Geraldton to Denham

Day 23—Thursday, June 19, 2008 (con’t)
According to Bill Bryson (author of In a Sunburned Country, a tongue-in-cheek travelogue of Australia), Australia is famous for BIG statues of small things. While we were driving today we saw the first of the famous (to us and Bill Bryson, at least) BIG statues/sculptures/whatevers: a really big crayfish. This crayfish is not just big; this crayfish is BIG—about 4 metres long and about 1.5 metres high and set up on a pedestal where everyone can see. It was awesome! We’ll see as we travel around the country if there are any other BIG statues. Bill says there are.
BIG statues aside, the statue of the crayfish (not crawfish, mind you, that’s in Looosiana, USofA) was surrounded by oodles of beautiful bougainvillea! They were white, pink, fuchsia, purple, scarlet red, and yellow, and blooming in profusion. Hard to notice, however, overshadowed as they were by the giant crayfish.
Continuing down the road we did actually see the famous—according to our guidebook—stands of Leaning Trees of Greenough. They belong to the native WA Eucalyptus camaldulensis, the River Gum. Their characteristic “lean” is caused by constant strong southerly winds that burn off growth on the windward side, called flagging. They are bent almost flat to the ground.
As we have been driving, we see really green fields because of the winter rains. The green is so verdant that I look at the fields and think it’s a golf course without the flags. There are acres of beautiful green punctuated by occasional stands of stunted, wind-ravaged trees. This is a golf course wanting to happen—think of Cypress Point and Spyglass in Monterrey.
Another plant indigenous to this area is the Banksia. Or more properly, plants indigenous to this area are Banksias. There is an arboretum (which we did not have time to visit, unfortunately) devoted JUST to Banksias. They are pretty but the flowers look like small hairy pineapples. But people do love them. I mean, how many arboretums are devoted to just one plant?
As an aside, much later in the day, we had a nice steak dinner with mushroom cream potatoes. Why, yes, I did manage to do that in a small, 3-burner kitchen in a 100 square foot campervan. Along with that delicious steak, we had an Amberley Margaret River First Selection Cabernet Sauvignon 2004. It was absolutely delicious. We really had a great time tasting and choosing wines while we were in the Margaret River area. I’m sure we will run out before we start out camping trip. Bummer. But—we are heading for the Barossa Valley after the camping trip and will replenish our supply and perhaps bring home a bottle or two. Unfortunately a bottle or two is all we can bring home.

Day 24—Friday, June 20, 2008
The heater isn’t yet fixed but we will cope with that later in the day; we have too much to do and see today!
First we went to the Geraldton Lobster Cooperative for a tour of their facility. They are justly proud of the sustainable harvesting that they do and the lack of “footprint” that they leave when fishing for lobsters. The guide told us that they had some huge number of pounds of live lobsters—in the warehouse at that moment—worth over $6million. All of the lobsters are kept in ocean temperature sea water and all the sea water is pure enough to be recirculated right back into the ocean. There is no pollution from the lobster processing and that is why, she says, their Brolhos Lobsters are famous from the fish markets of Los Angeles to the Arab Emirates. A dinner of their lobsters in Tokyo would cost $200 per person. Wow!
Then we were off to the Geraldton Department of Meteorology (DOM) at the Geraldton Airport (our Garmin GPS doesn’t recognize that there is an airport closer to us in Geraldton than Perth) for a tour and a release of the daily weather balloon. Actually they release several weather balloons each day at each of the 50+ national weather stations. The one they release at 7am has a data transmission module attached, a one-time use item that costs $350 (let me see, $350 x 50 stations x 365 days a year, that equals, oh, I don’t know, a LOT of money just for weather! And that’s just data, no forecast) but the other one, the one we will see, is just tracked by radar to tell the winds aloft. It rises to 60,000 feet (yes they do use feet and inches for some measurements; go figure) or so before bursting and falling back to ground. Gary (the weather guy doing the tour—just for us two, I might add) said that they fall to earth who-knows-where and once a farmer tried to sue the government for a weather balloon that fell on his house. The courts have decided that where it falls is “an act of God” and therefore the government is not liable for any problems caused by weather balloons falling.
