Kalbarri & Murchason Station

After our delayed departure from Monkey Mia, finally made it to our next destination just after sunset!!!! Always fun (not!!!) when you have to set up in the dark, especially on a river bank with lots of dry sand (i.e. bog!!). Luckily our brothers in arms were already set up and ready to assist with torches and a bowl of spag for the kids. Our actual camp site was Murchison House Station – a small sheep farm of some 750,000 acres!!! You just pay them a small sum and set up camp on the river bank and have the use of their abolution block and camp kitchen. Lovely to have a camp fire again (along with the marshmallows) and get back to a bit of bush camping.

Kalbarri is a fabulous location as it has both fabulous beaches for fishing and surfing, as well as the national park which has some fabulous gorges, wild flowers and of course the Murchison River. First day we explored the town, bought a crab net (as you do) and went fishing!!!! All the kids caught something (all except the biggest kid of all – poor old James!), but of course none of it was big enough to keep.

Next day, left camp at the crack of a sparrows fart to head off on a canoe expedition down the Murchison River. Goes something like this – catch a bus up the river, row down for 4kms or so, stop off for a massive (and I mean MASSIVE) breakfeast and then row another 8kms to your final pick up location. All went well, kids loved it, Tristy sat back and sipped his drink as Ben and I paddled, Cam and Goose were in the other canoe (cam doing most of the paddling!!).

Spent the afternoon checking out the National Park – Natures window and Z bend Gorge – quite stunning and we saw 170 million year old bug footprints!!!! Wild flowers everywhere (and lots of elderly folk to go with them) and it is just the start of the wild flower season.

Headed off to Jurien Bay on Wednesday (we think – must be on holidays because we can’t remember the days!!). Windy, windy, windy – what more can we say!!!!!!! Checked out the Stockyard Gully caves and the headed down to the Pinnacles around sunset – oh my goodness they are stunning!!! We had no idea what to expect but they are just fascinating and they go on forever – it really is a desert. As we checked out these ancient fossils Angus’s first comment was “this is a great root dad!!!”. To explain – the Pinnacles are fossilized tree roots.