Geraldton Revisited

We spent a week at Geraldton, and experienced much better weather than we did last year here (see blog post here). Blue skies and sunshine almost every day, but several days of incredibly strong winds would have kept any visiting wind surfers happy. Unfortunately the days of the strongest winds also corresponded to the ones when we played golf, but the 2 courses in town are good enough quality that we enjoyed the games anyway.

While in Geraldton we did several local tours run by volunteer guides. Firstly we went to the St Francis Xavier Cathedral, the magnificent Catholic cathedral designed by priest-architect Monsignor John Hawes. Having learnt all about the priest's life when we were at Mullewa recently, we were interested to see his most famous creation, and it didn't disappoint. We also did a tour of the HMAS Sydney memorial, which commemorates the sinking of this ship in WWII by the German ship the Kormoran with the loss of all hands. We visited this memorial the last time we were in Geraldton, but were given a much more intimate insight into the design of the memorial and the incident it commemorates by a very interesting volunteer guide.

We also went to the local meteorological office to see the launch of the daily weather balloon. We had been to the met office in Ceduna a month ago, but decided that, as the tour is free, you can't have too much weather. We were glad we did - in Ceduna there were a couple of dozen grey nomads on the tour which was run by a very jaded old hand on the brink of retirement, but here at Geraldton we were the only ones and the weather guru was fresh faced and enthusiastic. He showed us all the high- and low-tech equipment, then filled the balloon with hydrogen and sent it on its way up to the stratosphere.

Just for a change of pace, we headed back to the Chapman Valley winery in the Chapman Valley just north of Geraldton, for a lovely long lunch and to refill the supplies with some nice wine.

Trouble Comes in Threes

With only a fairly short trip from Kalbarri to Geraldton, we had booked the van in for a service at Geraldton for the day we arrived. We figured if we got going early we could be there around 10:00, which would give them plenty of time to do a service and still have us on our site around mid-afternoon. The service timing was also convenient given the tear to the awning experienced at Kalbarri, we figured they could also try and repair that at the same time.

We were up and away bright and early and well on track for a 10am arrival when BANG all of a sudden the car started wobbling over the road. We pulled over and checked out the situation - one of the rear tyres on the car had blown out. We still don't know why, we hadn't seen anything on the road so maybe it had been weakened previously or we ran over a nail or something. It was only a narrow road verge and not very level, but we were fearful of damaging the wheel rim if we tried to go on to somewhere more suitable. It took us a while of crawling around in the dirt trying to get the jack underneath the car before we twigged that step 1 should have been to unhitch the van, things became slightly easier after that (but only slightly). Heaven knows how long it would have taken us to get the wheel changed but a knight in shining armour (or at least an ex-tyrefitter on his way to a day at the beach) stopped and helped out. Even with his strength and knowhow it still delayed us about an hour - and ruined John's shorts - but the caravan service people weren't worried and promised to be done by 4:00.

The first thing we did after dropping off the van was go to the local tyre dealership, where we were solemnly informed that the tyre was stuffed and we would have to buy a new one, they didn't have one the same as the other tyres so we will have to leave the old spare on the car and the new tyre has become the spare. At least they put the new spare back onto the frame on the car for us.

When we returned to pick up the van sure enough it was ready - but still with the tear in the awning. They said that it couldn't be repaired but had to be replaced, in fact they pointed out that it wasn't just the canvas but the frame itself had been damaged. However they were very helpful and assisted us to put in a claim to our insurance company. Today we had to hitch up and take the van over there and they spent the morning installing an entire new awning, frame, canvas - the lot. We had to pay the standard $200 excess, which was less than 10% what it would have cost without the insurance, and we now have a nice new bright awning. We hadn't realised how faded the old one had got!

While we were waiting for the insurance claim to be approved during the week, we started to have trouble with our PC. It has actually been playing up for some months, every now and then it will suddenly shut down for no apparent reason. We had taken it to a PC shop when we were in Yamba but they couldn't find anything wrong with it, and bizarrely it had seemed to be alright since then so we figured they had managed to fix it without even realising it. However, this week it started to happen again, and again and again. The last couple of times we noticed that just before it shut down the battery warning message came up, even though it was plugged into power at the time. We found the local PC shop and they confirmed that indeed our battery is stuffed. They didn't have a replacement of the same type, so now we have the battery removed from the laptop and we are running on mains power only. We'll hopefully be able to get a new battery when we get to Perth next week

So it's been an eventful, and fairly expensive, couple of weeks. Hopefully now that we've had 3 failures so quickly we'll be right again for a while!

