West Coast Mission: Day 4

It is compulsory whilst doing the West Coast to visit Kalbarri National Park, failure to do so will result in being mocked and ridiculed by your peers and people will point and laugh at you in the street so we duly pulled off the highway and followed the loop that runs through the town of Kalbarri, checked into the cheapest campsite in town, Red Bluff, then hit the unsealed track to the national park itself.

Infinately Pinker Than The Other One

Stunning Coastline

One of Kalbarri's most famous landmarks is Nature's Window which marks the beginning of the 4 hour walk called The Loop. Thank fuck it's at the start, it meant we didn't have to bother with the walk because its recommended you take a lot of water and all we'd brought was goon. We just did some contrived "look at us relaxing nonchalantly whilst gazing through the Window" posing for the camera and spent the rest of the time twitching and waving our hands around, interspersing this with outbursts of, "Fuck off, flies!"

Contrived Posing In Nature's Window

The Z-Bend

Seriously, if you're going to check out Nature's Window and the Z-Bend take a fly net then at least you can relax and enjoy watching the other people wandering round spasming and shouting like spastics with Tourettes. Oh what the fuck take a job lot of 'em and flog them to the fools that forgot to bring one of their own, you'd make a small fortune. Other Great Aussie Business Ideas I've come up with include a sandwich bar halfway up any tourist attraction that involves walking up a hill and a bottle shop at the top of Uluru.

Fucking Flies!

After some more driving round, oohing and ahhing at the scenery and further verbal abuse of insects had occurred we headed back to the town as the sun set. Me and Becky had the power ballads blasting and we were shouting along as Craig cowered in the back whimpering, "Watch out for the cows..."

Meh, I had the cows covered and I assured him of this as I swerved to avoid a particularly startled looking bovine.

One of the things that shits me about this country is the signposting or lack thereof. When you get to the end of most unsealed roads all there'll be are some black and white arrows indicating that you need to turn left or right because onwards is no longer an option unless you drive a monster truck or you're feeling particularly adventurous and/or stupid but there's never any help as to which way would be best for you. So I swung a left and carried on driving as Celine Dion informed us at several decibels above what is deemed to be safe for the average eardrum that her heart would indeed go on. Good for you, girl.

It was about 20kms up the sealed road when I noticed Loody was flashing her lights behind us so I pulled over. Apparently she'd been shouting into the two way radio we had since I'd taken the turning, she didn't think we'd gone the right way. I thought about it... this was feasible... we had after all been driving for quite a while since we came off the track, certainly longer than we should have been... oh fuck... no, clearly we weren't going the right way.

Oh come on, its not like we were lost is it, I mean, I knew exactly where we were.

It just wasn't where we were meant to be.

written by

Koala Bear on May 5, 2007 from Kalbarri, Australia

from the travel blog: Sod Off Great Big Mission Round Oz

tagged RoadTrip, LovinIt and WestCoast

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