Sunday 9 September – Today has been a touristy day – we have visited the Kalbarri National Park.  The destinations were Natures Window, a natural hole in the rocks which opens to a lovely view of the Murchison River Gorge below, another lookout only a short distance from there, and Z Bend lookout, a further 12 km from the first two.  The problem was that the access to these attractions was down 25 kilometres of dirt road – about half of it corrugated.  Grant was not happy, and that mood unfortunately impacted on the day.

However the scenery was just beautiful and walks from the carparks to the viewing spots were not too long, though it was hot.  There were heaps of people at all three places, including a couple of 10-15 seater bus tours.  It is the most people we have seen at sightseeing places for quite a while.  The river, which is the second longest river in W.A. has lots of twists and turns which gives the lovely angles for photo shots.

The wildflowers were varied and really pretty, though there are not solid paddocks of them yet.  But in some places they line the road and look like a flowering avenue to drive down.  There was one which appeared to be a type of grass which has feathery plumes which blow in the breeze.  I thought they were a lovely lilac colour, but when I got up close today and really looked, they are just a whitish grey, but in the breeze and the sun they have a distinct mauve tinge.

First we went to the lookout which gives a lovely view from a height, overlooking the river way below.  We could see some sort of bird (quite tall) in the shallow water, but couldn’t distinguish what sort of bird it was.

A pretty spectacular view of the Murchison River.

Next we went to Nature’s Window which is truly a freak of nature.  To find a hole in a rock with such a beautiful view of the river as you look through it is amazing, and of course a wonderful photo spot with people posing in the ‘window’ – including us!!

Here we are sitting in the window in the rock.

And from there we went to Z Bend, so named because of the Z form the river takes due to fault lines in the rocks through which it runs.  Again there is a spectacular view, and we even saw some people down on the river walking on the rocks. (Birds eye view!!)

 One side of the Z.

Tonight we had tea with Dot and Ross at the caravan park barbecue area where Ross cooked some fish that he caught a couple of days ago.  It was yummy and we had a good old natter to go along with it.  They are leaving tomorrow morning heading south and will get to Perth (where they are staying in the same park as we are booked into) on Thursday.

We got back to van and went to do the dishes when I realised that I must have thrown away the sink plug with the scraps from the salad I made for tea. And the rubbish has been deposited in a very full garbage bin which neither Grant nor I are going to grovel around in.  So that’s a bit of a bummer, the kettle died half way my preparing to make a cuppa, so it’s now the old ‘heat up the water in a saucepan’ trick.  I’ve done that and am now enjoying a cuppa, and tomorrow it look as if we’ll have to go shopping for a plug and another electric jug.