Our decision to go to Point Louise was looking better and better and when we drove down the dirt road to get to the free camping spot overlooking a pristine beach and sheltered by the point itself we were proved right.
This little spot was so pretty we decided to stay here for a few nights and the relax and let the city bleed out of our pores. As you can see from the photos, it is a pretty little place.
We drove from Point Louise on up to and through Geraldton, stopping a few klms North of the city to camp at Coronation Beach. This place is a beach at the foot of a line of hills and it looks out over a lagoon protected from the ocean by a reef. Waves can be seen breaking over this reef all the time, but only the slightest of swells reaches the beach itself.
It is gorgeous.
However, every Eden has its dark side and here it is the flies, small bush flies, which make it difficult to enjoy the outdoors as they swarm over everything.
And we were forced to wear these stupid things.
They drove us to spend a day in Geraldton where we had to do some laundry and food shopping chores anyway.
The flies disappear at sunset and we have seen no mozzies so the evenings can be enjoyed, sitting comfortably outside and watching the cloud of the milky way stretch across the sky with all the other stars gathered around it.
however, the flies got to us eventually so we packed up and trundled up the road to Kalbarri.
Mixed feelings about this place. The townsfolk don't seem very friendly, but the scenery is magnificent. Perhaps they are just fed up of sharing it.
We are camped out on the banks of the Murchison river on a cattle station. This place, Murchison House, is a working station with the river flowing through it but they are getting into the tourism industry in a small way with camping provisions and quad bike and canoe safaris and the like.
It is a beautiful place, but just like everywhere else along this coast, it is afflicted by a fly plague.
We have bought better fly veils (the old ones let the little buggers get in at the bottom) and survive the things, but it is a pain. Back at camp we spend more time inside the van than we would like, but once the sun goes down they all disappear and we are left with a cool evening and clear skies filled with more stars than you'd think possible.
The main reason for coming here was to visit the parks and so we drove out to see the river gorges. Natures Window is probably the best known sight in the place so that was where we headed off first. The rock formation (see the pics below) is indeed stunning, but we hadn't expected to find a smooth bitumen car park with space for maybe fifty cars and a dozen buses complete with shaded areas to picnic under and we'll set up viewing vantage points. The walk to the formation is also smooth bitumen for most of the way.
These photos show us at Nature's Window - one from each side.
What happened to adventure?
West Loop was another lookout that we visited. At least this one had just a rough track to it, but it was a good lookout.
Z Bend was the next place and this was magnificent indeed. You can see the adventure hungry guys who built a rope bridge in the pictures below.
Back to Kalbarri for a beer and a delicious feed of red emperor and chips eaten while watching the glorious sunset.
The next day the flies were just as bad as ever but we thought we'd take a drive out to the coastal cliffs and have a look at some of the formations out there. After all, the sea breezes would be sure to blow the flies away wouldn't it?
The answer is no - in fact the flies were worse than ever out there and for much of the time we were just the centre of a buzzing, shimmering swarm of tiny black bush flies. We were fortunate indeed that we had bought the new fully closed in fly nets as at least our heads were spared the crawling over that the rest of us suffered. It was so bad that the camera's auto focus kept getting confused and focusing on the flies instead of the scenery I was trying to shoot.
Back to the car and back to the homestead to shelter inside until the evening when they magically disappear.
We had collected some wood and decided to have a camp fire this evening. I even bought some flour to make up some damper. As it turned out though, we had some new neighbours and we spent our possible baking time chatting to them instead.
They were Julian and Chris, and their two delightful boys Sam and James. It is amazing the nice people you get to meet out on trips like this. Anyway, we had a great evening together and all enjoyed the fire together, especially James who was happy as to be asked to put another log on the fire!
Tomorrow we get to leave this place. It could have been so great, but the flies spoiled it for us.
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