Category: Activities

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Day 91: 28 August – Not your average Monday…

Author: Mrs A

Location: Kalbarri

Distance kayaked: unknown – time 3 hours

Distance hiked: 4 km


In spite of hearing rumbling thunder all around us, we made the decision to head out on to the Murchison River estuary for an explore in our pack rafts this morning. Lightning strikes were seen in the distance, but for the most part it was dry for our paddle. As always we were lucky enough to see lots of birdlife including pelicans, kites, a kestrel, turns diving for fish and more. And no other boats on the water.


We weren’t lucky the whole time though, with the clouds taking a sudden turn and then dumping their cargo on our heads. We returned to the car, deflated the boats and went back to the mobile apartment for hot showers and lunch.


After drying off and warming up we decided to head off again, this time in the car to see more of Kalbarri National Park, the coastal aspect. And what a coastline it is. This seems to be south-west WA’s answer to the Great Ocean Road, without the flies and icy cold winds, with rock formations including the likes of ‘Island Rock’, ‘Natural Bridge’, ‘Castle Cove’, ‘Grandstand Rock Gorge’ and ‘Eagle Gorge’. There is an 8km walk along the cliff tops linking all of these, but we didn’t have time to do the whole thing, so did short walks between sections.


There has been quite a bit of money spent on these decking walkways – stunningly crafted along the edge of the cliff with no barriers, tastefully designed to complement the scenery. As we walked along whales breached and fin slapped out at sea and a number of kestrels swooped artfully along the sheer walls. We even saw a stunning bright blue Splendid Fairy Wren – sadly too far out of reach of my camera to get a good photo.


And there was non-feathery wildlife also. At one lookout we arrived to find a rock wallaby waiting for us in the carpark, while at another an echidna strolled nonchalantly across the road in front of us. Just magic!


Our final evening at Kalbarri finished with a lovely sunset and the promise of more storm activity tonight to see us on our way south. We really feel we have only touched on the surface of Kalbarri – there are so many paddling, biking and hiking opportunities here, a week or more would have been better. 

Regardless, tomorrow we head off towards Geraldton via Northampton to adventures new.


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Day 90: 27 August – Exploring Kalbarri National Park

Author: Mr A

Distance hiked: 10.5km

Flights climbed: 24 floors

Kalbarri National Park is 40km out of town, but a world away from the coastal scenery we had seen here. Towering walls reared up from the Murchison River. 


We set off on a walk called the Loop – yup – no one way stuff for us today. The river looked so pristine below as we peered over the edge of the sheer cliffs.It was a fabulous walk, one of the best day walks we have have done on this trip. Only a kilometre from the crowded car park and ‘Nature’s Window’ and we were alone, only seeing one other family during the 4 hour walk. 


After heading along a ridge line we climbed right down to the river. 


A game of swans (yes that’s right – look it up) sailed regally along the river. The cygnets just picture perfect.

We followed the river as it bent around, eventually leading us back to almost the same spot we had started from….very convenient. We got back to the car as the first spots of rain fell – perfect timing. 

The colours of the spring flowers as we left the national park were incredible, splashes of pink, yellow and white wherever we looked. It seems Western Australia’s famous wildflowers are beginning to finally show themselves.


We had decided on a fish and chip supper this evening, purchased as the sun set behind rain laden clouds. We were woofing these down by 6pm in the mobile apartment as the rain beat its tattoo on the roof. 

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Day 89: 26 August – Beautiful Kalbarri

Author: Mrs A

Location: Kalbarri

Distance cycled: 17 km

Mr A woke up early and full of beans so set about cleaning the van, car and mountain bikes all before 7am! Of course I couldn’t really just stay in bed, so before long all the washing was on also, and Mr A heading off to the nearest bakery in town for freshly baked bread.

