Kalbarri

Situated where the Murchison River meets the Indian Ocean, Kalbarri has soaring river and coastal gorges and protected swimming bays like the Blue Holes, superb walking trails, and over 1000 species of wildflowers.

The indigenous culture plays a major role in this city. The Nanda are the salt water people. Keepers of the land and sea, they have a spiritual connection to the land and Mother Earth. These Aboriginal people believe mythological Dreamtime beings sculptured the land to what we see today.

The remote and windswept coastline of Kalbarri has been the tragic setting of many shipwrecks over time. One of the more famous shipwrecks was Batavia, a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It was built in Amsterdam in 1628, armed with 24 cast-iron cannons and a number of bronze guns.

Pinnacles

The Pinnacles Desert contains thousands of limestone pillars. The pillars are the weathered and eroded fragments of limestone beds composed of deposited marine organisms such as coral and mollusks. Some of the tallest pinnacles reach heights of up to 3.5m above the yellow sand base. The different types of formations include ones which are much taller than they are wide and resemble columns—suggesting the name of Pinnacles—while others are only a meter or so in height and width resembling short tombstones. A cross-bedding structure can be observed in many pinnacles where the angle of deposited sand changed suddenly due to changes in prevailing winds during the formation of the limestone beds. Pinnacles with tops similar to mushrooms are created when the calcrete capping is harder than the limestone layer below it. The relatively softer lower layers weather and erode at a faster rate than the top layer leaving behind more material at the top of the pinnacle.

Wave Rock

Wave Rock is a natural rock formation that is shaped like a tall breaking ocean wave. The "wave" is about 15 m (49 ft) high and around 110 m (360 ft) long. It forms the north side of a solitary hill, which is known as "Hyden Rock". This hill, which is a granite inselberg, lies about 3 km (2 mi) east of the small town of Hyden and 296 km (184 mi) east-southeast of Perth, Western Australia.

Wave Rock and Hyden Rock are part of a 160 ha (395-acre) nature reserve, Hyden Wildlife Park. More than 100,000 tourists visitors every year.