Off to See the Wizard - Kalbarri National Park - Part 2

Now that I have a better internet connection I can continue with our day at the Kalbarri National Park, which was back on last Thursday.

After the Sky Walk we drove to the Nature’s Window Lookout. 

Another beautiful spot.  I love the craggy trees you see in the area.

There is a longer rim walk that starts here.  Mick went over for the first part.

Of course, everyone had their photo taken in the window, patiently waiting for their turn.

There were more pretty flowers and I even found a couple of little rock ferns tucked in a sheltered spot.  They are my favourites.

After lunch we found the “Z Bend” lookout.  It has quite a sharp turn in the river and the sides are very rugged.

The path down was really well constructed.

Just a couple of new flowers this time.

By now we were seeing quite a few wildflower along the main road.

No wonder this is known as a wildflower hot spot.

Then we saw this……. Dad shepherded ten, yes ten, little chicks across the road.  Fortunately, we saw them in plenty of time and no other cars came along.

We then took a little detour from the national park to visit another interesting place - the Warribanno chimney.

It felt really strange to suddenly be out of the scrubby heath type vegetation into wheat fields.

The chimney sit atop a little knoll in the middle of the rather flat terrain.

It is the remains of a lead smelter.  The explorer Augustus Gregory discovered lead when he travelled through the area and the Geraldine Mine was opened shortly thereafter, being the first place settled in the mid west of Western Australia.  It was situated about 5km from this site.  

The smelter was built in 1858 and only appears to have operated for a couple of years.

You can see down into the chimney, which descends into the hill.  A rather clever way to avoid having to build it taller. We found the little opening in the side of the hill.

The view was spectacular.

The nicest thing about this site is that we were the only ones there.  We had a great climb around, just us.

We found some rather special wild flowers……..Cape Weed and Patterson’s Curse!!!  This was the first Patterson’s Curse we had seen, but there is lots of Cape Weed around, which is rather sad when it is in among drifts of wildflowers.

Jokes aside, there was a surprising number of wildflowers in this one little spot.

The tourist brochures say that the Geraldine Mine site is a bit further on, but we couldn’t find where it was.  However, we did find some really pretty drifts of everlastings further along the dirt road.

Heading back towards town, we had one more lookout to visit - Hawks Head.  When we saw it, we thought this was the lookout we had previously visited.  Not long after I met Mick, Mum gave him a jigsaw of the Murchison Gorge and this is the view in the jigsaw.  I will have to check the photos from our previous visit once I get home.

We were about over lookouts by then, so it was just the drive back to town.

However, there was one plant I particularly wanted to see close up.  There are heaps of these along the roadside.

It is the white plume grevillia.  These are the buds.

Aren’t they stunning.  It is commonly called “Smelly Socks” as they have a sickly sweet scent at dusk to attract nocturnal pollinators.  It was getting late in the afternoon, so I wanted to see if they did smell somewhat off.  There was not scent at all.  We were obviously too early.

There were a few other beautiful flowers in the area as well.

What a fantastic day we had exploring. 

We finished the day off wth a delicious pizza.  This was a bit of an experiment.  I tried a new recipe that was given to me by our friend in Port Hedland.  The base is made from just two ingredients, one cup of SR flour and half a cup of Greek yoghurt.  I didn’t have a round pizza tray or rolling pin, so just pressed the dough out in a slice tray.  Success.

The highlight of the day is hard to pick, as it was all so good, but in the end it was the chimney and Sky Walk.