GERALDTON TO PERTH

We stayed at the Belair Caravan Park in Geraldton and after setting the caravan up we went to the Post Office to pick up our mail and to have a quick look around the town. Geraldton is a fairly big City right on the coast. The rest of the day we stayed around the caravan and relaxed.

Saturday morning we went to town to have a look at the HMAS Sydney II Memorial, we arrived just as they were about to start a tour of the Memorial so we joined in. A young girl gave us a commentary as we went around that was very interesting, we also bought a magazine about the Sydney that is very informative, Dad and Charlie will be interested to reading it I’m sure.

HMAS SYDNEY II MEMORIAL

After that we went grocery shopping at the IGA store, it was a well set up store and very clean. In the afternoon we stayed at the caravan reading and watching TV as I didn’t feel like doing anything else.

Sunday 2/12/07 only sixteen sleeps to go until we see everyone at home but whose counting (we are). We decided to go to the Markets in the Mall and then for a drive to Mullewa today, Market weren’t much, even Diane admitted that. Mullewa is 99km east of Geraldton and is situated in the middle of wheat country. A lot of people travel along the same road as we did to see the Wild Flowers; we are to late for them but you can see where they have been growing. On the return trip we headed south towards Mingenew and about half way we turned right towards Walkaway. On the way to Walkaway we past a Wind farm owned by Alinta (I think Alinta has been taken over by Babcock and Brown). The Wind Generators are huge fans powered by the wind; it would be interesting to know how many Watts they each produce.

I fuelled up on the way home for lunch. In the afternoon I took one of the wheels off the Caravan to fix the wiring on the Electric brakes that had broken. I had to join the wires and run them out through the backing plate and then rejoin them to the brake system. The rest of the afternoon after retracting the Awning we stayed inside as the wind was up again.

Monday morning we went down to the wharf at 9.30am to go through the Geraldton Fisherman’s Co-op. They take you through the Co-op and show you how the Lobsters come off the boat and how they grade and sort them. They keep the Lobsters live in big tanks and they can store 90 tonne at a time that would be worth $6 million dollars. It is a $1.6 Billion dollar business, and has markets in Asia and the United States. In 36 hours they can transport live Lobsters to any part of the Continent in 36 hours from their tanks to the purchasers.

The Co-op is owned by the Fisherman and for anyone to buy into a boat it would cost you between $15,000 to $30,000 per Cray pot and most boats have about 200 pots, with a boat it would cost you up to $7.5 Million. They fish anywhere from South of Fremantle to Shark Bay in the North.
GERALDTON FISHERMAN’S CO-OP

After that we visited the Western Australian Museum at Geraldton. They have set it up very nicely, they have a Video of the “Batavia” that was ship wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands and the massacre that took place between the survivors. They have relics from 4 other shipwrecks from around the West Coast. It was an enjoyable morning.

We had lunch at the Central shopping centre and then I went and washed the car while Diane did some shopping for new clothes for her skinny self. The rest of the afternoon I finished the wiring on the caravan brakes and started a new book, the last one was the worst book that I have read; it was “Seven poor men in Sydney”. I have only read 40 odd pages of the new book and it is much better.

I was talking to our next door neighbour in the late afternoon they are from the Netherlands, when they were up at Monkey Mia Linda had an appendicitis attack and had to be flown to Geraldton by the Royal Flying Doctor Service for an operation. They spoke very highly about the service. Linda only left hospital yesterday.

We left Geraldton on Tuesday morning at 8.39am, not knowing where we were going to end up for the night. On our way south we called into Dongarra, it is a nice town on the coast. Like most of the towns and villages along this part of the coast it has a Cray fishing fleet. Diane and I can’t get over the amount of new subdivisions there are in every town along this coast line. The area is certainly dooming. We called into Port Dennison and had morning tea in the park on the waterfront; very picturesque also.

We called into and drove around Leeman, Green Head and Jurien Bay all lovely seaside spots with caravan parks that I bet are full in the Holiday seasons with holidaymakers from Perth and surrounds. We decided to go onto Cervantes where we stayed at the caravan park right on the beach. We arrived in the early afternoon and after setting up camp we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon as my Shingles were playing up a bit. We are camped under trees so I couldn’t get a signal with the satellite dish so we read for a fair while before and after dinner.

