Western Australia Road Trip: Perth to Coral Bay

After three months in Perth the time had finally come to do what all great backpackers who come to Australia tend to do: pack up our belongings, toss a mattress in the back of a car and head off on a great Australian road trip. This one through Western Australia.

Road trips in Australia are serious business and a Western Australia road trip is even more so – you don’t just hop in a car and off you go. The distances between some places are so great and remote that you have to make sure your car will have enough fuel to make it the entire way. You may go huge stretches with no servo station available, no potable water to be found and heat that tops the 40s.

For two girls with horrible planning skills and very little in the way of being organized, we ended up leaving a day later than expected once we realized that we were, not surprisingly, completely unprepared, and set off for the outback of Western Australia. First stop: Karijini National Park, known for it’s beautiful landscapes, beautiful gorges, waterfalls and swimming holes.

So, what did we bring with us?

1 cookstove
1 Jeep equipped with a bed/mattress in the back for sleeping
1 small tent
1 blow up air mattress
2 floaties
Pots, pans, cutlery, cups
2 camping chairs
2 jugs of water
1 jerry can of petrol
1 large tupperware bin of non-perishable food
1 small cooler for fruit/veg
Our backpacks/suitcases
2 sleeping bags and 2 thin blankets
2 pillows

Generally, we didn’t really need the tent or air mattress as we just slept in the car every night.

The outback road from Perth to Karijini is about 16 hours of driving through nothing but some of the wildest bits of Australia – miles and miles of bush land, iconic red sand and kangaroos. It is exactly how I imagined a Western Australia road trip to look. Everyone will give you the same top tips for road tripping in Australia:

• Don’t drive at dusk or dawn or through the night – this is when the roos come out to the road and hitting one can be fatal. While we didn’t drive at these times, the stretch between Perth and Karijini had what felt like hundreds of dead kangaroos resting on the sides of the road
• Carry more water than you think you’ll need – we set off with two 20L water jugs
• Carry a backup jerry can of gasoline
• Always have a spare tire and constantly check your tire pressure
• Regularly check your oil and coolant levels

Three days after leaving, we ended up forced to stay in the tiny mining town of Tom Price thanks to a broken water pump in the car. A town with nothing but a local pub and a campsite with a pool, we set up in the campsite and spent the next two days floating in the pool while the temperatures soared to the 40s. After some bad news from the local mechanics to told us we might be stuck over Christmas, we set off to the local pub to drink away our sorrows and in the end, thanks to the pub and to Tinder, we made friends who offered us a bed in their air conditioned houses to use for the rest of our time in town. We are nothing if not resourceful after all.

CORAL BAY

Five days later and having seen nothing of Karijini apart from the mountains from afar, we had the car fixed and set off and made it to Coral Bay just in time for Christmas Eve – right on schedule. Coral Bay ended up being my favorite stop on the first half of our little Western Australia road trip. Just one main street, lined with one cafe, a bar, a little restaurant, two campsites, a hostel, the beach and not much else, it was the best place I could have spent my first Christmas away from home.

Splurging for two nights in the hostel to be able to make friends for Christmas, we instantly had a little group of travelers who were also in Coral Bay for the holidays. The first night was spent at the focal point of any small town’s nightlife: the pub; getting to know each other over a bottle of rum and off-key karaoke. By the time morning rolled around and we walked bleary-eyed through town, people that we had no recollection of meeting were striking up conversations.

With not much energy for anything else, we wandered on down to the beach and spent the day swimming in the crystal clear water, snorkeling and lounging in the sand until it was time to meet the girls from the hostel at Reef Cafe for a beer and pizza for backpacker’s Christmas Eve dinner.

Monday was the beginning of my first Christmas away from home. The first one in the hot Australian heat rather than the biting cold. First Christmas away from family and instead with a bunch of overnight friends from around the world. Instead of waking up to a Christmas tree and a warm fire in the living room, I woke up and opened up a little parcel of presents on my hostel bed that my mom had sent me while still in Perth and took a stroll to the beach to catch a glimpse of Santa making an appearance on a speedboat.

