Day 48 – Denham, Kalbarri to Geraldton

This morning we left lovely Denham behind, and made our way back out the peninsula road to the main highway before turning south on our way to Geraldton.  We stopped at a freecamp stop (parking bay) along the way for a midmorning snack and a quick break. There are numerous spots all around Australia like this now, but the WA ones are particularly well set up with lots of spots scattered through the bush to spend the night in , several picnic tables, long drop toilets, and campfire spaces.

As we turned off the main highway, we made our way into the lovely seaside town of Kalbarri. We have visited Kalbarri a few times before (sometimes when we lived in Perth we would come up here for a weekend), and always love looking at the wildflowers in the Kalbarri National Park on the way in and out of Kalbarri. This is the Kalbarri foreshore (pelican feeding everyday at 8.45am).

There is an enormous array of wildflowers out at the moment, absolutely mind blowing displays of banksias, grevilleas, hakeas, everlastings and a lot of others I can’t name.

After stopping for some fish and chips along the foreshore, and doing a quick wander along the main street (great bookshop here so Lily, Sam and I stocked up!), we decided to take the coast road down to Geraldton.

This area is full of beautiful coastal scenery and boardwalks.  We did a walk along the clifftop boardwalk from Island Rock to Natural Bridge taking in the stunning vistas and spotting many whales out rolling over and spouting.

 

The wildflowers along this particular stretch of road are amazing, and we couldn’t help stopping a few times to take some more photos. Eventually, after joining back on the main road at the historic little town of Northampton, we stopped briefly at the Lynton Convict settlement – a group of very old stone convict buildings that are still standing after all these years.

We made it into Geraldton in the late afternoon, and just had time to park the van at the Gerald Sunset Beach (Big 4) caravan park to admire the sun setting over the beach across the road.