With the south coast complete, it’s time for some sun! Winter is over and we’re heading north, so it’s going to be a bit of a double up on the heat coming our way. Our two main places of interest for this leg of our lap around Australia are Perth & Kalbarri National Park.
Traveling along the coastline from Geelong to Margaret River let us experience a lot of wild weather, and as we turn to the right, still keeping the ocean on our left, we’re expecting the mercury to rise the further north we go.
Not too far from Margaret River on the way to Perth is Busselton and we had heard that there’s a jetty almost 2 kms long – that’s not something one can simply just drive past, and we didn’t. We parked just next to a travelling circus, held the carnies back from using Eva in the show, took a look at the jetty, then kept on moving.
Next up, WA’s big smoke: Perth, a good place to get an overdue city fix our cameras fixed.
Knowing that we’ll be needing to get an early start at a long drive when we depart Perth, we booked in at a Burns Beach Sunset Village, a caravan park on the very northern side of town, just beside the beach.
Our first day was spent on the sand, taking it easy and recharging. For the rest of our stay, we drove to different parts of city, then explored by foot.
Read more about Burns Beach Sunset Village.
Perth is a great place, we really liked it and added it to our list of places to return to.
There’s old English-style building and loads of trees to escape the heat. Sitting high above town on top of a large hill is the Botanic Garden. Here, they have different sections of plants for various places throughout Western Australia. We slowly looked through them all, getting a good idea of what flora to expect over next few thousand kilometres.
As Eva usually sets the itinerary, a lengthy amount of time was spent at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. I enjoyed checking the out the art too, although as we’re getting some new WAY&FARER camping chairs made up, just like these ones, I was working on my own piece of art, mainly outside on the phone trying to figure out the details with the manufacturer.
Our last afternoon in Perth was spent with some of my cousins that live in the area, then we headed back to Burns Beach, packed up and got ready to leave early in the AM.
We made our way along the Indian Ocean Highway, stopping in at different coastal towns and lookouts along the way. Just as the sun was coming down, we arrived at Murchison House Station, our base for exploring Kalbarri.
Murchison House is a cattle and goat station on the edge of the Kalbarri National Park that backs on to the Murchison River. For $35 a night, we set up camp here at an unpowered site. As we arrived, the rain was pouring down and the entire place turned to sandy mud, so we announced a ‘games night’ in our little caravan, then the morning greeted us with full sun, packing a lot of warmth and every opportunity to do a bit of exploring.
Read more about Murchison House Station.
Kalbarri National Park was the first time that we saw what we thought to be typical of Western Australia: giant gorges, ancient rock formations that glow orange in the blistering sun and thick, powdery rich red dirt.
We explored high and low, hiking along the edge of huge cliffs and venturing down to the deepest parts of the Murchison River Gorge.
Read more about Kalbarri National Park or look at further details of the hiking trail: Nature’s Window Loop Walk.
Our next destination is Exmouth, about 800 kms to the north of Kalbarri.
We arrived at the Yalabia Free Campground & Rest Stop in the early afternoon, a few hours to the south of Exmouth. Our intentions were to spend the night here, but as we got there so early, we pushed on a drove to the closest rest area to Exmouth where camping was permitted, allowing us to get to the marine life haven early the next day(read more about the Yalabia Rest Stop).
If you’ve been to Kalbarri National Park before, let us know what you thought in the comments section below! Likewise if you have any questions or are planning on heading there soon.