HOPEY 40: Sun. 16th Sept., 2012 - Denham to Kalbarri

We left Denham at 8am. What a beautiful area Shark Bay is - we shall remember it fondly, despite having been almost buried there!

View of Shark Bay from caravan window

As we drove out of the peninsular, two large emus crossed the road infront of us - we'd seen quite a lot of them around Denham, with broods of up to six chicks.

We refuelled at the Overlander Roadhouse & joined the Brand Highway, on which we would travel until we reached the turn-off to Kalbarri.

The vegetation was attractive, with lots of low-growing bushes, flowering lavender & white, in between the larger green ones. There were also big trees, which had been absent on our last long drive. The yellow wattle flowered intermittently & we saw patches of a deeper purple bush, too - the countryside was beginning to look colourful. As we entered the Shire of Northampton, the temperature was 30C, with no humidity - perfect!

The further we travelled, the more numerous & varied the flowers became. We'd seen lots of yellow & purple but pink was now beginning to enter the picture, too

Nearer to our turn-off, we were surprised to see fields containing some kind of crop that was possibly wheat &, when we crossed the Murchison River, it had a reasonable amount of water in it, suggesting a more fertile region.

At midday, we turned off the highway towards Kalbarri, which was 65km away. The fields were green & we could almost have been in England!

The National Park area was ablaze with colour from the plants & bushes that had burst into bloom. We recognised kangaroo paw, banksia & wattle but were not familiar with many others. The kaleidoscope of colour was indescribable & Mother Nature had excelled herself - she had created a floral wonderland!