Hamelin, Kalbarri 23 - 26 October

After a very nice counter meal at the Old Pub in Denham which was accompanied by a truly wonderful sky at sunset we headed off towards Kalbarri.

Latest candidate for the weirdest rig we've ever seen!

First stop however was virtually just down the road at Hamelin to see the stromatolites which are coral/rock like structures built up  by living blue-green bacteria. Apparently these things were one of the first forms of life in the ocean and can now only be found in the Bahamas, and a few places off the WA coast. They thrive at Hamelin as the snails which would normally eat them can't survive in the extremely salty water.






Not very exciting looking, but without them getting together and making oxygen back in the day, we wouldn't be around to be bored by their appearance and lack of movement now (they grow at a rate of less than a centimeter every 30 years.....).
Kalbarri turned out to be a very nice little seaside town, and we were initially a little miffed that we would only have one day there. In the end we wound up spending two full days relaxing and hitting the limited shops. The tourist drawcard for the place is the Kalbarri National Park with it's river gorges, Natures Window and Z Bend Lookout and we planned to check out all of these on our way out of town as we headed off to Geraldton, but the very polite Park Range wouldn't let us into the park with the camper in tow, so we (well the one of us who is not named Hazel (hard to believe I know)) cracked the shits and decided we didn't need to go there anyway - we've seen better gorges!
Just in case you haven't seen them either, here a couple of pictures I downloaded from the interweb:

Don't know any of these people...