So by 9am, we were breakfasted and all tasks done, so we leaped on the bikes for an explore. First impressions are impressive. Kalbarri is a very small sleepy village, with about 6 places to eat out, either small cafes or pubs other than one, a single souvenir shop, two tiny privately owned local supermarkets (extremely expensive of course), and little else. There is a fishing fleet at the marina, and a fabulous coastal cycleway all along a stunning coastline. Kalbarri is where the Murchison River meets the ocean – the very same river we camped and hiked beside in Wooleen Station winds its merry way down to here. Hard to imagine!


The town reminds us of a smaller and quieter version of Coffs Harbour in NSW, probably as it would have been about 20 years ago. It sits in the midst of a national park – with walks along the coast as well as along the Murchison River gorge. 

There is even an ice creamery here – Mr A was excited to try a couple of flavours (Nutella and caramel ice cream), but I am sorry to say their sorbet choice extended to a single orange variety which was extremely sickly and tasted like it had been in the display unit a few too many months. Straight to the bin.

We cycled along a lovely shared pathway which follows the coast to Red Bluff, where the stunning turquoise waters meet the iron filled rock of the cliffs.


We were recommended a new eatery to dine at, ‘Upstairs Restaurant’, which had only opened in early July. We checked it out for dinner tonight. The chef is Spanish, trained in a Michelin Star restaurant in France, and the owner a young Iranian lady who has moved up here from Perth. She has brought a lot of class, with tablecloths (I know! in WA!), an excellent menu and wine list, and incredibly cooked food. Having skipped lunch, we were hungry and booked an early meal to watch the sunset over the sea. The owner had some time to chat about the challenges of starting a new business in a small town. Apparently she was told ‘It’s all too much for Kalbarri‘ – but being booked out for weeks on end and getting rave reviews on TripAdvisor suggests otherwise. We told her to stick with it.

The food was brilliant, and the Clare Valley Shiraz-Tempernillo blend we had with it was ideal. We shared some tapas for entree (hummus, baba ganoush, olives, olive oil and balsamic served with delicious bread from a Perth bakery plus fresh local king prawn skewers) and had separate mains (a half rack of glazed pork ribs with salad and crispy potatoes for me, and a whole crayfish tail for Mr A with salad) – exquisitely cooked.


A lovely night and back in the mobile apartment before 8.30pm! 

Need to burn all this food and drink off tomorrow – we are planning to head into the National Park for some hopefully tough hiking!

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Day 87: 24 August – Hiking the Murchison River

Author: Mrs A

Location: Wooleen Station

Distance hiked: 13 km

Our faithful weather station predicted another day of cloud ahead so we decided to keep things simple and follow the river upstream, checking out visitors of a feathered kind as we went.


This river is a lifeline this time of year, when it becomes a collection of ever decreasing pools. The further upstream we walked, the smaller they became.

Birdlife really does flock here, with more pink cockatoos, ring-necked parrots, black swans, ducks, herons and even a pair of black-breasted buzzards with eggs in a nest. Masked woodswallows, zebra finches, grass wrens, a flock of white-browed babblers and many more brightened our afternoon as we picked our way along the banks and across the sandy river bed.

Along our travels we sprinkled the native grass seed we had been given on arrival – hopefully some will germinate when the wet season arrives and there will be a posititive reminder of our visit for future generations to experience. 


We returned to camp for hot showers and a chilled out rest of the day and, despite the largely overcast sky, another fabulous sunset.  Our weather station is promising a return to blue skies and sunshine tomorrow, as we head off to pastures new.

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Day 86: 23 August – Wooleen Station wanderings

Author: Mr A

Location: Wooleen Station

Distance hiked: 8 km

I pulled down a blind in the van and was greeted by leaden grey skies – quite a shock to the retina after our months of being greeted by another blue sky day. Nothing was encouraging us to venture out too quickly…so we didn’t. A late breakfast and then we drove back to the homestead feeling we should at least chalk up something today.