5/12 my anniversary, on 5/12/1966 I started my working life in The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney Limited at there Cassilis Branch, (A bit of useless trivia for you). This morning we went for a drive out to the Pinnacles that are 17 km from town. The Pinnacles rising mysteriously from the dunes are Limestone pillars up to 4 metres high, some are jiggered and have a pointed end and some are pillar like. A quote from the brochure states that “The raw material for the Limestone of the pinnacles came from sea shells in an earlier epoch rich in marine life. The shells were broken down into lime-rich sands which were carried inland by wind to form high mobile dunes.


Winter rain leached the lime from the sands, cementing grains of sand together in the lower levels of the dunes. Vegetation became established and stabilized the dunes. At the same time an acidic layer of soil and humus developed over the remaining quartz sand.

The acidic soil accelerated the leaching process, and a hard layer of calcrete formed over the softer limestone below. Today this calcrete can be seen as a distinct cap on many pinnacles and has helped protect the softer limestone below.

Cracks formed in the calcrete layer and were exploited by plant roots. Water seeped down along these channels to leach away the softer limestone beneath. The channels gradually filled with quartz sand. This subsurface erosion continued until only the most resilient columns remained. The pinnacles as we see them today were exposed by prevailing winds blowing away the overlying quartz sand”. “Here ends the lesson”.

As the photos will show they are certainly something to see. After the pinnacles we visited Hangover Bay, the lookout and Kangaroo point, all coastal bays or headlands.
PINNACLES

I’m not good company at the present as the shingles start playing up after a while so we spent the rest of the day around the caravan. Tonight for dinner we had calamari, lobster stir fry. We both think that lobster is overrated.

Thursday was another interesting day we left Cervantes not knowing where we were going to stop for the night. We headed towards Badgingarra because we heard a lady talking about it on the radio, so we thought that we would have a look at the town. It is east of Cervantes about 70km away. Not much there at all we drove around the couple of streets and then headed east again through wheat belt country another 60km until we arrived at Moora. Moora is a much bigger town with a nice hospital and a pretty little park in the centre of town where we stopped for morning tea. There just happened to be a Bakery across the road that was just to tempting, a custard tart and muffin later I had broken my diet for the day. We met Kel and Janese from Murwillumbah in NSW they have been on the road since March 2006. After Moora we headed further east (closest to home for a long time) until we turned south at Walebing which is a small town on the Great Northern Highway.

We arrived at New Norcia at about 12.20pm. We set up camp behind the roadhouse a huge cost of $12.00 per night with power, shower and toilets. The whole town of New Norcia is owned by the Benedictine Monks. They came from Spain in 1846 to look after the aborigines in the area. Over years they built the town and were given 30acres to start with and they now have 20,000 acres. At one stage with pastoral leases they had 1 million acres under there control.

They have built two boarding schools one for boys and one for girls, both of them closed in 1991. Because they weren’t attracting enough students and the buildings were becoming dilapidated. The monks have opened up the buildings for the tourists to go through, except for their Monastery. They have two chapels and their own chapel in the monastery where they go for prayers 6 times a day.

The artefacts in these buildings a something else the Organs are Magnificent and the paintings hanging on the walls and the painted walls are certainly worth looking at. There is also a Museum that we are going through tomorrow before we leave that is supposed to be very good. They also have their own hotel that the monks rarely visit and they make their own wine, port and beer called abbey ale. We just had to visit the hotel to sample their wares. Their beer costs $80.00 a carton so it stayed on the shelf although we tried a glass at $5.75 per 250 mil; it had an alcohol content of 7% and was a nice drop but not $80.00 worth. I purchased a bottle of Port and 6 beer/wine glasses before we left. Kel and Janese were staying at the same place as us and they did the tour with us as well as another couple Mike and Marg for Oyster Bay in Sydney. After the hotel we went back to camp and had a happy hour at Mike and Marg’s caravan. We had just packed up and Les and Yvonne turned up it is the third time that we have met them on the road once at Broome, once at Exmouth and once here, they had travelled from Geraldton that day visiting the pinnacles on the way.

