It wasn’t too cold this morning and
although it was quite cloudy it wasn’t raining. We’d all slept a little later
than usual due to our late night, so got up and started getting ready to leave
as soon as we could. We are getting so much more efficient at packing up, so
it’s not stressful at all. When the kids got up they went to see the goats, and
our neighbours were up by now as well so took all of the kids into the pen to
pat them. There was a little bit of rain on and off as we packed up, nothing
heavy, it just meant we did things in a slightly different order so that the
important things stayed dry.
While we were packing a couple with a young
child drove past on their way out with their camper trailer. They hit a bump
near our tent and one of the wheels fell off their trailer. I was impressed at
how well they coped – they just got out and figured out what they needed to do
to fix it, with the help of the guy across from us, and then went into town to
get the parts they needed. Our neighbours and we were very thankful that
nothing like that had happened to us, and that this had happened at low speed
in the campground and not when they were somewhere more dangerous.
We were packed up by 9.30, then Tony went
up to the kitchen to make a coffee and get breakfast for the younger 2 kids. We
chatted more to our new friends and the kids played a bit more totem tennis and
barrel walking, we said goodbye to all the animals, and our friends, and
finally reluctantly left the station. Caitlin had briefly seen one of the
station kids in the morning and been able to say goodbye to them as well. If we
didn’t have a deadline to be home in a couple of weeks we definitely would have
stayed longer here, we all really loved it. It was so peaceful down near the
river, our campsite was flat and not too rocky or sandy, having the animals
around was exciting and always interesting, the camp kitchen and lounge area
was the best we have seen on our trip, and the location was great, we would
have loved to have spent more time in the National Park as well.
We drove in to Kalbarri and got fuel, and
could see the river winding past the town and then meeting the sea. The water
was calm and flat in the river, then at the mouth there were waves going in
every direction, it looked crazily tumultuous. There were big, thick grey
clouds in the sky now and it was a lot windier near the coast. We drove up to
Red Bluff, which was the main place I had wanted to see in this area (before I
knew about Nature’s Window). It was a little walk from the carpark to the top
of the cliff, there were a few lookouts along the way before reaching the
bluff. It was obviously pouring rain out to sea, and the ocean was a deep, dark
grey. The waves were pounding on the bottom of the cliff, splashing over the
rock and churning into white water, with a turquoise blue colour just behind
the break and as the water rushed back out. I love the sound and the feel of
waves breaking onto rocks, and Millie was surprised when I said ‘I love
cliffs’, then asked everyone to be careful where they were sitting at the top
of the cliff. There was a great spot to sit and watch, where the bluff sloped
down for a while so it wasn’t sheer, so I didn’t have any vertigo, but I still
wanted to make sure everyone watched their step. I explained that I love how
cliffs look and feel and my fear of heights doesn’t get in the way of that, I
just need people to be careful. We walked out to the end of the bluff and
looked at more waves crashing onto different rocks. It was quite magnificent.
We could also look back and see the green ampitheatre type area we’d admired
from the road into Murchison House Station. On the walk back to the car we
admire lots of wildflowers either side of the path.
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| View from Red Bluff |
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As we drove further through the National
Park (the park follows the coastline here for a while) it started to rain,
really heavily for a while. We’d wanted to look at more of the coastal sights
but didn’t know how that would go in this downpour – then we came out the other
side and it was still overcast but no longer raining. We could even see some
lighter patches of sky moving northwards towards us. We drove out to the
carpark for Island Rock. Millie wasn’t keen to get out of the car to see
anything else, so she stayed and the rest of us wandered down to the lookout.
There was a rock coming up out of the water that would once have been part of
the cliff, but the adjoining rock had been eroded away. It felt and looked a
lot like areas of the Great Ocean Road. While we were at the lookout our
friends from last night arrived. We looked at the view with them, then the mums
and kids all walked to the next lookout, and the dads drove the cars and
trailers to the next carpark to meet us there.
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| Island Rock |
LiAM walked with the 5 year old and chatted
to him more about Star Wars and other stories, and they looked at the views and
birds. Caitlin walked with the mum and the 3 year old, helping to keep him from
running along these paths (a boardwalk) that came close to the cliff edges at
times, without any fences. Caitlin was impressed that I was able to walk along
there without any trouble – I was fine as long as I stayed on the path and
didn’t go right to the edge. As we walked we had a changing view of Island
Rock, then the next attraction was the Natural Bridge – an arch in the rock,
reaching out into the sea. It was very cool as well, especially when the big
waves hit it and we could see the spray splashing back through the arch.
