Our friends John & Sue left early today for Perth, then Denmark.  John wants to be in Perth on Monday & then spend a few days with his niece in Denmark, where we will join them next Wednesday.  So, we are on our lonesome today to explore Kalbarri National Park.  First up we had a drive around town to see what Kalbarri looked like, quite a nice little town.  Our W.A. National Parks Pass allowed us free entry into Kalbarri National Park & we hadn’t got very far down the corrugated yellow sandy road (this gold coloured sand we haven’t come across before) when the inevitable happened.  We stopped for photos.  The wildflowers here are absolutely beautiful & such a variety of colours, shapes, sizes & all in varying stages of flowering.

Our first planned stop was the lookout above the Loop Gorge, a very high vantage point looking both ways.  I think we spent more time looking at the wildflowers than the gorge.  We then journeyed on to the Loop Gorge itself & “Natures Window”, a natural rock formation that is a large hole in the sandstone caused by wind & water erosion over time.  You can look through it & see the Loop Gorge.  It makes absolutely beautiful photos, as you can see in the sample below.

Next on the agenda was the Z-Bend Gorge, funnily enough a gorge with the river bed shaped in the form of a “Z”.  The car park & the 1.2km walk to the lookout was just as good as the gorge view, the different wildflowers were even better than at the Loop Gorge.  We ran into some fellow travellers whom we have been bumping into at a lot of sights, Fiona & her husband from Melbourne & their 3 young boys.  After dilly dallying & taking lots of photos (you only see a very small sample, on one day we took 390 photos) we were hurried up by a rain shower that we could see coming across the park.  We had our lunch in a very good picnic shelter provided then started to head out.  The road condition was a lot worse heading out than coming in, it must be all of the visitors into the park today really chewed it up.  Anyway, the journey was a lot slower as we were keeping our eyes out for new wildflowers & we stopped to take lots more photos.  It was like being in Mother Nature’s wonderful garden.  The flowers are apparently a bit late this year but we think what there is it’s  wonderful.

Eventually back in Kalbarri we had some cheese, bikkies & coffee to warm us up as the southerly wind was a bit cool.  Afterwards we had a short walk down by the Murchison River before walking back past the fish & chip shop next to the caravan park & picked up a hot dinner – a lot better than cooking, it is Sunday (our standard has fallen now that our friends left).  We are missing our friends Sue & John.  It is strange to see our Karavan without their Vista next to it.