Sunday morning we set out to explore the town of Geraldton. Our first port was to be the Sydney II memorial that was built several years before the location of the ship was known. En route we passed a market in the grounds of the old Geraldton Hospital, of course we needed to look around. There were old tools for sale and someone selling White Christmas just the same as Nicholas' mum makes. One lady was giving away biscuits as well.
We made it to the top of a hill where a memorial to HMAS Sydney II had been built. The true location of the wreck was not known until 2012, though a statue of a sailors wife or mother, positioned years earlier, looks in the very direction of where the Sydney rests on the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Eerie. The memorial is beautiful and fitting for such a significant disaster.
Having spent some time at the memorial we headed into Geraldton town for lunch and then a play at the waterfront water park. We found a bakery that had yummy house made pies and rice paper rolls. The pies became a little confused and Chantelle ended up with Nicholas' chilli pie, but only for a bite or two!
The water play by the beach was more impressive in the town brochure than in true life. It's all about the angle of the photo. While the girls played Nicholas escaped to the museum.
The museum had a large exhibit dedicated to the story of the Batavia. This is a fascinating story of shipwreck, treachery, scheming, murder and execution.
Monday and we didn't leave Geraldton until after lunch, there was so many things to get done before we left. Nicholas had a haircut (more like a sheep being sheared it was that out of control), then there was the last bit of shopping to be done. By the time that was all under control it was time for lunch!
After we finally left Geraldton behind us we drove to Greenough first where the wind is so strong the trees grow sideways there. We saw several trees as we drove through whose trunk were only 40cm above the ground but parallel to the ground. With wind like that there were some wind turbines on huge poles on the top of hills like candles on a birthday cake.
Our next stop was quite unscheduled. Angela was driving as we came to the hamlet of Leeman WA. Leeman is a roadhouse and a collection of houses. Angela was waved down by police for a random breath test. A very random breath test because after over 28000km it was the first time that we had come to the attention of law enforcement. Well maybe we had had the attention earlier but it was the first time we had been stopped. Why is it these things happen when Angela is driving?
Again it was late in the afternoon that we reached our scheduled stop for the night at Cervantes. The park was very empty and looked like it had lots of permanent holiday shack vans in there. We counted no less than eight agricultural tractors probably used for taking boats down to the beach for launching. Law enforcement should look at these tractors instead of harassing lovely women for breath tests as most were not registered and were so old there was no rollover protection.
Tuesday morning was the drive to the Pinnacles Now all the National Parks in WA have an entrance fee. Most parks have an honesty envelope system for payment, and the backpackers fill out the envelope for the receipt but don't pay any money. At the Pinnacles they have a booth so the backpackers cannot escape. With our last receipt we upgraded to a four week Parks Pass which will grant us entry to the rest of the National Parks for the remainder of our stay in WA. The other catch with the Pinnacles is you cannot pull a trailer along the drive. Yes we had to do the drive because those in the back had now lost all enthusiasm for walking. We cannot really blame them we have made them do over 200km of walks in the past five months to special places along the way (not counting the incidental walks around museums and from camp to shops etc).
The Pinnacles themselves are quite interesting. They are dotted around amongst pure white sand dunes that, as the dunes shift, keep revealing and hiding other Pinnacles. The researchers cannot agree what the Pinnacles actually are! Both theories agree that they originate from petrified wood with one theory being that they are the tree trunks and the other the Pinnacles are tree root systems. Along the drive we stopped several time to snap photos. After having a good look around we hitched the trailer back to the beast. Really the leaving trailers behind is not necessary, we could drive a Mack truck along the defined path.
We stopped at the sleepy seaside town of Lancelin to pickup some rolls for lunch. The overwhelming request was to eat in the car to get to Perth ASAP. Lancelin hit the news while we were in Perth. When police tried to stop an unlicensed driver who took off then crashed his car during the chase. While police were arresting him he managed to slip free and steal a police car and drove through the streets of the town with police in pursut at excessive speed. The police won, in the end, but they destroyed one police car and damaged several others to do it. The police were very good to the man and offered him lots of pepper and some new stylish bracelets.
When we arrived in Perth at the caravan park Nicholas had booked the wrong park, as you do. After a quick phone call he managed to obtain a refund of the deposit from the other park and book a patch of grass for the next ten nights. Thankfully that all worked out in the end.
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