Blown Away at Kalbarri

Kalbarri is a tourist resort at the mouth of the Murchison River. We spent a few days here last year (see the blog report here), but there is a lot to see and do so we decided to stay for a week this time around. The town is surrounded by the Kalbarri National Park, and although we did all the walks on offer last year we decided the park was worth a repeat visit. The signature rock formation is Nature's Window, and even though we already had several photos from our last visit when another tourist offered to take one with us both in it we couldn't resist. Once again we did most of the walks here, although this time we didn't do the 8km one, just the shorter ones. As well as having spectacular gorges, the national park has a section that runs along the coast with high sandstone cliffs. For some reason the Indian Ocean seems to be much bluer than the Pacific Ocean and the clear waters of the national park are gorgeous. The local wildlife obviously like it, we saw a pod of dolphins catching waves right near town, surfing almost into the beach. They have an unfair advantage over human surfers, when they run out of wave they just duck underneath and swim underwater back out to the start of the break, they don't have to struggle back through the breakers.

As well as the natural attractions, we decided to take advantage of some of the tourist activities on offer here. Not to be faint hearted about it, we signed up for a 3 hour quad bike adventure. It started with a 1 minute safety briefing, then we spent 10 minutes getting used to the feel of the bikes and how to use the controls. After that we were off, along sandy tracks, stony hills, washouts, rutted trails and rocky ledges. The bikes don't have power steering so you have to wrestle them around corners and through the ruts, holes and rocks. The accelerator is a thumb press which is very hard to control while the bike is bumping around. However, we had a total ball, and despite the ache in our arms and hands the next day we absolutely loved it.

Our other activities here couldn't compare for excitement, but were nevertheless enjoyable. We spent an hour or so walking through a parrot breeding centre, admiring the multicoloured birds as they screeched and twittered. We also saw some birds of a different feather at the daily pelican feeding sessions run down by the river. And of course we had a couple of games of golf at the local course, including participating in the Friday afternoon 9-hole competition, where we happened to play with the local lady who had run the pelican feeding session we attended. She also does the sporting announcements for Kalbarri on ABC radio on Saturday morning, when we tuned in while we were having breakfast we heard her send us a special cheerio.

The only downside at Kalbarri is the incessant wind. In the middle of our stay it was so strong that the corner of our canvas awning ripped, so now we can't put the awning up until we can get it repaired, hopefully at our next stop at Geraldton.

Wheatfields and Wildflowers

We've spent a few days meandering through the northern Western Australian wheatbelt, which is also wildflower country. We have to confess that this was partly to avoid the coast while the local school holidays were on, but we also found lots to see and do.

We spent 3 nights at Perenjori and 1 at Mullewa. The most famous local flower is the wreath flower, and we were lucky enough to see some magnificent specimens. Unlike the eastern states, WA is still in the grip of drought, and 2010 has been one of the driest years on record, so it apparently hasn't been a great wildflower season, but we still found plenty of colour to be impressed by.

This region is also famous for priest-architect Monsignor John Hawes, and we visited several of the churches he designed and built here. Mullewa was his parish for 22 years, and he not only designed the church pictured at left, but provided most of the labour to build it and painted several of the pictures that decorate the interior. Mullewa has multiple walks with excellent information panels, one of them gave us a terrific insight into the life and works of Monsignor Hawes, while others covered Mullewa's railway heritage, the town's history and the bushland and wildflowers of the region. Needless to say, we did all the walks on offer, even though the flies were far more friendly than we would like, and the wind has approached gale force.

Being Western Australia, you can't go far without stumbling over a mine of some sort, and there are some new ones being developed just east of Perenjori. We first experienced this on our way there, when we spent 80km and well over an hour stuck behind some piece of huge equipment being trucked to the new mine - the up side was that we knew that we wouldn't have any traffic coming towards us, as anything coming the other way had to almost bury itself in the scrub beside the road to let the oversize load past. From Perenjori we did a heritage drive to the old gold mining township of Rothsay, the drive was supposed to be a loop but part of the road was closed due to a new mine being set up (the destination of the aforementioned oversize load), so we decided to take a different route back to town. We were half way along our chosen back road when we unexpectedly came across a sign saying 'Security checkpoint ahead' and found ourselves being interrogated by a security guard. It turned out the the previously public back road had the previous week been privatised and given to a new mine company, and if we wanted to proceed on our chosen route we would need to be escorted through the new mine development. We initially said we would return the way we came, but it was close to lunch time so we told the guard we would pull off into the scrub on the side of the road and eat the sandwiches we had brought with us. By the time we finished lunch the mine security escort had turned up, so we decided to continue on our original planned route after all, which meant we followed our escort car for the next 10km or so, with check in points every few km. We felt like royalty with our own dedicated escort vehicle clearing the way for us! By this stage we were off the edge of the only map we had, but John's excellent navigation skills got us back on track to our home base.

