31 July 2024
We departed our site in Kalbarri very early, to visit Jakes Point to collect shells (Nicole) and take photos (Steve). It was worth it on both accounts, with Nicole being particularly relieved that shell collecting was indeed allowed on that beach.
‘Allowed‘ you might ask? Well, here in WA, they have fairly strict controls on collecting shells on many beaches, meaning Nicole has had to remain on top of these controls. And, as you can see below, Nicole took full advantage.
I enjoyed the sunrise photography, catching the moon setting and some early morning surfers.
After a bakery breakfast in Kalbarri and re-sticking the dashcam to the windscreen, we headed south towards Geraldton.
On the way we stopped at the Pink Lake, which seemed to be attracting a lot of interest from Asian tourists for some reason. Then a brief stop at Port Gregory, which was pretty underwhelming.
We made a brief stop in Horrocks, a quaint little seaside town that reminded me in some way of seaside villages in Ireland — just the houses were 300-400 years younger.
Then it was on to Geraldton — easily the biggest town we had been to since Darwin (population circa 36,000 people). We had had someone tell us it should be called “Feral-ton” but, while it wasn’t what I’d call a pretty town, it wasn’t too bad.
We decided to take advantage of being in a decent sized town to see the new movie Twisters. We decided to go all in and splurged on a hotel room and, while it wasn’t much, it did make a nice change from sleeping in the motorhome for a night. The movie was fairly good; about as good as you would expect a sequel to be.
We visited the HMAS Sydney II Memorial, commemorating the worst naval disaster in Australia’s history after the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran sunk it off the Western Australian coast in 1941. The volunteer on duty while we were there did a good job of taking us through the various elements of the memorial, which is very well thought out. These include a dome of seagulls, and the waiting woman waiting for the sailors to return. You can read about the symbolism here.
It was just the one night in Geraldton, which was enough prior to continuing our run south towards Perth.
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