Australian weather balloons still use hydrogen (can you spell Hindenburg?) as opposed to the helium balloons the Americans use. Gary said it was ok to say “inflate the balloon,” or “fill the balloon,” but it was NOT ok to say “blow up the balloon.” They have quite a few safety precautions, needless to say. The balloon is filled remotely and there is a flashing light to tell people not to get closer than 20 metres to the building where it is being filled and the weather guy releases it remotely as well. It is then tracked by radar (this is the afternoon balloon, the morning balloon has that $350 gizmo to phone home with) to tell the winds aloft.
Gary doesn’t believe in the 7-day forecasts, he thinks the farthest ahead the forecast is even remotely reliable is 4 days. That said, however, the current 4-day forecast is as reliable as the 24-hour forecasts were even 5 years ago. Did we remember to ask what the forecast was. Nooooo, we didn’t.
We did however ask about whether low pressure areas rotate clockwise or counterclockwise? Doesn’t everyone want to know that? In the northern hemisphere they rotate counterclockwise (or, anticlockwise as they say in Australia. Australians may speak English, but their ”Strine” and my “American” are often very different) but sure enough, in the southern hemisphere they rotate clockwise.
That was a tour that was definitely worth while doing—of course, not too many aren’t worth doing. I learn something with every tour we go on. Among other things, I learned that I can access (when and if I have internet access, www.bom.gov.au/silo to get the latest weather forecast.
On to the Catholic Cathedral tour. As usual, interesting, and this tour we had tour-guides-in-training along with us (just 4 of us this time—almost a private tour). When I give tours at the Desert Museum I feel bad for the visitors when there are just a couple or just one person. I need to remember how special it feels to me as a visitor when we get a guide all to ourselves.
Monsignor Hawes, the Catholic priest who built the cathedral (which, by the way, is painted in orange stripes inside; nobody said priests were interior decorators!), was also an architect. Which was exactly why he was recruited in the early 1900s to come to Australia from Rome to help the diocese build their church.
He had many definite ideas about building churches (he built about 16 in Australia in his approximate 30 year tenure); at one point the Geraldton bishop wanted a larger sacristy. Hawes said no. The bishop said yes. Hawes said no—you get the idea. Well, finally the bishop put his churchly foot down and Hawes acquiesced. Sort of. When you look at the cathedral, you notice a very strange addition with a conical roof unlike any other part of the cathedral. THAT is the sacristy. It’s as if Hawes said, You want a sacristy that will bastardize my design? I give you a bastardized sacristy design. So there!
Additionally, when he was sent to another parish by a subsequent bishop when he didn’t want to go, he designed one of the gargoyles on the new church he built to look like the new bishop. He seemed to always get the last word. Not the obedient priest! But not exactly disobedient, either!
Saddest part of the tour was the guide’s talking about the amount of vandalism. Not just to the inside (where they have had to close off several of the exhibits with glass barriers) but also people shooting the stained glass windows. Lots of people from Geraldton have donated some beautiful stained glass windows in memory of their departed friends and family; vandals have shot holes in those stained glass windows. So sad.
After we did all that, we took the caravan to be re-repaired at Batavia Coast Caravans. I mention the name because they were so nice, especially Alex who did the bulk of the repairs. We brought it back at 4pm on a Friday afternoon. Did anyone complain? No. Did Alex moan and groan? No. He went right to work, and Pete, the boss, joined him shortly. They spend an hour and a half on the repair, finally, they thought (rightly, it turns out), getting it fixed. It wasn’t easy because the design of the installation sucked! The heater is in the upper cabinets (first design mistake) so Pete was, at one point, bent over backwards, his back on the corner of the counter under the heater, working on the heater from underneath because you couldn’t pull the whole thing out from the front (another design mistake). Finally the two of them thought they had it fixed and they jokingly told us they were not open for the next 5 days or not until we had left town, whichever came first. (Nevertheless, this morning—I’m writing this on Saturday—Alex, who happens to also live in the caravan park where we are staying, stopped by to make sure everything was working! How amazing is that?)
Since our heater problem was solved, we celebrated by taking a great bottle of wine with us, a Clairault Cabernet Merlot 2002, to the Bella Vista, a non-licensed restaurant (meaning they do not sell liquor of any kind, but you are allowed to BYO. Very, very common to BYO to restaurants and often they don’t even charge a corkage fee.). At 5:30 we called for a booking and couldn’t get one until 8. After a while we realized that 8 was too late and called to cancel. Almost immediately we got a call back from the owner that we could come “now [6:30], but we have a booking at 7:30 so you have to be done.” We went and what a hole in the wall it looked like, but we stayed and what a great meal we had! All that stuff about book covers is right! We had a few little problems with parking and driving on the left at night, but all in all, a great evening!

