After a short stretch of the North West Coastal Highway, we turned off to Coronation Beach, with a sheltering reef and quiet campsite. We stayed late the next day whilst I fumbled ineptly on the beach with my new (and first) fishing rod, before hitting the road again for Kalbarri.
We both like wildlife, as the number of wombat/koala/kangaroo photos on Annie's camera will attest, and thanks for some great zoos and national parks we have seen many many antipodean critters. Missing, however, have been the monotremes, which are either reclusive or had escaped their enclosures. It was then a stroke of luck when Annie cried out on an annoyingly slow 60-zone and we saw an echidna ambling by. Like a big hedgehog, but stretched out, he (she? it?) was quite unconcerned with our understanding that it was only active at dawn and dusk. Actually, I don't think I can support the widely advised dawn/dusk activity pattern for Aussie animals - they do what they want when they want, and road traffic be damned.
Kalbarri is annoyingly pretty, one of those places that will always look like paradise even when it's raining a storm, or in the driest, ground-baking-est scorcher the Aussie summer can provide. My unwarranted hostility on seeing the splendour of reef breaks next to a tranquil lagoon, and seeing jagged sandstone cliffs looking over soft grassy sandbanks, was only assuaged by my mom not being in Oz yet. She'd want to up sticks and move here immediately, and the travel distance for family get-togethers would be silly. There would be plenty of local animals to stock her dream menagerie, though my fishing efforts need a drastic improvement before they could provide for her aquatic section. I stood by the water right through sunset until the seagulls stole an almost whole pack of bait, but in my defence, no-one else had any fishing luck that night either.
Our body clocks are slowly resetting to match the sun, so it wasn't much of a struggle to rise and start packing at first light. We drive a few kilometres out of town to the Big River Ranch, where we had booked onto a horse riding tour. Annie was excited to be riding again, describing herself as an intermediate rider, a stark constraint to my trepidation and obvious lack of experience. We were introduced to our horses and told of their natures: Kiwi the laid-back dude for me, and Barney the playful egotist for Annie. The riding was surprisingly easy, nose-to-tail in a line of six with two guides and the horses knew what to expect. Until we went for a run, that is. During the run, for which I held on for dear life, Kiwi cut corners, jumped past Annie in line, led the others on an impromptu path-making session via a dead bush, and got lost, though unlike the rest that wasthe girl in front's fault for pulling her horse up. Phew! I was shattered after all that adventure, and that exhaustion doesn't even factor in my sore lungs from laughing; my horse pooed mid-river and floated towards a horrified Annie! Elated and feeling reckless, we left Kalbarri on the East road, stopping in at the National Park gorges. Why reckless? We'd been to so many other national parks in WA, we decided not to pay the entry fee here. And on that rock and roll note, we drove a 500km round trip diversion to Denham / Shark Bay World Heritage site, just to see some dolphins.
I've noticed a split in travellers here: those who enjoy the outback and those who think it's 'just the bush' and can't tell mulga from eucalypts. The crux seems to be how much the landscape changes in, say, a three-hour drive. Let me warn you, even David Attenborough would have been pulling his hair out in frustrated boredom, if he'd been with us on that drive to Denham. You may now be wondering if it was at all worth it, and, unfortunately for future travellers, I have to say it was. Let's ignore the overpriced caravan park and the neighbouring camper who mistook our get-lost-it's-tea-time look for an entreating come-talk-at-us, and get right to it. We saw baby emus being inexpertly shepherded across the road by a parent. We were within touching distance of two fully aware wild dolphins, who swam on their sides to get a better look at us while their pups span, jumped and chased back and forth (at Monkey Mia). We saw beaches made entirely of the shells from the tiny bivalves that proliferate in Shark Bay's hypersaline southern reaches, the sea grass meadows from an excellent high clifftop viewpoint (though sadly no dugongs at this time of year), and we even saw evidence that the entire area was tropical and mangrove-covered only 4000 years ago. In short, the monotonous drive to Denham was completely worth it, and we really should have broken up the boredom of the drive in with some of the picturesque rest-stops, instead of saving them all for the way out!
Readers of Bryson may have picked up on an omission in my list if wonders in the Shark Bay area, though I've not been specific with place names and his 'Down Under' did come out in the 90s. After a long bus trip, he dismounts and baffles at the appeal of some slimy rocks, namely stromatolites. Hamelin Pool is a famous site for viewin these ancient microbial colonies, and it's about as interesting as slimy rocks can get to the non-biology-specialist. The slime colonies are protected by boardwalks and boating restrictions, but what the info boards don't tell you is that these particular stromatolites can only have been there for several thousand (not million) years - the sea level changes have completely reshaped this area several times over since then. It's nice they're protected where they are, but they're actually quite common in this bay, to the extent that you can drive your 4x4 over them (to launch a boat) at the campsite we stayed in that night, a lovely station stay called Gladstone.
Sadly that brought our journey's biology lessons to an end for a while, but don't worry, we've still plenty to recount. Next up: The Pilbara!
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