven big birds arrive for some fish... clearly the fishing trawlers aren't serving up this morning.

We trot back to the car and we're off on the road again.I'm particularly excited as today we're going to see some Stromatolites, which I read about in a Bill Bryson book and am desperate to see... but Dave will tell you all about them in the next instalment...