A walk was chosen from a couple of detailed booklets we had been handed when we checked in. It was really well documented history lesson on the property, showing us old graves, the remains of various ramshackle buildings and even the 1800s rubbish dump! It was such a dull day it just exacerbated the feeling of desolation that hangs around these stories of battlers against the odds of the vagaries of drought and floods in outback WA. What these people went through to try and eke a living beggars belief. 


We saw zebra finches taking a morning bath, and an as yet unidentifed interloper (in photo below for Rosemary to identify ;-)). 


We headed back to the comfort of our van both quiet and thoughtful, thinking how lucky we were. The temperature here regularly climbs beyond 50 degrees in the summer – that’s Celsius for our overseas readers. There would be no relief at night either with the temperature staying over 40 degrees. Imagine that with no A/C, fridge, cold beer! These settlers trying to make a new life here must have yearned for a “hot” English summer day that some of them would remember from their previous lives. 

A quiet afternoon in the van, my achievements only including knocking a glass of diet coke all after the ever so patient Mrs A. This was followed by me trying to “mend” her prized kitchen device, the hand operated food processor. That ended in her throwing it away. I had succeeeded in turning it from a partially fiunctioning device into a number of never to be re-assembled parts.

We finally headed out again late afternoon, before things got too worked up.  We walked up the Murchison River and spotted some Major Mitchell pink cockatoos, which immediately shook off the rather somber mood we had been in today with their pompous, strutting and waddling gait. We spotted heaps of other birds including black swans, welcome swallows, herons and ducks.


The sun was going down as we headed back to our little paradise on wheels for…..homemade chorizo pizza!!! 

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Day 85: 22 August – Goin’ bush – Wooleen Station

Author: Mrs A

From: Denham

To: Wooleen Station, Murchison, WA

Distance: 343 km

Travel time: 7 hours (including lunch, breaks)

The alarm was set last night and we were up bright and early at 6.15am for showers and to pack up to head inland. We knew we had a big day ahead of us plus needed to top up with water at the desalination plant. A quick call into the bakery as we left town gained us some freshly baked rolls for lunch and confirmed the ladies working there are always wearing their grumpy-pants.


Before long we were heading up the Butchers Track, 144 km of orange dirt road through a nature reserve. The road was dead straight, the landscape the same the whole way, and you could be forgiven for thinking we were on a treadmill going nowhere. But we did eventually reach the end, and turned onto another orange, straight road. Despite this, the road was in good condition and only one vehicle passed us all the way. Our lunch spot was a flat clay pan at the side of the road, feeling beautifully remote.

Finally we arrived at Wooleen Station. We had been told about this location by other travellers around multiple campfires along the coast, who advised us it had been covered on Australian Story (an ABC television series) on several occasions. The station’s website was impressive, talking about stunning scenery, birdlife and an environment slowly recovering from over 100 years of abuse by overgrazing of cattle and sheep, as well as a huge increase in grazing native animals (predominantly kangaroos and emus) brought about by the introduction of permanent water sources. We were intrigued.

First impressions were good, with a fine welcome at the homestead, where we were handed a pile of walk and mountain bike trail leaflets and encouraged to explore.  We were also provided with a pack of seeds each, and asked to scatter them on our travels around the station to encourage native grasses to return.

It was another 14km to our riverside campground, on slow going farm tracks. By then we had really had enough of being in the car and were ready to arrive. We pulled into camp and first impressions were quite underwhelming. 

We are beside the Murchison River on heavily eroded sand and clay, with little view (on the site we picked, anyway!). We felt conned – we could get a better campsite than this for free, never mind the $30 a night we have paid. We cracked open beers and read some of the literature we’d collected. We felt better – the money from our camp fees goes towards improving the station and returning the Murchison River to its former glory – a tough target to reach, but admirable work all the same.

We decided to get off our bottoms and see the river. It is only about 10 metres away after all, a short walk down the sandy bank…and wow! Fabulous light and scenery awaited us, five black swans swam up the river, whistling kites soured overhead, a pair of Major Mitchell pink cockatoos landed beside us in a tree. Across the bank we saw a pacific heron and a little egret hunting for fish, and a flighty back wing stilt in the shallows. All this on our doorstep, plus more. It really is a beautiful spot.