Christmas in Australia is entirely different from Christmas in Canada. All of the families had a full set up on the beach and spent the day visiting with friends, drinking and swimming in the sea until the sun set and we quickly followed suit. Back at the hostel later that evening, we cheered over cups of rum and a freshly cooked bbq before calling it a night.

SHARK BAY AND MONKEY MIA

From Coral Bay, Shark Bay and Monkey Mia are a six hour drive. We set off early Boxing Day and made it there by mid-day. For the majority of our time there, I wasn’t that impressed. We took a stop to see the stromatolites (ancient organisms that have been around since the dinosaurs), checked out the one-street town of Denham and then took the drive to Monkey Mia to see what the fuss was about. Entrance into Monkey Mia is $12 with all proceeds going into the maintenance of the area and I am SO glad we decided to stop. If it weren’t for Monkey Mia, I wouldn’t have much to say about the area, but Monkey Mia makes the place. The whole area is very resort-like, with a restaurant and bar overlooking the sea.

The main attraction at Monkey Mia is the daily dolphin feedings each morning, beginning at 7:30am until 12pm. The following morning, we found ourselves waiting on the boardwalk at 7:15am, eager to see some dolphins. As a bit of an animal activist, I get worried about animal tourism and whether or not it’s ethical – but the way they run the dolphin tourism at Monkey Mia made me really happy!

The dolphins first began coming to Monkey Mia in the 60s when the local fisherman began feeding the dolphins their catches of the day. Since then, wild dolphins continue to come to the area and are offered a very minimal amount of fish so as not to be dependent on humans. Everything is well regulated, an entire section of beach is closed off from tourists (no swimming, snorkeling, etc. in the area), and tourists coming to see the morning feedings aren’t allowed to go farther than ankle deep in the water and there is strictly no touching of the dolphins. That being said, the dolphins are clearly used to this and a few are comfortable to come right up to the shore.

KALBARRI NATIONAL PARK

Feeling much better about our decision to make the trip to Monkey Mia, we were off to Kalbarri National Park – the only thing of which I knew about was a giant rock with a hole in it called Nature’s Window. Now, my description of it doesn’t sound like much but it is well worth a visit if you’re traveling through Western Australia. An easy 800m walk from the carpark, Nature’s Window is a big chunk of sandstone that’s naturally had a hole eroded into it from the wind and has left a beautiful view of the river and gorge below. We arrived there in the late afternoon and nearly had the entire space to ourselves.

Kalbarri itself is a fun little town with a child-friendly beach with calm water off the river, a bunch of adorable cafes and tons of pretty viewpoints along the coast. We set up camp half an hour south of Kalbarri at Lucky Bay, where we were lucky enough to run into Lindsey and David, two friends from Perth who you may remember were with us at Rottnest Island. Excited for a mini reunion after having only each other for company for a few days, Lisa and I pulled into the campsite with our standard bottle of rum and joined our friends for a night of cards and drinks, choosing to take this photo long after our prime.

HUTT LAGOON AND THE PINNACLES

Just South of Kalbarri is a pink salt lake which we stopped to see solely for the reason that it’s a pink lake and we’d never seen one before. It was here that Lisa took it upon herself to try to stand in the lake for a photo and instead sunk thigh-high through crystalized salt and thick mud, losing her beloved crocs in the depths of the lake.

With just a few days before New Years Eve, we decided to do a quick day trip through the Pinnacles of Nambung National Park before popping back into Perth to celebrate the New Year and regroup before part two of our roadtrip.

Despite nearly nothing going according to plan, five days stuck in one place while our water pump got repaired, one lost go pro, one broken iPod, five ruined sunglasses, one leaky jerry can and one pair of crocs swallowed up by the pink lake, we gained the chance to see a part of Australia that not everyone makes the effort to see and a ton of laughs.