Day 25—Saturday, June 21, 2008
Before leaving Geraldton, we happened upon a wonderful sundial that was actually a sculpture of two children holding up a curved gnomon. If you could figure out the whole sculpture, you would know not only what time it was but what day of the year it was. We couldn’t, even with the directions! I took pictures so we could try again later. Yeah, right.
The fuel prices are so bad here! Several fuel stations have promotions: at Woolworth’s grocery, spend $30 and get $.04/litre off; at IGA, spend $25 and get $.04/litre. And the latest, buy wine and get $.20/litre off. Something seems strange about a promotion that says Buy wine and drive your car less expensively. But we will take advantage of any promotion we can and now we have 6 bottles of wine to drink as we drive north. Well, not actually WHILE we drive! But we did save $9 on diesel and have 6 bottles of wine, not a bad bargain.
Today we went from Geraldton to the town of Kalbarri and Kalbarri National Park. It ‘s a pretty short drive and it started with strong winds blowing off the ocean and obscuring visibility somewhat. We still aren’t in the real outback yet; we can see farms and the occasional lonely house off the road in the distance. Every once in a while you see a “school bus stop” sign and a rutted dirt track off to a presumably distant and invisible farm or ranch.
We’re starting to see more signs of 3-trailer-roadtrains as we travel north. The signs tell us they are 54 metres long; the 18-wheelers we are accustomed to in the US are 54 FEET long.
I am also surprised to see agaves and prickly pears. I guess I shouldn’t be as I know prickly pear cactus is an invasive pest here, but I am.
We stopped in Port Gregory to see the Pink Lake. It is indeed pink. They harvest beta-carotene from the lake. I don’t know what the source of the beta-carotene is, but the lake is truly PINK! Makes a lovely picture, looking across the pink lake to the green farmland and the deep blue sky beyond.
Kalbarri NP is one of the many NPs who have lots of 4WD roads—and Aussie 4WD roads are nothing like our US 4WD, therefore we have rented a 4WD car for tomorrow when we plan on driving far out into the Park.
Today, however, we went to the Rainbow Jungle, a parrot breeding and rescue place. It also has Australia’s largest free-flight aviary. Pretty cool to wander around among hundreds of beautifully colored parrots, many of them endangered and being bred here to keep the species viable.
We have checked into the Tudor Caravan Park, another Big4, in Kalbarri.

Day 26—Sunday, June 22, 2008
Since we have our very own 4WD vehicle, of indeterminate age, I might add, we are free to go when and where we want. The vehicle is a Patrol of not only indeterminate age but also indeterminate mileage. It has 30,000 kilometres on the odometer, but we are guessing that means 130,000 kilometres or 230,000 kilometres or even 330,000 kilometres—I lean toward the last kilometre-age (is that the right word? I’d say mileage but we ARE in Australia) given the aroma inside and the fact that the right-side mirror is missing and the covers for most everything else inside are missing. Not to mention the repaired bullet hole in the passenger-side windscreen. I’d say it was dead center but that may not be the appropriate word to use in conjunction with “bullet hole.”
We don’t NEED a 4WD for the road out to the Murchison River gorges but that was all that “Cars 4U2 Rent” had on hand so we took what we could get and headed out to the gorges.
The Loop has the longest trail and the beautiful Nature’s Window, a hole in the layered sandstone that is used in every picture advertising Kalbarri because it is so stunningly beautiful. Beyond Nature’s Window is a hike of about 8 km around the land inside a big turn in the river. In not too may millennia the river will become an oxbow lake, but for now it is a long a apparently quite beautiful walk. We elected not to carry on as the hike is quite strenuous in parts. We hiked about 2 km and then turned around.
Our next stop was Z-Bend. I don’t quite understand the Z-Bend designation and we didn’t see any Z-bends, just a meandering river in a beautiful gorge. We hiked out to a lookout and admired the view of a gorgeous (OK, OK, no pun intended) river and had lunch at a picnic site that was mercifully somewhat free of flies. Only somewhat, however. We have to get used to the pesky critters as they will only get worse as we go north.
