The Aborigines who have called this place home for thousands of years would probably disagree. After all, they have lived off the land, they can identify the medicinal plants and know which are edible. They can appreciate the endless blue sky and probably even know where to find water under the red soil. Maybe they have even come to terms with the zillion flies.
But to my blue eyes the land between Shark Bay and Jurien Bay has a mind-numbing sameness to it, scrub broken only by desiccated, stubbly wheat fields. This is what Bill Bryson called "A Sunburned Country." Sure, there are some stately red gum trees along the Murchison River, the "pink lake" laden with beta-carotene harvested by chemical giant BASF near Port Gregory and the acorn banksia trees in Kalbarri National Park. But that isn't enough to keep your attention for 700-something kilometers.
We camped at the mouth of the Murchison River under the eucalyptus trees in the town of Kalbarri for two nights and explored a bit of Kalbarri NP, the part with paved roads. Our rental contract forbids driving on unsealed roads, of which there are ten times as many as paved. We also spent some time on the coastal cliffs watching the surf crash onto the rocky shoreline as pods of dolphins cruised offshore. And tonight we made it as far south as Jurien Bay, a small fishing village not far from Cervantes.
