Kalbarri & the Pinnacles Desert

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A few days of recuperation in Perth and we were ready to head up the coast. We headed up with Easy Rider, a company that runs a hop-on hop-off bus service for backpackers. The advantage of this service is that you can see some of the sights that are off the highway while heading up the coast.

The first thing we noticed is that the distances here are huge. You can travel for hours without seeing anyone called Bruce or Shane. After half a day on the bus we reached our first sight, the Pinnacles Desert. Here, huge limestone hills have been eroded by wind and sand for thousands of years. All that is left are small pillars of stone, surrounded by golden desert sands. The little pinnacles stretched as far as the eye could see.

Rocks and gorges, and lots of flies too.

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It was here that we had our first encounter with the Aussie fly, possibly the most annoying creature on earth. These little buggers just don't leave you alone and try and crawl up your nose and into your mouth. We resolved to ourselves that we would buy a flynet to go over our heads as got back on the bus.

The next stop on the tour was the Kalbarri Gorges. This is last point at which any rivers reach the sea. North of here the rivers are just dried out creek beds. There are some attractive gorges around here. We saw the z-bend gorge and nature's window and could trek down into one of the gorges. We could have spent longer here but unfortunately we didn't have the time to spare. There were plenty of kilometres to cover to get up to Broome so we had to continue up the road.