Those two stops were each about 25 km in on a dirt road. Not too bad, but corrugated. I’d love to know why, the world over, dirt roads get corrugated. What is it about car/truck traffic that makes them eventually have this awful washboard wearing of the dirt base?
The last—although not planned to be our last—stop was at Ross Graham Lookout, a stop that was on a paved access road. The Lookout is dedicated to a teacher in Kalbarri who apparently was singularly responsible for getting national park designation for the Kalbarri area. He taught there for only a short time as he died at 30 (or 31, depending on which sign you read) but he made a huge impression on the area. Another very nice viewpoint of the Murchison River.
We intended to go on to the Hawkes Head Lookout but the car wouldn’t start even though we had only driven it 15 minutes before. t was a diesel and we did all the stuff you do with a diesel wait for the glowplug to light, not crank it for more than 30 seconds. The battery was fine, it cranked like a champ. It just didn’t catch. The possibility remains that it was out of fuel. We had driven it 130 km and the fuel gauge had not budged from the full mark. Maybe it wasn’t full to begin with? Remember my ruminations on the age of the vehicle? Maybe it was older than we thought. Maybe, maybe. We’ll never know.
Our cell phone had no service nor did the cell of a Swiss couple who were there. There was one other car in the lot with a Kalbarri license; we hoped for their cell to work. Nope. The Swiss couple was going to take me into town when they got back from their walk but the Kalbarri couple convinced us both to come with them. That way I wouldn’t have to drive the campervan 50+ km out to pick up Randy.
Back to town we trundled, packed like sardines in their little 4WD and they took us to the car rental place. Turns out it was his brother-in-law who was there to meet us! Anyway, there was no problem with our abandoning the car out in the Park, and brother-in-law took us back to the caravan park. All in all, not too bad an experience. It could have been a LOT worse if we had decided to head off into the hinterland—which we could have done, since we had a 4WD. Once again, friendly Aussies helped us out. My only regret is that we didn’t get the names of the couple who rescued us.
Since we were back early (about 3pm) we sat outside and just relaxed in the sun. Yes, the weather has been and is forecast to remain clear.

Day 26—Monday, June 23, 2008
Our destination today was Denham and the Denham Seaside Tourist Village. Not a Big4, but very nice, nonetheless.
Denham is the gateway to Monkey Mia (My-ah) where we will be able to feet the wild dolphins, assuming the wild dolphins have a mind to visit the morning we will be there (day after tomorrow, on our way to Carnarvon).
Another interesting stop along the way was to visit the stromatalites. What, you may ask are stromatalites? Among other things, they are the oldest living things on earth. To me they look like rocks but scientists—the first of whom discovered (or rediscovered) them in 1956 in Hamelin Pool (down the road from Denham)—call them “living fossils” as they first lived over two billion years ago. They occur in very few places on earth any more as they need very specific conditions in order to live at all. The colony at Hamelin Pool is the first living example found on earth and is ONLY 3000 years old. It’s a very nice exhibit, but rocks are, well, rocks. Dolphins will be much more exciting.
But they have done a great job with the exhibit; lots of information beautifully and humorously presented on exhibit signs posted quite often as you walk around. The boardwalk is especially nice, as it enabled us to walk right over the stromatolites (which are easily damaged by people walking or wagons driving over them. Wagons? Yes, wagons. Years ago wagons full of wool would actually be pulled out through the stromatolites to “lighters” for carriage to bigger ships. Of course they didn’t know they were killing “living fossils” but the wagon tracks can still be seen through the stromatolite “rocks.”
On the walk to the stromatolite beach we walked through the shell block area. I don’t know how to describe that better than “shell blocks.” Over thousands of years, shells have concreted to the extent that they can be quarried much as granite or other stone is quarried. They are true building blocks and many building in the area are built from the blocks. They have great advantages, not the least that they insulate extremely well. The blocks are layers and layers of small shells concreted together by the action of sea water on the lime in the sea shells. This action has been going on or thousands of years before the Aussies discovered what great building blocks they were. Later we will meet a guy who built several houses from these shell block and we will have dinner in one of those houses.
We checked into the campervan park and got a beautiful site. We overlook the ocean from a site high on a hill. Really, really nice!
After sitting outside drinking a nice Aussie beer (Victoria Bitter), we decided to go on a tour tomorrow—we’re a little snake-bit from our experience of renting a 4WD yesterday! We’ll leave the driving to others!