Friday morning was cool early but turned out to be a nice sunny day not to hot. At 9.00am we visited the Museum and Art Gallery before leaving New Norcia. The Museum has a lot of old implements used in the early days for carpentry/ graving, farm machinery and other machines used. Inside is well set up with a lot of paintings and artefacts, musical instruments, aboriginal spears, shields and other items. There are just too many things to mention and all I can say is that it is certainly worth a visit. I purchased a fruit loaf of bread before leaving that the monks had made that morning and I had a slice for morning tea before we left it was very nice.

NEW NORCIA

We left New Norcia and drove south east to Toodyay which is another Historic town. We went through the Flour Mill and looked through a café that stores a collection of Coca Cola memorabilia that has been collected by one man over 45 years. It is a marvellous collection. We had lunch in the park before heading to Northam. Northam is a large town in the wheat belt with the main street decorated nicely for Christmas. After driving through the main street we then turned south to a small town called York which is on the Great Southern Highway. The caravan park is near the race course set in a bush setting and has nice amenities. I think we will be staying here for two days as there are markets on tomorrow morning and we just must go.

York is directly east of Perth and it is only 100km to Perth. York has a lot of old style buildings and has a quaint main street; one of the things in the main street is a car museum that I will visit tomorrow after the markets. We travelled with Kel and Janese for the day and met up with Mike and Marg at the caravan park. Diane and I had a sleep in the afternoon or should I say I had a sleep Diane couldn’t get to sleep before it was time for happy hour. I felt much better after an hours sleep.

We had a phone call from Marcus while we were having Happy Hour and he was telling us that he has changed his car registration over to WA plates and that both Mona and he have jobs and they will be earning $750.00 per week so they were pretty happy. We told them that we would see them on Sunday afternoon, and said that they are looking forward to that.

Saturday morning we were at the markets by 8.15am to check out all the specials, it was a good old fashion markets with plenty of fruit and veg as well as old wares etc not just cheap jewellery although there was some of that too. After the markets we drove around the town taking photos of the old buildings etc before having a cup of coffee in the main street. I then went and had a look through the York Motor Museum with all its old cars while Diane checked out the shops. The Museum was very interesting (for me anyhow) there were cars as old as 1912.

After lunch, I went down to the bowling club and watched them play a game of Pennants, York beat Bolgart quite easily. When I arrived there was no one behind the bar and if you wanted a drink you had to get it out of the esky that was situated out near the green. We had happy hour with Mike and Marg at 5.00pm.

Sunday morning we said goodbye to Mike and Marg and left York on our way to Perth it was only about 8.40am. Perth was 99km away so there was no rush to get there, we went through Mundaring, Midland and past the airport (only 9 days to go before we fly home to see everyone). The only place we recognised on the way was the Burswood Dome Casino that is situated near the swan river. We drove through to Fremantle and stayed at the Fremantle Village Caravan Park.

We were two sites away from Markus and Mona who were glad to see us again. They are both delivering Yellow pages phone books to make some money, they get .25c per book and they deliver two books per house. They have changed their rego over to WA plates but had to spend $800.00 on repairs first. I rang Paul Brockman (one of the fellows we met in Kalbarri) and he is going to ring someone for us so they can do the 140000 service on the cruiser. Diane went grocery shopping with Markus and Mona in the afternoon and I stayed at home and had a sleep (bloody shingles).

Monday morning we drove over to Camec Caravan Supplies to look at New Caravan Doors but they don’t have one the same colour in the door frame so it looks like we won’t be putting a new door on the van. The new door was to stop the dust from coming in on dirt roads. We also purchased two rafters for our awning so that we can stop the ends flapping. After that we drove up to Hazelmere for a man to look at our amateur radio. He said it was working fine and told me what frequencies were tuned in on 20m and 40m for me to get the best reception.

On the way back we just happened to call into the airport to check out were we will be leaving from when we fly home next Tuesday. At Fremantle we drove around and had a look at all the old lovely buildings and also had lunch at”McDonalds” right on the beach. Fremantle is an old place with a lot of old buildings and warehouses. In the afternoon we stayed around the van.

Tuesday morning we visited a chemist shop to get some stronger pain killers for me and to fill a prescription for Diane and three St Vinnies shops to buy two suit cases for our flight home, one for our clothes and one for all Diane’s old clothes and things we don’t need. We purchased the suit cases for $14.00 for them both. A great way to get a cheap suit case and when we return if we don’t need them anymore we will give them back to St Vinnies. We drove into Perth City Centre on the way back but didn’t stop (too busy). Perth is a lovely city with the Swan River running through it and the many Parks along its banks.

