Towards Kalbarri

Tuesday 6^th September

Denham to Murchison River

We woke up to the sound of the wind doing its best to turn our awning inside out.  To make matters worse we realised we would be heading straight into it all day as we drove south towards Kalbarri.

While Cameron and Christel were doing schoolwork, I shot down town to get fuel before we hooked up the caravan and headed off.  Denham has two fuel stations.  When I pulled up at the first one there was a sign on the pump saying ‘Out Of Order’.  Never mind on to the second one.  Guess what, Out Of Order.  It was 150 odd km out to the Overland Roadhouse, which was the nearest fuel stop. I checked the car computer which showed we had enough fuel to do 180km without towing the caravan.  It would be touch and go.  Luckily we had a 20 litre container full of diesel for emergencies, so we decided we’d be OK.

We wanted to stop off at the Hamelin Stromatolites, on the road out from Denham to the main road.  We didn’t quite get to there before the orange fuel light started flashing, so we had to refuel on the side of the road.

The Hamelin Stromatolites are the oldest living organisms on earth.  In appearance they just look like old well worn rocks. It’s hard to believe they are actually living things. They originated 3.5 billion years ago, being initially formed from cyanobacteria.  The high density of salt in the water in which they lived, allowed them to develop.  They released oxygen into the atmosphere, and as a result of this, all other life started to form.

Obviously that’s a very brief explanation of the life cycle and importance of these rather ordinary looking rocks, but it appears they were they origin of all life on earth.   I’m not sure where Adam and Eve fit in, but I’ll leave you to argue that one amongst yourselves.

Before the Stromatolites were discovered for what they were, to the early settlers they were just a heap of rocks on the shore, which formed a handy place to load wool onto boats for shipping overseas.  They used to take the wool out to the waiting boats by horse and cart across these rather handily placed rocks.  Tracks left by the carts are still visible on the old rocks.

As a small aside, there is a sign by the stromatolites, giving a description of how the wool was delivered from the early sheep stations to the ships waiting to take the wool to England. The wool bales were first of all loaded onto fairly heavy farm carts, or Camel Trains, at the sheep stations.  They were then dragged, or carried, in some cases for hundreds of kilometres, to the coast at Hamelin where the stromatolites formed a nice hard landing.

The wool was then loaded onto small drays and taken out across the rocks to rowing boats waiting at the shore. It was then off loaded from the drays and onto the rowing boats, which would then be rowed out to bigger boats called lighters.  It was then off loaded from the rowing boats onto the lighters, which then sailed 190 km out to the sailing ships waiting in deeper water to take the wool to England.

Again the wool was transferred from one boat to another before beginning the final stage of its trip to England.  And of course in those days of sailing ships, there was no guarantee it would ever get there.  So each bale of wool was actually loaded 5 times before it departed for England.  It must have been worth a bit.

Also at the Stromatolite Site there was a shell rock quarry, where over millions of years crushed shells had been compressed and glued together into a lightweight type of rock. 

The Early settlers were able to use it for building their houses, and cut it out of the ground using cross cut saws similar to the ones used by the early timber workers.

We got out to the Overlander Road House and fuelled up both the car and the spare fuel container.  After lunch at the Roadhouse, we continued south towards our scheduled overnight stop at a free camp beside the Murchison River. 

The free camp site beside the Murchison River was huge with room for about 80 to 100 vans.  There were about 30 camped there when we arrived, and we soon found ourselves a nice spot fairly close to the river.  There were tracks leading in all directions to camp sites amongst the trees, and Cameron had a ball exploring these on his bike.  

He was also able to ride across the low level bridge over the river to another camp site on the other side.  Needless to say we didn’t see much of him except when he came back to tell us about something he had discovered.

It was while we were camped here that we saw our first flocks of wild budgies flying past.  Budgies are almost a pest in Australia, but this was the first time we had seen them in any number.  They made quite a sight as they flew over head with their brilliant green colours flashing in the sun.

Our average fuel consumption for the days travel was just under 26 litres per 100 km. Thanks to the strong head wind we had been travelling into all day; this was the highest we had experienced on the trip so far.  Normally we would expect about 19 to 20 litres per 100km.

Wednesday 7^th Sept

Murchison River to Kalbarri

About 20 km south of our overnight stop at the Murchison River, we turned west on the road down to the coast and the small township of Kalbarri.  From just south of Broome, we had been starting to notice wild flowers growing along the side of the road.  The further south we came, the more we saw, and the greater the variety.  We knew that this was the best time of the year to see them. 

They are especially prolific in this part of Australia, and we had heard that as a result of the extremely wet winter Australia had just experienced, this was expected to be one of their best years ever for wild flower displays.

The road to Kalbarri goes through Kalbarri National Park for most of the way. As we came closer to Kalbarri, there were several places along the side of the road indicating good places to photograph the Wildflowers. 

We stopped at a couple of them and did our best to capture the natural beauty we could see all around us.  We learnt from one of our brochures, that some of the plants in the Park do not exist anywhere else in the world.

Kalbarri is situated on the coast at the mouth of the Murchison River. Our camp site was right by river, which is about the same size as the Mokau River; in fact the whole place somehow reminded us of Mokau. 

The whole area is surrounded by the Kalbarri National Park, and besides the wildflowers, tourists come to the area to see some of the spectacular cliffs and gorges in the National Park.

After setting up camp we had a look around town, and then Cameron and I decided to try our hand at catching a fish from one of the wharves across the road from the centre of town.  The wind, as usual was blowing a gale which didn’t make conditions very pleasant.  We persevered for a while, but the fish weren’t biting, so we gave up and went back to camp for beer and bikkies.