Kalbarri to Cervantes

 After being served breakfast by our host we set off in fine but cool weather. A lot of cloud about and threatening rain for a lot of the day. 

Firstly we explored a couple of tracks to the coast for some lovely views of the nearby cliffs. 


Next stop was the pink lake at Port Gregory. It certainly is quite pink but we didn’t see it at its Pink best with the low cloud unfortunately.  Apparently the pinkness is caused by a combination of an algae and the salinity of the water. Whatever it is I’ve never seen anything like it. 

We then headed inland and stopped at the historic town of Northampton. A small but lovely old town with many well preserved old buildings. The Catholics seem to have done well here, with a church , convent and a school. 


There were some bikes parked outside a cafe but we didn’t see the owners until they were about to leave. We followed them out of town and they soon turned off the main road.  We turned also but stopped to consult the map and sure enough it was an alternative road to Geraldton. A really nice country ride through undulating farmland mainly cropped with wheat, wild flowers were abundant


Soon we were riding through the outer suburbs of Geraldton and made our way to the waterfront and CBD. A really nice and well kept place. The beach was lovely to see and people were swimming. 


After a bite to eat we headed off again, unfortunately the coast road which is supposed to be very scenic is closed for refurbishment for about 70km. So we were on the M1 which was very busy and not a lot of fun. 

We turned off at a point past the roadworks and managed to join the coast road for the last 80km. Some really nice seaside holiday spots around here and most of them can only have been in existence for 50 years or less. We are less than 400km from Perth so I guess many of these places are holiday homes.

We rolled into Cervantes which is another of these little seaside villages but this place has a lobster processing plant which is big business in these parts. We’ve noticed that a lot of this coastline has a reef  extending about 300 metres from the shore then drops away precipitously which makes for dramatic wave breaks but also ideal habitat for crayfish.  Unfortunately we were too late getting to processing plant to buy one from their retail outlet. 


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