Peter and Christine's Australian Road Trips

After having a brief tour around Dongara, a typical fishing village with a protected harbour, we set out for our next destination – Kalbarri.

The first small place into which we took a detour was an historic village called Greenough, but it wasn’t open. However, we did get some shots of an interesting local feature – horizontal trees – they grow this way because of the prevailing westerly strong winds. They look really odd!

We met up in Geraldton for brunch with Tim and Moira, right on the water, which was very pleasant, and, after a little retail therapy, we continued on our way.

Along the way, we visited Coronation Beach, a favourite camping spot of Tim and Moira’s and it was a lovely area so we could understand why they loved visiting and staying there.

Our next destination for the day before reaching Kalbarri, was the Pink Lake on Hutt Lagoon and, much to our delight it was PINK, so taking photos of this phenomenon was easy.

Further up the coast, we spent quite a while visiting just a small part of the Bigurda Trail, a clifftop area that stretches 8 km along the coastline with spectacular views at various points of natural rock structures. I was able to access the Castle Cove/Island Rock area and Peter walked a little further along to the Natural Bridge.

While we were at the Island Rock lookout at Castle Cove, we observed a kestrel stalking some prey, gliding back and forth searching, then hovering and diving. It managed to catch something small as whatever it was the kestrel devoured rapidly then sat quietly on a branch for a while. We have seen these beautiful kestrels quite often in our western coast travels. We haven’t managed to get a close-up shot of one yet, but I did buy a beautiful drawing/painting of one in Coral Bay, that will grace my walls when I get home.

The photos on this particular entry are mostly Peter’s, especially the ones of the kestrel.

Island Rock is fairly self-explanatory. Peter’s shots of the wash-up into a cave at the base of the cliff are pretty good!

The cliffs and island rock demonstrate the various strata of rock formation in the area and the way different rocks erode at different rates. It is quite fascinating.

The Natural Bridge is interesting and again the photography is not too bad!

From there we drove into Kalbarri where we stayed in this cute little motel unit for the night. Tim’s choices have been spot-on so far!