A brief account of my experience of the tsunami events in Kalbarri. It was 4.30 in the afternoon when my family and I witnessed the first tidal surge to hit the area, we were at the northern end of oyster reef, the protective reef that separates the river from the ocean and because I was a lobster fisherman and had spent many years at sea I knew something out of the ordinary. 
The surge just rose up about half a meter in the first instance and then just kept increasing in volume (not as a wave) and swept all our belonging away with it to the extent that we shifted them up the beach three times (about 10 mtrs in total)to stop the surge reaching them. 
I also nearly lost my 15 ft dinghy that we had used to cross the river and get to the reef, in the sense that it broke away from it anchoring point just as I reached it after realizing it was in danger. 
My 6 year old son rode the surge for about two hundred mtrs on his boogey board as it filled in what was essentially a dry channel that runs parallel but on the inside of oyster reef (the water was very hot as the reef had been basking in the sun all day and heated the water as it flowed across it), soon after that time the oyster reef became completely submerged so the final height of the surge was about 1.3 mtrs above the original height of the ocean previous to its arrival 
As it poured (more rushed) up the river it churned up the bottom and made what could only be described as a series of vertical stranding waves (up to about 1 mtr in height) as it rushed across shallow areas of the sand spit opposite the oyster reef (Essentially the Murchison river runs between the two where it meets the ocean)
 I realized immediately that it was unusual event and when I related our experience to my mother she immediately connected the events to the earthquake and tsunami reports that I had not heard about. 
By my very rough calculation it was exactly 12 hours after the quake to when we saw the first surge and I estimated it must have traveled at between 2 & 3 hundred miles an hour to get there in that time. Over the next 48 hours (from memory at least that long) Kalbarri (which is situated at the mouth of the Murchison river) continued to cop the effects of many more surges, some bigger than the first and many in rapid succession, some less than 15 minutes apart, in total I would be guessing but I would estimate well over 40 surges were experienced in Kalbarri At one time on the next day at about 7.pm I witnessed two waves some 15 minutes apart that rose and fell at least 1.3 mtrs in final height from highest point to highest point, the effect and speed in which it rose and fell were incredible to extent that I stepped out the distance on the beach between the highs at some 17 mtrs up and down the beach (a gently sloping bank of the river in front of my parents house. 
The effect on moored fishing vessels was no less dramatic, one minute they would be straining against their mooring ropes with water rushing past them on the incoming surge and in some cased it was less the a minute and the opposite would be occurring on the outpouring. 
I also witnessed one of the river ferries (that takes tourists up the Murchison river) lost power and had to, for the safety of the passengers, make its way to shore during on of the incoming surges the next evening. The turmoil and waves thrown up in the river were amazing to witness, one minute all would be calm between surges and the next all hell would break lose as the incoming surge swept all before it including swimmers who did not realize the danger of what was occurring,
 I estimate it was running in and out at about least 15 knots. Further south of Kalbarri at Horrocks Beach (another small coastal fishing community)beach fishermen unsuspectingly enjoying a spot of beach fishing between the coastal dunes and the sea (waters egde) had there vehicles swamped by the speed and volume of water because they had no way of getting out of its path. 
In Geraldton a commercial lobster vessel was swamped in its pen as ropes became taught and dragged it under as the surge poured in and filled the fisherman's harbor, I estimate the height in the harbor, given the water had no means of escape to be well over 2 mtrs, it also flooded some of the main street in Geraldton and rose up over the height of the lobster landing wharves.