Kalbarri

Arriving at Kalbarri meant we were now truly into wildflower country, and especially orchids, the major attraction of the trip for Jean. We stayed at a caravan park in town but with easy access to the National Park. Kalbarri National Park covers 183,004 hectares on the lower reaches of the Murchison River, with magnificent red and white banded gorges for 80 kilometres, as it carves its way to the sea.

The species-rich heathlands provide a spectacular floral display. There are vivid gold and orange banksias, grevilleas in white, yellow and red, green and red kangaroo paws, featherflowers in many coloured shades, smokebushes, starflowers and many more. We soon had our first encounter with WA's iconic Kangaroo Paw, growing by the roadside:

Orchids there were aplenty also, initially at the excellent Kalbarri Wildflower Centre (sadly soon to be replaced after 20+ years by a residential development) and later in the national park itself. Orchids will be a separate thematic facet of this blog later but here's a sampler for now, one of the West's superb Spider Orchids:

Apart from exploring the park, highlights of Kalbarri included delicious local rock lobster, a dessert pizza, and a cruise up the river, where we learned that the local mega station of over a million hectares, which is only allowed to run one sheep to 32 hectares ( determined by rainfall patterns), makes far more money out of trapping the millions of feral goats and shipping them live to the Middle East.

From Kalbarri we turned inland in search of everlasting flowers and the famous Wreath Flower.