Sunday 11th September
Kalbarri to Geraldton
The 150 odd km drive down the coast from Kalbarri to Geraldton was fairly ordinary. For once we actually had a few hills and corners to go around. Very much like driving on a New Zealand road. We passed Pink Lake which was quite spectacular. Its colour comes from beta carotene which is a natural chemical which also gives colour to carrots, pumpkins etc. You need to know this stuff!!!!
We booked in to our motor camp which is about 10km north of Geraldton itself, and after lunch went for a drive around the town and called in at the visitors centre. We are booked in here for a week as we are expecting mail from Cameron’s Correspondence School, our car Registration Certificates, which are being forwarded from Howard, the guy we bought the car from in Melbourne, (remember the fiasco we had when we tried to register the car, and how Howard came to our rescue?), and we have also got the car booked in for a service with the local Mitsubishi Dealer, for Friday the 16th September.
Geraldton is a lovely town built along the coast around its port. It has more than doubled its size over the last 2 years, and as a result a lot of the housing is new.
Monday 11th September
Geraldton
Had another drive around town and visited a few points of interest including the memorial to HMAS Sydney, an Australian Navy Frigate that was sunk by a German Raider off the coast of Geraldton in 1941 with the loss of all its 645 crew. The memorial is dome shaped and depicts hundreds of flying seagulls.
Cameron had worn out his jandals so we had to buy him a new pair. A fairly simple task. Walk into the first shop we saw that had jandals and buy a pair.
There are about half a dozen shops in Geraldton that stocked jandals, so we had plenty to choose from. We worked out we needed size 7. Every shop we went in to had hundreds of jandals, from size 1 to 6, and hundreds from size 8 to 13. Size 7. No way. Plenty of pink, or nice yellowy ones with lots of pretty flowers on them in size 7, but boys size 7? Forget it.
So a simple job of buying a pair of jandals, took about an hour. We finally found some, 2 pairs in fact, so we bought them both. One green pair and one blue pair. Not our choice of colours, but beggars can’t be choosers, and Cameron was happy just to have some jandals, especially as we were threatening to buy some nice pink ones for him.
After our little jandal shopping expedition we bought our groceries, including a roast chicken which we had for dinner overlooking the beach, in our caravan park, and watched the sun set. Cameron’s idea.
Tuesday 13th September
Geraldton and Mullewa
We decided to have a bit of a drive in the countryside today, and hopefully see some more wildflowers. The township of Mullewa had a Wildflowers Walk which was supposed to be well worth visiting, and it is also supposed to be one of the few locations in Australia where you can see the Wreath Flower, which got its’ name from the shape the plant forms.
Mullewa is 100 km inland from Geraldton, in what is known as The Wheat Belt, and on the drive in there, we passed miles of wheat and grain crops. Huge paddocks of wheat stretching as far as the eye could see.
Quite a few unknown other crops as well, and we met heaps of road trains carting the harvested grain out to the port at Geraldton. The country side was flat to gently rolling, ideal for growing crops.
Mullewa is probably about the size of Urenui and was once a service centre for the nearby mining industry. But the mines have long since dried up, and now Mullewa seems to be following suit, trying to survive on the tourists coming to see its wildflowers. We found the Wildflowers Walk, and for the next hour wandered along a track through the Mulga scrub looking at a few wildflowers. We didn’t see anything we hadn’t seen before, and certainly no wreath flowers. Quite disappointing really.
We had our lunch in town and then went to have a look at a church we had seen from a lookout. It was really quite unique. Built by a priest who was sent to the area by the Catholic Church back in the days of missionaries. He apparently built the whole thing by himself which is quite an achievement.
We then took a different route back to Geraldton passing through more wheat fields, and at one point we came around a corner and all we could see in front of us was a purple hill. A whole paddock covered in purple flowers. We had seen quite a few patches of these same purple flowers, but nothing as big as this. Quite amazing. We later learnt it is a weed called Patterson’s Curse, and it is noxious for animals.
Wednesday 12th September
Today we visited the museum in town, which among other things, had a good display and information about the Batavia, a sailing ship that belonged to the Dutch East India Company that was wrecked off the coast of Geraldton during her maiden voyage in 1629. Some of the survivors made it on to a nearby island where they soon started squabbling among themselves which eventually lead to several murders and all sorts of other nasty things.
After lunch down by the seashore, we went and had a game of 10 pin bowling. We then drove for a short distance south along the coast checking out a few of the beaches, before heading inland again and back to Geraldton. Because we have the car booked in for a service on Friday, we are filling in time a bit, but never mind it’s a nice place and Christel and Cameron are getting lots of school work done.
Thursday 13th September
After school work we spent some time on the beach before going back to town for groceries and another look around town.
Friday 14th September
Dropped the car off at the Mitsi Dealers and then spent 3 hours walking around town before picking the car up again and heading back to camp. We have now done just over 18,000 km with the caravan, and 35,000 km so far on our trip. Just to get it in perspective, that is nearly 22 times the length of New Zealand. Tomorrow we will head south again along the coast. We want to check out the Pinnacles, in Nambung National Park, close to Cervantes, so we will probably head for there.
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