After the harsh but picturesque attractions of the Murchison Gorge we stayed at Kalbarri and spent a day exploring the sandstone cliffs and inlets leaving the bike at one lookout to enable us to do a one way cliff top walk.
A return south briefly took us to gorgeous Port Gregory passing a beta carotene works on the shore of the highly saline and bright pink Hutt Lagoon. Hutt River Province is a legal quirk of circumstance being a principality separate from Australia and exempt from its legislation and taxes. This arose from a dispute over wheat quotas forty years ago and Prince Leonard now aged 86 welcomes visitors to the homestead that also provides camping in the arid outback environment.
Hamelin Station on Shark Bay provided a memorable base from which to explore up to Denham visiting the old Hamelin Pools Telegraph Station and adjacent stromatolites. Also here was the remarkable quarry used to extract blocks of compressed shells used locally in construction. These same tiny shells form Shell Beach where they lie up to 10m deep and stretch around Shark Bay for over 100 km.
The shallow waters of Shark Bay contain huge areas of seagrass that support mantra rays, dugongs and a wide variety of other marine life - 4WD only tracks give the best access so we will have to return one day. However we were able to get to the old Peron Station which used to run thousands of sheep - the old woolshed and shearers accommodation stand by an artesian bore that produces 170,000 litres of water a day at 30 degrees C now used in a free standing hot tub.
A second night on the half million acre Hamelin Station that runs 10,000 sheep (do the math)* set us up for the journey north to Carnarvon where we stayed the night at Quobba Station on the coast with a memorable sunset after lunch in town and a look round the heritage precinct at One Mile Jetty.
Today we set off in heavy rain (a surprise after the last few weeks of scorching sunshine) for the Kennedy Ranges 150 miles inland but decided after an hour that there was every chance of the road being closed behind us as the downpour was torrential.
Thus we returned to a proper site in Carnarvon to do the mundane chores such as laundry, water refills, battery charging, shopping etc. and will shortly watch a DVD with the heater on for the first time in months : the Tropic of Capricorn is less than a hundred miles away so we expect this to be only a temporary unsettled spell........................
* one ewe per 50 acres!
Click for Photos and our Whereabouts.
The slide show returns to the start of this trip with NSW in October
A return south briefly took us to gorgeous Port Gregory passing a beta carotene works on the shore of the highly saline and bright pink Hutt Lagoon. Hutt River Province is a legal quirk of circumstance being a principality separate from Australia and exempt from its legislation and taxes. This arose from a dispute over wheat quotas forty years ago and Prince Leonard now aged 86 welcomes visitors to the homestead that also provides camping in the arid outback environment.
Hamelin Station on Shark Bay provided a memorable base from which to explore up to Denham visiting the old Hamelin Pools Telegraph Station and adjacent stromatolites. Also here was the remarkable quarry used to extract blocks of compressed shells used locally in construction. These same tiny shells form Shell Beach where they lie up to 10m deep and stretch around Shark Bay for over 100 km.
The shallow waters of Shark Bay contain huge areas of seagrass that support mantra rays, dugongs and a wide variety of other marine life - 4WD only tracks give the best access so we will have to return one day. However we were able to get to the old Peron Station which used to run thousands of sheep - the old woolshed and shearers accommodation stand by an artesian bore that produces 170,000 litres of water a day at 30 degrees C now used in a free standing hot tub.
A second night on the half million acre Hamelin Station that runs 10,000 sheep (do the math)* set us up for the journey north to Carnarvon where we stayed the night at Quobba Station on the coast with a memorable sunset after lunch in town and a look round the heritage precinct at One Mile Jetty.
Today we set off in heavy rain (a surprise after the last few weeks of scorching sunshine) for the Kennedy Ranges 150 miles inland but decided after an hour that there was every chance of the road being closed behind us as the downpour was torrential.
Thus we returned to a proper site in Carnarvon to do the mundane chores such as laundry, water refills, battery charging, shopping etc. and will shortly watch a DVD with the heater on for the first time in months : the Tropic of Capricorn is less than a hundred miles away so we expect this to be only a temporary unsettled spell........................
* one ewe per 50 acres!
Click for Photos and our Whereabouts.
The slide show returns to the start of this trip with NSW in October
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