Now that you’ve finally made it to Western Australia, why not extend your stay and enjoy some of our other beautiful areas while you’re here?  Start planning now for your 2015 annual holiday!  Here are just a few highlights…

Karijini
A day’s drive east from Exmouth will bring you, via Giralia, Nanutarra Roadhouse and Tom Price, to Karijini National Park.  Visit the breathtaking red-rock gorges, cascading waterfalls and stunning spinifex landscapes of the ancient Hamersley Ranges.  Walk, scramble or swim to your heart’s content.  Link to images….

Mount Augustus and the Kennedy Ranges
From Karijini, you can drive through Tom Price and Paraburdoo and then pick up a 4WD route that will take you to Mount Augustus, world’s largest monocline and twice the size of Uluru.  Climb it, or explore Aboriginal sites around the base, and don’t forget to visit the pools of the Lyons River.

Alternatively, without 4WD, approach from the west (Carnarvon) via Gascoyne Junction, and take in the striking gorges which dissect the Kennedy Range scarp before continuing to Mount Augustus.  Link to images….

From here, Perth can be reached by driving south via the Shire of Murchison – the only shire in Australia without a town – and Mullewa, where you should not miss the parish church designed and built for himself by the architect-priest Monsignor John Hawes.

Quobba
Driving south from Exmouth, a 49km detour just short of Carnarvon brings you to the renowned Blowholes at Quobba.  They’re well worth a visit.  Link to images…

Shark Bay
194 km south of Carnarvon, at the Overlander Roadhouse, is the access to Shark Bay World Heritage Area with its incredible diversity.  See the stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, the amazing Shell Beach, the wonderful museum at Denham and the dolphins of Monkey Mia, and experience the rolling red sands and sheltered waters of the Peron Peninsula.

If you have a 4WD, contrast this with the outer peninsula, Edel Land, with its rocky limestone, spectacular cliffs and sometimes wild ocean.  Link to images…

Kalbarri
A turning to the west some 100 km north of Geraldton leads to Kalbarri, where the lower reaches of the Murchison River have cut a magnificent 80 km gorge through the red and white banded sandstone.  View it from the various lookouts, or scramble down into the Gorge and hike around The Loop.  Various tours are available from town.  Link to images….

To the south, the road leads to the various formations of the rugged coastal cliffs, also striped red and white for effect.  Next one sees Port Gregory’s Hutt Lagoon or ‘pink lake’, its colour due to algae which are farmed for beta-carotene and its waters also producing a commercial quantity of Artemia or brine shrimp.  Past the ruins of the Lynton convict hiring station, the main highway is rejoined at Northampton.