We packed up ridiculously early this morning due to a phone call from a very eager chap from the east coast who was returning his messages from the weekend and didn’t realise that we were in the west, or that it was obviously still the middle of the night no matter where he was. We’d had a few drops of rain, so it was time to get out of town.

On the road back to the main highway is Shell Beach.

We stopped in to get a close up of the tiny shells.

And to marvel at the beautiful clear (but salty) water.

The water just looks like glass.

So clear!

A bit of panoramic trickery.  Me Jenny – she loves to get involved.

Then the clouds opened up just enough to give us this beautiful religious experience.

Down the road a bit is Hamelin’s Pool and home to the most diverse and abundant examples of living stromatolites in the world.  These creatures are monuments of life on Earth over 3500 million years ago; a time when no other complex creatures were present on the planet.

There is a newish boardwalk that allows you to get out above the stromatolites to see them properly.

And here they are.  It reminds me of that movie Cocoon… alien-like.

Then it was time to hit the road – destination….. Carnarvon.  We had planned to stay on a couple of stations along the way, but with the imminent rain, it was a safer proposition to head straight into town.

Now, I don’t want to bag Carnarvon because I don’t really know much about the town, but on first glance….. it isn’t somewhere I desperately want to spend a huge amount of time.  This time, the rain will determine the length of our stay.

This is one of the roads into Carnarvon.  It’s called Memorial Drive and palm trees were planted all the way along as a memorial for the HMAS Sydney – the ship that sank off the coast.  This was the best section that we passed.

We headed straight to the fisherman’s wharf to pick up some fresh crabs and prawns…

Then one quick look up the main street before getting ourselves tucked in at the caravan park – right next to the satellite dish….. ahhh, the serenity!

The big dish was used during the Apollo mission to the moon in 1969 and also to track Halley’s Comet and put Carnarvon on the world map.