Blonde on a Road Trip

As much as we’d have liked to stay in a prison that looked strangely like university halls, we had a VERY long road ahead of us up past Perth and on to Kalbarri National Park. But before we departed, I managed to grab a few pictures from ‘inside’.

We didn’t stick around for long, not just because it’s a prison, but because we had a very long road up to Kalbarri ahead of us. But as drives go, it’s a pretty nice one. Simple one-lane highways take you up the NW Coastal Highway, from which you can see for miles, surrounded by low vegetation, farmland, bush land or even nearby sand dunes.

Our first proper stop to break up our journey was at Thirst Point Lookout, where we parked up and covered ourselves in sun cream, only to be battered by the wind and sand on the beach.

After taking a few pictures, we heaved ourselves off the unforgiving windy yet stunning beach and back into the Juggernaut for our next leg of the drive.

When looking up the route, I’d noticed there was a Lucy’s Beach up towards Kalbarri. It seemed silly not to see what kind of beach had been named as such, and as it turns out, it was a silly beach with a silly track up to it.

The track in question was initially a dirt road, which then quickly turned into a sand track that wound through dense, bushy dunes, with gaps and unhelpfully positioned rocks on each side (a bit like Devon but without the sand). Luckily, the Juggernaut is an impressively resilient car/beast and with some careful manoeuvres over some horrendous dips and downright crevices, we arrived at the little loop-like parking area.

Disturbingly, we did notice an abandoned pair of black Havaiana flip-flops on the beach… and no one around to claim them… so we began theorising how this might have happened. Michael has the same pair so it was a bit unnerving actually. Anyway…

We made our way back to the car to take the treacherous windy, sandy, track back to the road to Kalbarri, this time with Michael at the helm.

25 mins up the road, we stopped in Geraldton for some fuel. Geraldton is a pretty busy big town despite its distance from Perth, which feels like the epicentre of WA, but Geraldton is a fairly major seaport.

We shared the road with a few rather obscenely sized vehicles, including this beast, a road train, which is all part of one moving vehicle. He’d better hope he doesn’t have to do any reversing!!!

Onwards and upwards another 98km to our next destination, which I was unaware of until we reached it because Michael had to nudge me awake as we began driving past it…

The Pink Lake…

Pink Lake or Hutt Lagoon “boasts a pink hue created by the presence of carotenoid-producing algae, Dunaliella salina, which is a source of beta-carotene; a food-colouring agent; and a source of Vitamin A.”

It looked pretty pink but could’ve looked pinker and I think the pinkness depends how much water has been fed into the lake. This year, they’ve had incredible rain levels, so their wildflower season was exceptional, and so the concentration of pink in the lake was probably therefore lower than usual. But still definitely pink and not the milky turquoise we’d been getting used to!

Not long now until our actual final destination for the day… Kalbarri.

Just another 68km up the road and we reached Kalbarri Red Bluff Tourist Park just before check in closed. We’d called ahead to say we’d be cutting it fine, and though the receptionist was still there when we arrived, bless her, she’d prepared our key and map for us and put it in a collection envelope outside anyway so we wouldn’t be caught out. Very friendly anyway!

Side note: having rushed to quickly get some milk at the local supermarket before check in, we got to the tourist park reception only to find that they had milk for sale in the fridge there too. DOH! Oh well, better safe than sorry.

Once checked in, we quickly unloaded our bags, chucked some beers in the freezer and had a quick shower before we went on our usual sunset seeking challenge and drove about 3 minutes up the road to Red Bluff Point.

Armed with beers and warm clothing to protect from the wind, we sat and admired the sun going down over the horizon again at about 18:50.

By this point, two exhausted drivers went on a search for some food. The Gilgai Tavern looked the most alive, so we parked up there and hobbled in. Michael ordered the lamb cutlets and I had the prawn salad and rice (appetite somewhat diminished from fatigue – little did I know this was going to become a theme for the next week).

The cutlets looked, smelt and tasted amazing and would highly recommend if anyone makes the ridiculous trip up there.

But that was just about enough for one day, and so we said good night to our long, long day.