Way Out West

If Michelle Shocked had happened upon Western Australia prior to penning her popular ode to Alaska, she may very well have written about letters being returned to Kalbarri rather than the titular Anchorage. Western Australia, just as it is with its US counterpart, is the largest state in the union. Or more accurately, the largest Ferderated State in the Commonwealth of Australia. And at a smidge over 2.5 million square kilometres it not surprising that it’s by far the largest, covering nearly a third of the continent’s land mass. But that’s ok, with a population of a little over 2.3m there’s a lot of it to go around.

Of all of the interesting facts about this place, the sparcity became very apparent when we set off from Perth and headed up to our holiday destination in Kalbarri. It wasn’t the lack of other vehicles that really hammered this home, or the fact that there were very few signs of human habitation during the 500km trip. Instead it was the roadside signs warning drivers about the lack of water and offering advice on how much one should be carrying in order to travel through the state safely. Now you don’t get that in North Yorkshire. And why would you? North Yorkshire, the largest county in England, has an area of a little over 8,600 square kilometres and has a population of 1.2m. If one could pick up North Yorkshire, and I’m sure there are plenty around that wish it were possible, and drop it into Western Australia one could do that 292 times and still have room left over for Lancashire.

So with less than the specified amount of water on board, but plenty of beer and wine, we set off north towards Kalbarri. Making a few stops on the way for sightseeing and that great British tradition of second breakfast, meant that we couldn’t make the entire drive in a single day. Well, not if we wanted to only drive in daylight hours anyway. Yes, I realise that the car did have headlights but judging by the dead kangaroos on the roadside, travelling at night is not for the faint hearted. Well not if you happen to be driving the equivalent of a motorised skateboard. The car we chose for our journey may have been fine in downtown Perth, but looked decidedly weenie compared to the rest of the vehicles on the road. These looked they had just stepped out of a Mad Max film; covered in red dust, piled high with outdoor equipment and with huge radio antennae that look like they could make contact with outer space. Which is probably just as well because if they had been anywhere other than the coastal highway then survival comes at a heavy cost. Literally. So alongside these, and the huge road-trains that service the minining industry in this part of the world, our Hyundai i30 looked puny and we were pretty sure that if we came into accidental contact with a ‘roo then we would come off decidedly worse. So a night-time stopover it was. 

Tired, sweaty and a little dusty, we pulled off the main road into Cervantes. “Cervantes,” the guidebook boasted, “is a delightful coastal town with stunning beaches and grand vistas.” Well it was on the coast. And it did have fabulous beaches. But that is as far as our agreement with the guidebook went. More accurately, and I am being charitable here, the guidebook should’ve read “Cervantes is a windy hole of a town with sandy beaches that spend the entire time trying to enter any open orifice. The views are spectacular, or at least they would be if you could see them through the sandstorm.” Maybe we arrived at a bad time. Or maybe we were just tired and needed some comfort. Either way, Cervantes didn’t help. After an astonishingly good meal in the local tavern, we returned to bed and were back on the road again at first light. 

Pretty soon there was a decent amount of distance between us and Cervantes and with the open road in front of us, we covered the distance with remarkable ease. Having absolutely no traffic on the road, and not a single set of traffic lights, junctions or for that matter bends between us and our destination we arrived into Kalbarri in next-to-no-time. Well, okay nearly five hours but with a place this big that’s the equivalent of “just popping to the shops”.

Kalbarri is an entirely different proposition to Cervantes. Admittedly they do share one attribute; they are on the coast. But that is the only similarity. Where Cervantes appeared god-forsaken, Kalbarri is a thriving beach community with shops, restaurants, a tourist information centre, playgrounds and other community paraphernalia. With so much going on, it’s easy to forget that you’re hours from anywhere; surrounded by the Indian Ocean on one side and a semi-arid dessert on the other. How the Indian restaurant managed to serve up such fresh and delicious meals is one of the wonders of the modern world. 

Our one and regrettably only full day in Kalbarri has been jam packed. It started by watching pelicans being fed on the local reserve, segued into a wilderness walk to a local look-out (view point) closely followed by a dip in the pool, a short nap, snorkelling in the aforementioned Indian Ocean and we’re soon to set off to witness another spectacular sunset. Something that 90% of Australia doesn’t get to see. Just today we’ve seen pelicans, kangaroos (living ones!), a huge nameless lizard that wandered across our path, parakeets, and coral fish. 

It’s been so good, that we wish we could wake tomorrow morning and do it all again. Instead, we’re taking the short drive back to Perth, only this time with plenty of water. There’ll be plenty of stops on the way and who knows, there may be even time for a second breakfast somewhere down the trail. But not in Cervantes that’s for sure!