Fremantle to Exmouth

As we travelled out of Cervantes the landscape slowly changed from the flat, sandy coastal scrub, with huge dunes of fine white sand. By the time we reached the end of the Indian Ocean Hwy outside Dongara the soil could support trees - the highest thing we’d seen in some time outside the caravan park.
Between Dongara and Geraldton livestock have nibbled the post/harvest stubble almost to bare earth, dotted with bent-backed River Gums. We dutifully stopped for a family photo in front of the ‘leaning tree’, which had sheep resting in its shade.
We admired the colonial architecture, particularly the cathedral, as we drove through Geraldton, stopping for lunch at a cafe on the foreshore.
North of Geraldton the countryside undulates through hills. The soil has turned shaley and taken on the characteristic red hue of outback Australia. We pass a farm house built against the side of a hill, it’s front on stilts with a huge balcony gazing out to the ocean.
At Northampton we leave the highway to head back to the coast road, to take in the ‘pink lake’ at Hutt Lagoon, Yallabatharra, near Gregory.
We pass through a vast, shallow valley, the sparse, dry, stubbled farmland peppered with patches of low-growing coastal scrub. And then, we are travelling with sand dunes on one side, and a huge, shallow lake stretching out along the road on the other. The vegetation and soil around the lake is palely pink, and at the lookout, viewed from above, parts of the lake are an intense pink colour. On the hard, packed sand lake bed chunks of pink salt crystal are lying around.
On the side of the highway where we pulled over a number of small white snails are perched in the scrubby bushes, looking like they have grown there like flowers.
Approaching Kalbarri, a wide plain stretches inland that looks big enough to house the Sydney basin.
Then we come over the crest of a hill and Gantheaume Bay lies before us. What a beautiful vista!Read more