Kalbarri

Kalbarri National Park was declared in 1963 on the central coast of Western Australia, around the town of the same name, and combines two very different settings: the interior, where the Murchison River has cut a gorge some eighty kilometres long in red sandstone, and the coastal strip, with cliffs falling to the Indian Ocean.

The rock of the gorge is the Tumblagooda sandstone, laid down some 400 million years ago and famous among palaeontologists because it preserves some of the oldest known tracks of arthropods walking on dry land, a key record for understanding the colonisation of the terrestrial environment by animals. The red and white bands of those strata are the park's visual signature, and the formation known as Nature's Window, a natural arch framing the river's meander, has become its most widely reproduced image. In 2020 the Kalbarri Skywalk opened, two walkways cantilevered over the gorge.

The park is also a botanical destination of the first order: in the southern spring, between July and October, the flowering of the kwongan heath covers the ground in wildflowers, with hundreds of species, many endemic to south-western Australia, one of the planet's floristic biodiversity hotspots. The wildlife includes red and grey kangaroos, emus, wallabies and an abundant birdlife, with cockatoos and raptors making use of the thermals in the gorge.