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| Natural Bridge |
While we were admiring the view and talking
about how it would have formed, we saw dolphin fins. They disappeared and
reappeared a few times, then we saw that it was a pod of about 14. One of them
leaped out of the water and they swam around for a while, surfacing and ducking
under, obviously fishing. Once they had moved out of sight we headed back along
the path, stopping at one more lookout over Island Rock, where Tony and Millie
joined us. (Tony had popped down to the Bridge lookout then gone back to the
car to be with Millie). Millie was sad to have missed the dolphins – I saw them
briefly again but she missed them. We watched the waves for a while, then went
back to the Bridge lookout and watched there – with no luck. I’m glad she saw
the view, though it was disappointing that she missed her favourite animal.
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| dolphins |
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| Island Rock from the other side |
Back at the car we had some sandwiches,
then continued driving south. The countryside was quite green and pretty, all
farmland here, dotted with windmills. The next town we reached was Geraldton,
which seemed very full of traffic after so long only seeing smaller, remote
towns. It felt a lot like Newcastle, with a large industrial looking port to
the south of the main town (I hadn’t realised that was there), and lots of very
old buildings, with a new, modern precinct along the foreshore. I had heard
about a fantastic playground near the foreshore, with games as well as play
equipment, so we headed there for the kids to play while I went to the shops.
There were some deep parking spots nearby, so we unhitched the trailer to make
it easier for me to navigate a shopping centre carpark, and Tony took the kids
to the playground. They said it was awesome, lots of things to do and a great
place to hang out. I tried to find a new carseat for Millie, with no luck, but
did get her some new thongs. I stocked up on food for the next couple of days,
then headed back to get the trailer and the rest of the family.
We hitched up again and stopped at KFC on
our way out and bought a small $1 chips each, a nice way to tide us over until
dinner. We continued south for another hour or so, trying to get as far south
as we could while keeping in mind that the sun was getting lower in the sky and
we didn’t want to set up after dark. A little way south of Dongara we pulled
into a 72 hour rest area at Cliff Head North. I’d been worried that we wouldn’t
be able to find the turnoff or that the road in would be hard to navigate – the
sign was obvious on the highway, and we turned into the rest area and were
greeting with the ocean only a couple of hundred metres along a straight, wide access
road. The water looked silky and was starting to turn orange and blue as the
sun approached the horizon. It was so beautiful, and had been rather easy to
find! There were several caravans set up there on either side of the road, and
we were thinking of setting up at the last space towards the water – our tent
would have come a fair way out on to the road though and I was concerned that
if the caravans behind us wanted to leave first in the morning, they might not
have room to turn around. There were a lot of puddles on the ground and there
didn’t seem to be anywhere else suitable. We wandered down a track leading off
the cleared area, talked briefly to a couple who had their caravan in a
campsite down there, and found a large campsite, close to the shore, with
enough dry, flat area for us to put our tent. Tony drove down and we spent a
bit of time figuring out the best orientation for the tent (I wanted a bit of
shelter if it got windy, we needed to avoid a couple of rocks, and the slight
slope works better if the tent is sloping up not down. We eventually got it
figured out and set up as the sun slipped over the horizon.
There was an oil rig out on the horizon
which in the daylight looked like a large bird perched on the water, then was
just a huge orange light glowing out to sea once it got dark. Our site was
separated from the ocean only by a beach of seaweed. We could hear and see low
waves breaking against the seaweed, it felt very cool to be so close to the
ocean. We had our dinner (rissoles and eggs and bread rolls) and got ready for
bed. I walked back down to the toilets and they were pretty gross – they had
the buckets with disinfectant and brushes for washing out the bowl before and
after use (most Western Australian national parks and rest stops have these,
and they’ve meant clean and non-smelly drop toilets so far) – but in this case
the water in the buckets was dirty and disgusting, so the brush couldn’t clean
the toilet bowl so they were gross as well. We decided to do bush wees for the
remainder of our stay here – easy enough because we were in such a secluded
spot, we could see the top of the caravan nearest us and otherwise were
completely alone.
The night became quite cool, so we rugged up a bit and sat looking at the stars and listening to the ocean, before heading in to bed to read for a while. Thee was light in the sky from Geraldton, quite bright to the north, so the stars weren’t as showy as further north, but we still had a great view of the milky way.
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