Kalbarri Banquet

Wow! A huge day around Kalbarri today. So much to see and do, and a great variety as well. I knew we needed to come to Kalbarri, as it was a place people talk about, but really I knew very little about what to expect.

In fact Kalbarri was for many years a haven for surfers and fishermen who braved the road in because they craved the isolation. The sealing of the road changed all that and it is now a thriving little tourist town. Nestled between the ranges and the coastal dunes, it sits beside the Murchison River, which acts as the port. However, to get into the ocean you need to brave the bar, which today was running rough and angry. Given what looked like rocks either side of the channel markers I wouldn’t want to tackle it in good weather, but today with the waves crashing through it looked impenetrable. I’m no boatie, so perhaps it wasn’t that bad, but we didn’t see anyone going out today.

We survived the deluge last night rather better, owing mostly to vastly better preparations now that we have been shaken out of our northern slackness. There was however still a backlog of stuff to dry, and the tents were sill wet in any case. That worked out well, because the first event on the card had a fixed time of 8:45 and that is pelican feeding on the shore. We left things drying and off we went.

Pelicans might be common almost everywhere in Australia, including inland, but I don’t mind saying that they are my favourite bird. Awkward and ungainly with their pigeon-toed walk on land and preposterous beak, they possess the most endearing faces, and to see them with their mighty wings outstretched gliding at high speed, motionless in themselves and almost skimming the water, is to see one of nature’s marvels.

Elliot discovered at Monkey Mia that a pelican with a size advantage is a formidable assailant, and that pointed beak bearing down, with wings outstretched is not an experience he cared to repeat. He kept his distance this morning. The pelicans were there for one thing, mullies as icy-poles. Any other birds get second pick. The other birds this morning were various seagulls and a one-footed sea-eagle. Mullies are  apparently the local name for the type of herring common around here, and often used as bait. A team of volunteers runs the feeding sessions every morning. The pelicans have a pecking order, but are also a bit picky. They find the fish too frozen at the start of the session, so the big guy at the top of the food chain tends to get the fish having seen off all contenders, but spits them out for the others to fight over until they are a little more thawed.

Pelicans apparently live for around 40 years and mate for life. They generally only raise one chick each year, although up to three eggs may hatch. Because the eggs hatch about a week apart the older chick generally gets all of the attention, with the younger ones starving. A pelican chick is born naked, and within six weeks is fully-fledged and leaves the nest. In the intervening time it will consume around 50kg of fish from its parents, so that is one enormous task to keep the feed up to them for that period. Should one of the pair die, the other will remain a widow for the rest of its days.

Kalbarri has some impressive sandstone headlands south of the river mouth, looking across at the dunes and cliffs to the north. We checked out a couple of these before hitting the “i” for the obligatory purchases, then back for a late-morning packup, now dry.

A quick visit to the national park visitor centre told us the road into the National Park was open, so off we went for a very cursory visit. Wildflowers, gorges, rock-formations are all quite spectacular. We chose a couple of locations to explore the quick walks, leaving the longer ones for another day. The yellow sand made a welcome change from the almost incessant red we have had recently. The gorge was also wide and the rock formations different from those seen before. A more relaxed exploration will be on the list for some other time.

Back into town and we went to the wildflower garden in time for lunch. This is a private property on the edge of town large enough to have an apparently natural wildflower garden with about 2km of walking trail. They also run a shop and devonshire teas, which we only managed to half avoid. We saw a wide variety of flowering plants, but it was really only a tiny proportion that was out. I can imagine that this would be a garden of great variety throughout the year.

The must-see for the boys was Rainbow Jungle, a specialist parrot bird park. Again an entirely private affair they have a huge range of parrots in large cages, and also in a large walk-through enclosure. The parrots come from all over Australia, and all over the world. There is no pretence of providing a natural habitat, because, as they say, parrots are destructive little creatures and will lay waste to any vegetation they can get to. A large black cockatoo crunching through solid chunks of wood was proof enough of that. They do however pride themselves on keeping the birds happy enough to breed, which has in most cases been successful.

Standing pride of place at the entrance is a character talking corella. He greets everyone as they arrive in a very clear voice. He has quite a repertoire, and the favourite trick he played on me was to sidle up to the cage and bend his head over as if looking for a neck scratch (which is what the corella at Whim Creek wanted as well). When you go to give it to him he turns sharply as if to nip you, then gives a hysterical laugh as you recoil, while he bobs up and down happy with the joke!

Fortunately for us it closed at 4, which gave us time to start heading down the coast. Again we could only visit a selection of the attractions. We also passed up a visit to the Hutt River Province, the details of which I leave as an exercise for the reader…

Our overnight stop had several options, but the one we chose was a sleepy little fishing town called Port Gregory, beside the “Pink” lake, Lake Hume. The fading light made a photograph a bit unsatisfactory, but perhaps tomorrow will give better results.