In the afternoon I put up the awning rafters, one on each end of the awning but I think we need one in the middle as well. We will call into Camec when we move over to High Wycombe on Thursday or Friday. After that I needed to lie down for a while which I did. I then read until the Twenty/20 match of cricket started. We tried to get tickets too the game but it was sold out, so we had to settle on watching the game on TV.

12/12/2007 Six days to go, this morning Diane did the washing and then we re-organised the car and van and then packed one of the suit cases with all Diane’s big clothes and things that we don’t want for the rest of the trip.

In the afternoon we went for a drive from Fremantle to Joondalup taking the coast road. It is a beautiful part of the WA coast; we went through Cottesloe, City Beach, Scarborough, North Beach, Waterman, Sorrento, Hillarys, Mullaloo and Joondalup. Mel, it is like the beach area at Wollongong in NSW. The beach and sand hills are on one side of the road and all the homes and buildings are on the other side. There were plenty of beautiful homes for us to get ideas from.

I spoke to Paul who has organised for our car to be serviced on Friday so we are going to move over to High Wycombe tomorrow. Markus and Mona called in after work and were disappointed when we told them that we would be leaving tomorrow.

Thursday morning we packed up and headed over to High Wycombe to Springvale Retirement Village. On the way we wanted to call into Camec again to buy another roof awning rafter and with the caravan on we found it hard to park, so we turned down a side street and as we did we looked at the name of the street which is Mills Street and we remembered that Paul had told us that he worked in Mills Street, so we called in to see him. Paul’s work backs onto Camec so he let us through the back gate.

Springvale retirement village is just that it is full of permanent homes and we are camped in the parking lot near the office. When we go home we will be putting the car and van around behind the manager’s office which is fully fenced.

In the afternoon we went for a drive over to Martin’s Trailer parts and purchased a new towing head for the caravan, one that rotates 360 degrees and also tilts up and down. The reason we decided to change it is because when we were talking to Mike and Marg the other day they were telling us that they wrote off their last caravan when it hit a large pot on a bend and the van rolled and jack knifed. Because they had a 360 degree towing head the car was not damaged and neither were they. If our van rolled over with the present head on, it would roll the car also.

Alex came over after he had finished work for the day and had a couple of drinks with us and tomorrow he is going to take us over to have a look at a house of his mates to give us some ideas for our new house.

I took the car over to Ultra Tune at Forrestfield for its 140000 service at 8.00am Friday morning; I had to unload the boat because it wouldn’t fit in the Garage bay. Clive the Manager loaned us a car for the day. I picked Diane up and we drove into Perth and spent the morning at the Factory outlets having a short break for coffee at 11.00am.

We then drove up to King’s Park for a stroll around the park; it is a beautiful natural park overlooking the Swan River and the Perth city centre. There were a lot of people there having their Christmas parties or end of year parties. Diane took some good photos and then we went back to the caravan for lunch at 2.30pm. I went and picked up the car at 3.00pm and then into Kewdale road to a bearing place to purchase some bearings for one of my fishing reels. Statewide bearings didn’t have any so I’ve decide to wait until I get home next week to order them over there.
PHOTOS FROM KINGS PARK

Alex came around at 4.30pm and took us over to his nieces place for us to have a look at her house. It is very similar to the style and colours that we have been thinking about, on the ceiling in their back patio they have put cedar panel boards and it looks very nice. We thought that we might do the same on our front patio ceiling it would look good from the street.

It has been a windy day today and as night was coming it seems to get stronger over here so we decided to fold up the awnings just before dark. The wind blew that hard that the van was shaking most of the night, we both had a restless night. The wind even blew the Satellite dish off the satellite during the night.

Saturday was overcast most of the day; Diane had lost one of her thongs through the night either by the wind blowing it away or maybe a dog took it. We went over to Forrestfield Woolworths to get the barest of grocery needs and to see if we could buy Di a new pair of thongs. By the time we got back to camp it was time to get ready to go over to Paul’s for a Barbecue lunch.

