Geraldton, Australia

Only a short day today, about 150 km’s, so it makes sense to get a wriggle on this morning and get moving. This will let us get into Geraldton early enough to have lunch and then go and do some of the Geraldton sights. We were up and away a bit after 8:00 and went to meet Merryn & Patrick who’d gone a little earlier to take some photos at the lookout. I was surprised to find Patrick’s car & van pointing the wrong way? He’d missed the turnoff; understandable I guess; it was a straight uphill road where you could see the carpark from a km away and we’d only driven past it four or five times yesterday! (Sshhh, he does this a lot…)

One more stop before we hit the highway proper. Yesterday, Patrick armed with his new (expensive) wildflower book, found a yellow horny tailwobbler, or something like that and we were off to photograph it (Yahoo). Well, we found it. Please see attached photos, it’s the ugly one!

Now we’re away and making good time down the coast. A little further on (60km) and we come to the Pink Lake. Depending on the time of the day and the levels of the Beta Carotene, the water is a magnificent bright pink. Microscopic algae called Dunaliella Salina occurs naturally in the salt lakes. This algae bloom under the right conditions (warm weather, high salt concentrate) and produces carotenoids. Like other plants, these carotenoids help protect the algae from harsh conditions.

Just because I know you’ll all be interested, we took several photos of the pink water. I’m sure you can’t imagine what it looked like from all the different angles but don’t despair, we can show you! Northampton was our next stop. Not too far away and I had a hankering for a Devonshire Tea and as I know Patrick is always up for anything with sugar, I knew I’d have his support. Northampton’s a town of approximately 750 people and the surrounding wheat and pastoral farms use it as a base. Copper and lead were discovered in the district in 1849 and Northampton grew as a mining town supporting Geraldine Lead Mining Company, the first lead producer in Australia. Of course, it’s Sunday and in Western Australia, that means nothing is open. Strangely enough, the hairdresser was, but there wasn’t a Devonshire Tea to be seen. It was that bad that Patrick had to resort to eating a Banana (a rare occurrence I can assure you).

With a few photos completed, we’re back in the saddle and away again, arriving in Geraldton in time to cook and eat lunch. The Sunset Beach caravan park is pretty good, quite close to the beach and with views over the bay to the city but about 5km’s out of town. We split up for the afternoon and Lyn and I started with a visit to the Information Centre before taking a walk around St Xaviers Catholic Church, designed and built by the same guy that did the Northampton Church. Priest architect John Hawes who is responsible for designing and building a number of chapels, churches and presbyteries around the WA mid-West area. Having had our fill of church photos, we ventured down to the town’s esplanade and walked along the newly completed walkway and out the breakwater to view the ships arriving and hopefully catch a glimpse of sea lions (not to be I’m afraid).

After our walk and a drive around town checking out the other historic landmarks, it was time to do another grocery run before returning to the park. Geraldton looks to be a nice town. With 30,000 people, it’s the biggest town we’ve come upon since Bendigo and it’s nice to have a bit of civilisation again. Lyn and I even called into Bunnings to grab a couple of things. Tomorrow we’ll do the tour of the HMAS Sydney II memorial but we did shoot up there after tea to take some photos whilst it was floodlit. After we all stumbled around, almost tripping down the steps and nearly falling into the water feature we met a local (who may be one of the guides), who told us that the lights were broken. Funny that. I was thinking their floodlighting wasn’t too good.