The light was incredible – the sun low in the sky, bouncing off the water, the salmon-pink river banks and lighting up everything around us – a photographer’s dream. The last time I felt this magical feeling was in Windjama Gorge in the Kimberly, under very similar lighting experience. As the sun set we were in for a fabulous treat. It was extremely hard to pick a single photo to represent it – like a 20 minute firework display across the sky and reflected in the still pools.


We showered and home cooked a vegetarian Pad Thai for dinner (a Jamie Oliver recipe) with a glass of Shiraz – ‘Cat Among the Pigeons’. Delicious. I think we’ll be ok here for a couple of days after all.

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Day 84: 21 August – Walking the beaches of Shark Bay

Author: Mr A

Location: Denham

Distance walked: 7km

We spent the morning getting organised for our final push down into Perth. Areas we want to see researched, campsites reviewed on WikiCamps and booked, road conditions checked (been some heavy rain up here), and scheduled our trusty 200 Series in for some TLC at Geraldton Toyota. 

The weather has been pretty chilly and windy, but we dragged ourselves out for a walk this afternoon and so glad we did. Heading down the to the beach, a short walk and we come across a mob (flock?) of five emus strutting around in the scrub. 


Further along the beach we were rewarded with a stunning late afternoon light show, captured exquisitely by Mrs A of course. 


Tomorrow we leave the coast for a few days and head inland again, a whole new adventure!

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Day 81: 18 August – Spectacular Francois Peron National Park

Author: Mrs A

Location: Francois Peron National Park – Big Lagoon, Cape Peron and Snapper Point

Distance driven: 110 km return

Distance kayaked: 4 km

Distance hiked: 4 km

We left early after a light breakfast heading for Big Lagoon (they’re very creative with the names in these parts. There is also a Little Lagoon) in the Francois Peron National Park. We had been told by the information centre that today was to be both the warmest and least windy day of the next five days, so we decided to take advantage.

By 9.30am we were inflating our pack-rafts and setting off on the beautiful turquoise water for an explore.

It was the perfect way to see the shallow lake, which was unsuitable for motorised vessels. We explored right across to the opening of the lagoon, where it met the sea, and clambered up the iron rich sand dunes, cris-crossed with multiple animal and bird tracks, and no signs of humans at all.

We decided to stop and have lunch here, at the brand new national park kitchen and picnic area with the million dollar view. Not another soul was there!

After lunch we decided to drive up to the tip of the national park. I had read some incredible accounts of the scenery and wildlife up there, and couldn’t wait to visit, however as we drove up the extremely rough roads (corrugations and deep sand) for over an hour, I could tell Mr A was doubting my decision. Thankfully the view at the top was incredible, with spectacular scenery and out of this world colours.

Better still, as we reached Cape Peron and the Snapper Point Lookout the sea life appeared as if on cue – within moments of arriving we spotted several sharks swimming past and a huge manta ray, along with multiple shoals of gleaming fish. We both agreed, we could have spent a whole afternoon just there.

We walked along the headland, reading about the history of the point, with the first European visitors arriving from France back in 1801 and dancing to the maracas to try and convince the local Aboriginal groups they were there in peace. The Aboriginal people of course have been resident on this point for more than 26,000 years, and had never seen anything like it. I can only imagine what planet they thought these strange visitors were from!

Down on the beach we saw hundreds of Little Pied Cormerants, which are regular residents here. The fact there are so many on land in this photo, and not in the water, means there are tiger sharks about. Cormerants, dolphins, manta rays, turtles and the odd pack-rafter are favourite meals for tiger sharks. We remained firmly on land.

We returned to camp exhausted after our busy day, and thankfully had the foresight to defrost a pre-made red curry for dinner. 