Paul and his wife Tracey live at 14 Calluna Way, Forrestfield; they have two girls Caitlin and Sophie. Paul also owns a HQ Holden Monaro in mink condition that has a 350 chev motor in it. He bought it as an investment some years ago for $24,000 and it is now worth about $40,000. Paul had the Red Emperor on the Barbecue, the one he caught up at Kalbarri when we went out on the fishing charter with them. Alex and his next door neighbour Kevan came over as well to help us eat this huge fish. Diane and I saw in Woolworths fillets of Red Emperor that were worth $55.00 a kilo.

We had a good afternoon, Tracey and Paul are good hosts and Alex and Kevan were fun company. We played two types of darts, Aussie rules and cricket. The rules of cricket were that you had to all throw left handed and the closest to the bullseye and there farthest from the bullseye played together. Then you had to do the same to see who batted and who bowled, closest batted. Then the same again for the batting side one dart each and then they picked out of the two numbers hit what number would be the wicket. The bowlers had two hit that number 11 or 13 times to get them out while the batters scored as many as they could, if the batters hit the wicket number they would lose a wicket as well. If the bowlers hit the number more than the 11 or 13 times they would get a wicket back. I played the same as usual hit and miss. (need more practise).

The wind came up again in the afternoon and blew strong all night, so much so that it blew over the small fold up table. It was another very restless night.

Sunday, what a lazy day we read until lunchtime and then Paul, Tracey and their kids came around at lunch time and we changed the caravan towing head, my socket set was to small to loosen the bolts and Paul brought a heavier socket set with him.

I went around to Alex’s dad’s house in the afternoon and watched Danny Green’s fight for the light heavyweight title. It was the worst fight of the night. When I arrived home Markus and Mona were there and we all had dinner together before they went back to Fremantle. We wished them all a merry Christmas and we will see them again after Christmas.

Monday morning and the day has arrived, tonight we leave for Home. We stayed around the caravan in the morning and then in the afternoon Alex came around and we went to a Firing range to shoot a .22 revolver and a .45 USA brand semi automatic. We used a box of bullets for each gun; there were 50 in a box. We thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon; Diane said that her adrenalin was really pumping when she first fired the .45. We brought the targets home as evidence, don’t mess with dead eye Di.

We got back to the caravan at about 5.30pm and we packed up the caravan and moved it into the storage area. We both went to bed at 8.30pm but I only got about 1.5 hours sleep and Diane didn’t get any. The cab arrived at 11.45pm to take us to the airport and we arrived around 12.00am. After checking in our bags and walking up to the departure area we sat and waited to be called for our flight. We took off at 1.20am Tuesday morning, the flight was smooth and I had about 1 hours sleep on the way home. We arrived in Sydney at 7.05am.

Everything went smoothly at the airport with our baggage and car rental. The trip through Sydney was good and we got to the start of the Expressway in 50 minutes. We arrived home at 11.45am. Wow 1.00am Perth 11.45pm Taree and about 4000kms later here we are at home.

Mel, Darren, George, Riley, Rachel, Charlie, Hannah were all there to meet us. It was great to see everyone again. Charlie, Audrey, Doug and Betty all came out in the afternoon before we went to George’s Graduation from his pre school. Diane and I were running on Adrenalin by the end of the day.

Wednesday morning we woke up still tired but happy to be home. I had an appointment at the dentist at 11.00am. Diane went to see all the girls at Bowls. Sid and I went to the Manning Hotel for a counter lunch. In the afternoon I went to Greg’s Christmas drinks and saw a lot of my old clients. It was a good feeling to have my old clients coming over to say hello and to hear them say that they are very happy with the service that Greg is providing them.

The last few days have been busy visiting Diane’s Mum and Dad through the day on Thursday and Thursday night we stayed at Rachel and Tim’s place which gave us and Hannah a chance to get to know us better. Charlie had no problem he remembered us OK. Friday morning I babysat George and Riley while Diane and Melissa went shopping and in the afternoon after Darren came home from riding his new trail bike I helped him pull one of the radiators off it as it was leaking after he hit a tree whilst he was out riding. He was lucky he didn’t get hurt more than a few scratches.

Diane and I had Dinner at Mum and Dad’s on Friday night which was our Christmas meal with them before they go to Newcastle on Sunday.