Kalbarri National Park
"I stood on the skywalk and the canyon did the thing canyons do — made me feel appropriately small."
Red-and-white banded gorges carved by the Murchison River, a skywalk cantilevered 100 metres above the canyon floor, and a coastline of sea cliffs that takes the wind personally.
Kalbarri sits roughly six hours north of Perth, where the Murchison River finishes a four-hundred-kilometre journey from the interior by carving through five hundred million years of sandstone and dropping into the Indian Ocean. I came for a single afternoon originally and stayed three days, which seems to be the standard experience — everyone I met at the caravan park had done the same recalculation.
The gorge country inland is the main event. Nature’s Window is the famous shot — a natural rock arch framing a bend of the Murchison River below, red and white bands of sandstone running horizontal through the cliff face like the rock is keeping a very long, very patient calendar. I hiked the Loop Trail in the early morning, eight kilometres along the gorge rim and down into the riverbed and back up, and the heat came on fast enough by ten that I understood why the rangers post such firm warnings about starting early and carrying real water, not a bottle.
The Kalbarri Skywalk, opened in 2020, extends two cantilevered platforms out over the gorge at different points, one of them a hundred metres above the canyon floor with a glass-and-steel edge that gives you nothing to hold onto except good judgment. I’m not particularly afraid of heights and I still felt my hands go cold on the railing. The view down the gorge from up there, the river a thin silver line far below, is one of the more honest vertigo experiences I’ve had.
The coastline south of town does something completely different from the gorges — limestone cliffs dropping straight into a churning Indian Ocean, with lookout points spaced along a scenic drive that lets you watch the swell detonate against the rock without getting anywhere near the edge yourself. Red Bluff and Rainbow Valley Beach both deliver actual color in the cliff face at sunset, layered red and orange bands that make the whole coastline look faintly volcanic even though it isn’t.
When to go: April to October, avoiding the peak summer heat that makes the gorge hikes genuinely risky. Wildflower season (July–September) adds the coastal heath’s blooms to the gorge scenery, which is worth timing for if you can.