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Margaret River April 14 - 17

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Wine Country Luxury - Margaret River April 14 - 17 Our last night in Hyden I used the leftovers from rotisserie chook to make enchiladas and we watched a murder mystery series featuring a small town lesbian cop (somebody is killing people and trying to frame a resident sea lion). In the morning we headed back west to the ocean and wine country. Driving through the hills and dales of Ferguson Valley I couldn't help but notice its resemblance to Sonoma County--green rolling hills dotted with big-limbed trees that from a distance looked like oaks, vineyard after vineyard, cattle and sheep. Except for the kangaroos it could have been Healdsburg or Glen Ellen.  We stopped at a small winery called Bakkheia that John saw a review for. No tasting room. A renegade, self-taught wine maker, who laid out cheese, olives, and homemade salami on a board amid the oak barrels and machinery, and plied us with really impressive reds. He had a unique pricing strategy--he invites 20 or so wine enthusia...
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Heading South and East

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Pink Lake, Pinnacles Desert, Endless Wheat Fields, Wave Rock Our next excursion was into the interior--the bush--tho the territory was mostly agricultural. Vast wheat and canola acreage--seemingly endless in all directions--now just stubble, dotted by a few large gum trees. The coverage is vaster than anything I've seen in the US midwest. It's hard to imagine how they manage to plant or harvest or transport it all. But somehow they do. We saw several quarter-mile-long, 2-story, tarp-covered storage structures at railroad sidings presumably full of wheat or canola seeds.  And everywhere there are flocks of hundreds of sheep. But I get ahead of myself. Our first stop heading south along the coast was back past Pink Lake where we had a windy breakfast. I mentioned this mining area lagoon earlier on our way up to Kalbarri. Its water is bright pink. John's shot of the Pink Lagoon as a short squall moved through My shot of Pink Lake lagoon Next we turned off Hwy. 1 and continued ...
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A Few More Highlights

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The last week in Kalbarri April 3 - 10 Except for the very last day, our final week in Kalbarri was much cooler. Mornings were quite chilly. One more trip to Nature's Window (my first, John's second) at 5:30 am. The moon was still full.  Natures Window rock formation above the Murchison River. A tricky hike in the dark before sunrise but glorious.  View of parkland and Nanda Country from Meanarra Hill. We went looking for mallefowl here, but later we learned they had not been seen for years  On Saturday we took a boat ride with other tourists out into the ocean with a lobsterman and his sister. A well run operation, a couple of miles up the coast, collecting 12 lobster pots (about 4 feet square by a foot and a half tall) each with 6 to 10 "cray," tho not all were kept. I got a bit seasick, but didn't hurl. Each adult on the boat got 3 lobsters (we donated 3 of ours) and we ate our fill for the next 2 days. Learned a lot about the industry and licensing The captain...
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Coastal Cliffs and Beaches

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Nanda Country A viewfrom the top of Meanarra Hill of Kalbarri and the Murchison River where it flows to the ocean, Nanda Country  The Aboriginal people of this area are called the Nanda, the Salt Water People. For at least 50,000 years they have subsisted off the abundant sea life from the ocean and river. British colonialists who settled Western Australia in the 1830s committed the same brutal ethnic cleansing here as they did in North America and all their other conquered lands. There were several massacres carried out by settlers, as late as the 1920s. And of course the horrendous residential schools. Population estimate of the social and language groups of Nanda is now about 800 people. It wasn’t until late 2018 that the Nanda people were finally recognized as the traditional owners of 17,000 square kilometers of land encompassing the upper Murchison River and the western seaboard from Northampton to Shark Bay. They have exclusive title rights to several key areas. South...
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Cyclone Narelle

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Playing it Safe--Our Escape   We were hearing about the cyclone (same as a hurricane) soon after we got to Kalbarri. It came ashore from the Coral Sea to Queensland on Australia's east coast as Category 5, lost a little energy but picked back up over the gulf, and then was dubbed a tropical storm across the Northern Territories. It seemed too far away to bother about. But by Wednesday, March 25 it was a cyclone again and several predicted tracks had it coming right for us. Thursday, March 26 we began making contingency plans. It is quite remote here and there are very few roads or motels outside of Kalbarri. People on the west coast were starting to head south or inland, so alternative places to stay were disappearing fast. Everything seemed fine here, but John did find a room in Yalgoo (southeast) for 2 nights and we went shopping for water and things to eat that didn't require cooking in case the power went out. We filled our gas tank--one station was already out of gas. We s...
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Kalbarri National Park

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Sunrise Hikes Besides the beaches on the ocean and at the mouth of the river, the big attraction in Kalbarri is inland in the national park, which covers a large area surrounding the Murchison River gorge. The river has carved into the ancient sandstone exposing colorful layers embedded with fossils. It has been very hot here and at least one of the main trails is closed after 7:00 am so visitors don't get heat stroke. Our forays to the various trail sites have started very early in the mornings. This is ideal for John, who has focused his photography on the special light of sunrise. But we have to start driving in the dark, usually before 5 am, and this is risky because of abundant nocturnal wildlife on the road, especially large kangaroos. So far, we haven't hit anything, tho we've narrowly missed a couple of echidnas. A minor irritation in hiking is the little flies. They don't bite, but there are zillions of them and they buzz your ears and land on your eyelashes an...
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Kalbarri Town

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  Our Base of Operations If you take a left at Northampton on Highway 1 and head out to the Coral Coast on 139 you pass a long lagoon that is bright pink. Hutt Lagoon or Pink Lake. It's caused by carotenoid-producing algae. Nearby is Lynton Convict Housing Station where convict labourers were kept in the 1850s. A few miles on and you reach the scenic shoreline of Kalbarri. At the crest of a hill the village at the mouth of the Murchison River comes into view. The town where we will be based for a month from mid March to mid April hugs the shoreline of the river and is mostly only 4 or 5 blocks wide. Somewhere in the middle of this picture is the Reef Villas--our base of operations. We're just 1 block up from the river park (the lawn-green area) that extends for a couple of kilometers all the way to the left and out of the frame. Our villa apartment has a full kitchen, a first-floor lanai and a second-floor balcony hidden from the street by tall palms where many noisy birds hang...
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