We have finally shown the benefit of experience, stocking up at the local small supermarket in Perenjori well before it closed at lunch time on Saturday, with virtually no shopping available here in outback WA until Monday morning.

Merredin

Merredin is in the heart of the WA wheat belt, less than 300km east of Perth, and is larger than it appears at first glance. We found quite a bit to do in the town and surrounding areas and spent 3 nights here.

The town was founded as a stopping place on the way to the goldfields, and when the railway reached it in 1893 its importance was assured. Merredin Peak, the local granite rock formation, allowed water to be captured for use by the steam locomotives, and the town developed as a major hub for the storage and transport of the abundant grain grown in the region. We of course did the heritage trail around the peak and climbed to the top for good views over the town and pastoral lands. We also explored the remains of the military hospital that briefly occupied the land below the peak during WW II, established far enough from the coast so that enemy planes couldn't reach it without refueling. As the war progressed and it became obvious that there wouldn't be an invasion this far south the hospital was packed up and moved to New Guinea, leaving only concrete foundations in the scrub. The trail around the site gave lots of interesting information and reproduced photos of the hospital during its bustling peak.

One thing offered here that we hadn't seen in other small towns was a local town bus tour. This was a surprisingly interesting 1.5 hours, run by a man who was obviously passionate about his home town. It gave a good insight into not just Merredin's past but its expected future, and the work being done by the local council to diversify the town's economic base. The tour included an inside look at the massive silos where grain is stored before being loaded onto trains and sent off to Fremantle for shipping overseas. With the 2010 harvest only a few weeks away the silos are almost empty now, and felt like massive echoing caverns.

Rounding off our time here we spent half a day exploring further south of Merredin, including yet another granite outcrop of Totadgin Rock, a sculpture park at Bruce Rock and a good lookout and heritage walk at Narembeen.

Catching our Breath in Kalgoorlie

We've spent a couple of days in Kalgoorlie catching our breath after dashing across the Nullarbor, and basking in the lovely warm sunshine. We spent a while here when we were in WA earlier in the trip (almost exactly a year ago in fact) so there wasn't too much in the way of tourist delights that we hadn't already done. However, we spent half a day at the local museum, then John watched the AFL grand final replay.

This morning (Sunday) we had noticed was the local monthly market, but this proved less than exciting - barely half a dozen rather tatty stalls, plus a fairly ordinary sausage sizzle. The highlight of our stay here was a game at the brand new Kalgoorlie Golf Club, a green oasis with lovely grassed fairways and greens, and red dirt outside of these narrow boundaries. The only drawback with the course is that it has obviously been built as a cart course, so it was quite a long walk - not the least being almost a full kilometre between the 9th green and the 10th tee.

Today is our wedding anniversary, so although Sunday evening in Kalgoorlie provides limited dining options we had a celebration dinner out. Back to standard caravan fare tomorrow.

Whales Across the Nullarbor

We spent 3 days travelling across the Nullarbor Plains from Ceduna to Kalgoorlie. The wet season experienced by southern Australia was starkly evident, with the landscape being more green than brown, and covered with grasses and groundcover plants, instead of just scrubby bush and dirt. In fact it rained for the final 500km of the journey, which made it rather tiring.

The highlight of travelling across the Nullarbor at this time of year is the Head of Bight whale watching area. Southern right whales visit the Great Australian Bight during winter and early Spring, to give birth and rest up away from the cold Antarctic waters. The Head of Bight is the northernmost point of the Great Australian Bight, and provides viewing platforms down to the sheltered waters favoured by the whales and along the spectacular cliff formations that plunge down into the waters of the Bight. Although the whale photo at the top doesn't look like much, we were more than satisfied with our close up experience with these massive mammals, as the whale and her calf pictured cruised slowly along the cliff line right below where we were standing. In fact, there at least half a dozen whales within easy spotting distance, some of them sporting playfully in the waves only a couple of hundred metres offshore.

Its been a fairly tiring 3 days travelling, although gaining 1.5 hours due to the time change has meant we haven't arrived at our destination too late each day. We usually spend travel time chatting quietly or just looking at the scenery, but we decided to turn the last 2 long days into our own private music festival, and have been taking it in turns to pick the next cd to play. Needless to say John's choices tended more towards the headbanging than Wendy's quieter selections!