Monday, Day 51 - Feb 26 - 8am to 6pm, Geraldton, Western Australia, Australia

Geraldton, “where the surf’s always up,” is internationally renowned as a “surfing” destination .This is a new port for us and the drop off point for Kalbarri National Park. It is a very remote area with very few towns and those are many miles apart. The land is used for sheep and some grain growing.

In 2009, we really wanted to drive up to visit Kalbarri and points farther north known for diving and snorkeling, but just didn’t have the time. So, we are taking a fee ($159pp) ship’s tour to see the park. It was listed as a tender port, but there is a docking space when we arrive so no tenders; yea!

The Kalbarri National Park tour is a seven hour bus tour, not Dick’s favorite kind of touring, so it already has one strike against it! Onward and upward to meeting in the lounge at 8:00AM to pick up bus tickets after a fast breakfast from room service.

The tour bus is scheduled to leave at 8:30AM. We have a fairly nice bus for 50 and have 32 passengers so we are not crowded and a Driver/Guide. He lays out the plan for the day and says we will be back at the ship around 3:30PM. The fact that we do get back to the ship on time and it is overcast and only about 75 degrees instead of blazing sun and110 degrees are the only really good things about the tour.

According to the Australian Travel Guides, “Kalbarri National Park is a beauty and receives thousands of visitors annually, attracted by its striking coastal landscapes, gorges and formations carved by the Murchison River. The Park is a photographers dream!”
 
Well, we will let the pictures tell the tale.

Frist we see some sights in Geraldton. Then it is a  drive of about two hours, through the historic town of Northampton, to our first stop in the park at Hawk’s Head Gorge. The land going to the park is farm land for the most part and we only see about six people, including the ones in cars passing us, for the whole way...very desolate land!  Our first  stop is for a view over the Murchison River Gorge, a 200 meter return steep hike, where we are served juice, cake and 1,000's of flies!! The overlook is just so-so and would not rate the road, parking, trails, covered picnic areas and toilets infrastructure in the US. We have cake and juice here.
Around Geraldton

HMAS Sydney Memorial

Cathedral

Entering Northampton

Turn off the Main NW Highway to the National Park

Then we drive to the little tourist town of Kalbarri and stop for a “gourmet” picnic style lunch at a city park overlooking the mouth of Murchison River where it meets the Indian Ocean. The park is in the heart of the little town and several people go across the street to check out the shops. Others walk to the beach or out on the piers in the river.

The “gourmet” lunch consists of one small quiche in a mini-metal pie plate and a choice of three salads: apple cabbage slaw, baby tomatoes, cucumber mix and a tasteless pasta shell, corn, and green pea salad, rolls and water. Hardly gourmet fare though the setting is nice, the wind keeps the flies away and it is probably the best part of the tour. We spend an hour here.

After lunch, we continue to the Coastal Gorges Red Bluff vista point for a photo of the panoramic view of the ocean, beach and sea cliffs. To be honest after the Great Ocean Road (GOR) and Esperance this is nothing but another nice, not spectacular, coast line. 

Another stop for the Natural Bridge and Castle Cove shows us the endless cliffs stretching south from Natural Bridge lookout over the Indian Ocean. This is a 800 meter return hike. We also see the dramatic rock formations of the coastline, carved by the continual pounding of the ocean against the cliffs, in this southern edge of the park. It is a nice view, just not up to what the literature says.

On the way back to Geraldton we pass by the Pink Lakes, created by the largest Beta Carotene producer in the southern hemisphere. This is worth a photo stop but we don’t because it is on private property. Oh, well.

But, the worst part of the tour is the driver who talks for the whole six hours we are on the bus...he tells some interesting points, like the difference between a station in the out back areas and a farm. “A farm runs one or two sheep to the acre and is family owned. A station is one sheep to two or three acres and the land is owned by the state and worked by the manager.” We did go through a station up near the park. But for the most part he talks about who lives on this farm or that house or what his family does...too much useless information.
The driver kept saying he hoped he wasn’t wearing our ears out, but he just kept talking...ugh!
Shearing shed on the station miles from anything

Dick put his ear plugs in and read, Carolyn did the same and she slept though some of it. We weren’t the only ones ready to get off the bus. You know that when after almost two hours of driving the driver asks a bunch of seniors if they want a comfort stop or to head straight for the ship, another 45 minute drive away, and everyone wants to go straight to the ship!

All this fun for an extra $290! If it had been a free tour, it would have been OK. The discount was thanks to our Platinum status with Regent. Regent should be ashamed of this tour! The 10 hour trip on the GOR was a free tour and we bought our own lunch so that means we paid $290 dollars for a piece of cake, juice and the meager lunch. The destinations department manager got an ear full after the tour.

Back on the ship we get cleaned up and Carolyn works on the blog, we are behind again, Dick works on the pictures.

The block party is at 6PM. This is a much more talkative new bunch. There are eight suites with World Cruisers (WCs), the rest  are new and they were out in force, eager to meet everyone. The WCs on our deck are a friendly bunch and we partied well after the start of dinner.

We have a very nice dinner in Compass Rose tonight. Dick has a half dozen fresh oysters on the half shell and Carolyn has the wonderful crab salad on avocado and we both have our special salad, and the herb crusted rack of lamb. For dessert Dick goes for a lingonberry dessert and Carolyn has apple streusel, both very good.

Then it is off to bed. They have battened down the stuff on the patio so we must be going to have rough seas tonight. We don’t last long enough to know !