Littered with shacks owned by Carnarvon locals, the spot has served as the perfect weekend family getaway for generations of residents or as an overnight stopover for travellers on their way to tourist-driven pastoral stations and remote surfing breaks further north.Ĭleo Smith’s mother Ellie Smith and partner Jake Gliddon.
Several locals have met their end at those cliffs, consumed by gigantic waves that come out of the blue.īut taking the left at the T-junction and meandering for a kilometre down the limestone track - past the blowholes where seawater blasts through the ground (a coveted sight for Instagram-loving tourists) - the family arrived at about 6.30pm on October 15 at a picturesque cul-de-sac featuring a coral lagoon and campsite protected from the fury of the raging sea.
The sign is an unsubtle reminder of the lives lost along the stretch of low rocky coastal cliffs which start several hundred metres to the left and run northward. Mother Ellie Smith with Cleo, who is now missing, and baby Isla. There they would have been greeted by a message of death all too familiar to locals like themselves: a wooden board painted with white capital letters and suspended between two telegraph-like poles framing the raging water in the background, “KING WAVES KILL”. The sun would have nearly set when the family of four from Carnarvon caught sight of the Indian Ocean.Īfter driving north for just under an hour – passing dusty orange plains, the vast flats of Lake MacLeod, and thick Acacia shrublands – beautician Ellie Smith and salt mine worker Jake Gliddon reached the T-junction at the Quobba Blowholes with her daughter Cleo Smith, 4, and their baby Isla in tow.
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