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Day 79: 16 August – Biking, bubbles and campfires

Author: Mrs A

Distance driven: 452 km

Distance cycled: 14.5 km

We awoke to a perfect blue sky morning and were packed up, hitched up and on the road by 8am. We had a lot of driving ahead of us and we wanted to ensure we made the most of our destination in the afternoon.

Several podcasts kept us company along the way, and by 2.30pm we had arrived. Today we are staying at Hamelin Station on the southernmost tip of Shark Bay.


Hamelin Station Reserve is a 202,000 hectare property, situated on 32 kilometres of coast line and bordering the Shark Bay World Heritage area.  The former sheep station is now owned by Bush Heritage Australia.  The reserve helps to protect Hamelin Pool, one of the only two places in the world where living marine stromatolites are known to occur.

Now, we had no idea what stromatolites were, so on spotting a sign directing us to see them, we jumped on our bikes and headed up to Hamelin Pool. As we rode down onto the beach and boardwalk we spotted Nick and Laura, the couple from Manly/UK who we first met (and last saw) just north of Broome while hunting for dinosaur footprints! On finding they are camped just two spots away from us we made arrangements to catch up for drinks in the evening.


So, stromatolites. These black spongy things are stromatolites, basically towers of living micro organisms, the origins of life on earth. Pretty interesting. We passed several Japanese tourists taking selfies with the rock-like structures – I wondered whether they had any idea what the information boards said or why they were there. Even Mr A and I found them relatively heavy going!

The beach on which we were cycling was made entirely of miniature white shells, a particular type of cockle which grows prolifically in this area. In one area we passed through quarry from the 1800s, where the original settlers in this area had cut bricks from the compacted shells to build their homes.


We returned to Hamelin Station and explored the beautifully landscaped grounds and onsite lake, rich in birdlife.

Before long it was time to pop the cork on our prosecco and raise a toast. On this day 15 years ago Mark and I became Mr and Mrs Anderson, supported by many friends and family at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Laura and Nick came over to join us, bringing some dips and biscuits, and we set about realising just how many people we know in common. Mr A and Laura in particular – Laura previously worked for SAS and Mr A worked closely with a number of her colleagues in his KPMG days.

We finished the evening under the shooting stars around the campfire with several good bottles of red. A fine end to an anniversary date!

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Day 78: 15 August – Grand country

Author: Mr A

Location: Kennedy Range National Park

Distance hiked: 12 km

Floors climbed: 22

This is big, magnificent country with the sandstone escarpment of the Kennedy Range towering over our van. We had planned to go walking today if the weather fined up, and it had. So a foundational breakfast was called for. Using the fresh tomatoes, garlic, red onion and basil from the market gardens of Carnarvon we mixed up in the hand blender some bruschetta. I had spotted some packaged bread especially for bruschetta when we were in Woolworths. On inspection of the packaging it had actually been made in Italy, shipped to Brookvale (a kilometre away from our house in Sydney!) then onward to Caranarvon. Well travelled bread indeed. Tasted great though!


Fortified,we were on our way. The first walk took us up a steep path to the top of the escarpment, 800 metres above our van with views out over the plains. It was just a majestic place. 


After a clamber back down we marched off to the next walk around the side of the range. The rock formations were amazing. The colours of the rock are so different to anything we have seen before. Rich purples, glowing organge, huge blocks of rock strewn everywhere, it was quite an overwhelming landscape. We came to a huge natural amphitheatre and just sat there. I just listened to the sound of blood rushing through my ears, because the silence was so loud. It reached out and enveloped us in this beautiful stillness, That’s the magic of country.


Back at the camp, we wandered over to the communal fire. A dozen other campers were there, pretty much everyone on the site, and we just drank some wine and chewed the fat. A lovely bunch of people…again. From all walks of life…some Australians, a German paramedic travelling round on his own, it was another great opportunity to understand others’ perspectives on the life decisions that brought them to this place and time. 

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