14 May 2013 - Belair Gardens Caravan Park, Geraldton, Western Australia

Sunrise occurs later each day although the shortest day will still come and go and we will be heading again for summer. In the meantime, we have retrieved our jeans and sweatshirts out of storage and stowed our shorts and t-shirts away for now. Thankfully the sun is still shining and the afternoons are still pleasantly warm, out of the wind, at about 25 degrees.

Chris washed the landcruiser and caravan, something he has been wanting to do for many weeks, and today, did so in the absence of direct prohibition from park management. I busied myself with a load of laundry and the social exchange that tends to happen near clothes lines. I recognised a women from the Kalbarri caravan park and asked how she had coped with the crying children, knowing that she was parked right beside one young family. She rolled her eyes and told me that not only had they suffered the whinging twins I had seen, but a small baby on the other side. She had remarked to management that the park was more a creche than a tourist resort. It seems that we had had a far better experience there than some and I had no grounds to complain at all!

On our way into town, through the silos and storage sheds of the wharf, we dodged the hundreds of pigeons who hang about the area feeding on the spilt grain. They are quite a hazzard on the road out to the park

In town we called into the local Tyrepower franchise to discuss the pecularities of our Cooper tyres. When Chris explained that he had specifically asked the tyre people in Tom Price if having a different brand of tyres on the back to those on the front would be acceptable and received assurance that there would be no problem, the man here in Geraldton said he would have said the same. He suggested he could switch them front to back, back to front, or simply sell us another two tyres to have a matching foursome and gave us a price for doing so, a whole lot less that we had paid up in the Pilbara.

While Chris conversed with the tyre expert, I sat in the vehicle studying the only reading matter at hand, a map of Geraldton and surrounds. Here I realised I had been quite ignorant in suggesting that there was no river mouth to attract settlement; the Chapman River appears as a fine squiggle on the map, flowing westward and seems to end just short of the sand dunes. Hardly a river mouth although it may be in some centuries.

We left the man at Tyrepower to his other customers, quote in hand, promising to think about it, and headed to the museum. 

The West Australian Museum is an absolute must when visiting Geraldton. It was well descibed by the women in the Visitor Centre as being “quality” rather than “quantity”, and that is exactly why it such a pleasure to visit.

There are four main exhibitions: the regional social and geological history of the area, how recent European exploration and settlement has developed the Mid-West including agriculture, fishing, mining and science industries, a comprehsive study of shipwrecks with emphasis on that of the Batavia, the Zuytdorp and the Zeewijk, the discovery of the bombarded HMAS Sydney II by the German Raider  Kormoran and a visiting exhibition titled “Traversing Antarctic”, which we had seen in the National Archives centre in Canberra. 

We had learned about the ship wrecks and about the loss of the Australian naval vessel over the past few weeks, however there were some interesting facts in the regional displays that did catch my attention.

The Waiting Woman

I wrote about the shortgage of water here in Geraldton in years gone by however I did not know how bad matters had become.

In the early 1900s, Geraldton was described  by the Inspector of Nuisances has having “festering filth and millions of flies, that sanitation was impossible in such surroundings”. This was no doubt prompted by an outbreak of bubonic plague in February 1906, spread by fleas from rats. The first confirmed plague case caused some residents to panic and flee the town. I am just glad we have passed through 107 years later.

I was also fascinated to read about the mining of ‘talc”, more scientifically known as ‘hydrated magnesium silicate”. Talc is one of the softest minerals and has many uses in industry, apart from anointing our freshly bathed bodies. It is also used in paint, paper, plastics, ceramics, fertilisers, animal feed, rubber, foods and cosmetics. The mine at Three Springs, south of Geraldton, is the tenth largest producer in the world. A farmer sinking a well discovered talc there in the 1940s, and mining commenced in 1948. Today, modern mining methods extract over 150,000 tonnes of talc each year from the sixty metre deep pit. Trains carry the lump talc from Three Springs to Geraldton, past this caravan park, then on to Japan and Europe by ship.

HMAS Sydney II Memorial

From the museum we headed up to the HMAS Sydney II Memorial, where a very beautiful, moving and tasteful construction honours the 645 lives lost in November 1941. From the elevated location, one has a wonderful view over the town, one reason alone to drive up to see this. I loved the bronze sculpture of the “waiting woman” gazing out to sea , grieving for her loved one lost at sea. A full list of those lost is engraved upon the long sweeping granite wall, which is part of the memorial.

We were back at camp early enough to rescue the laundry from the dew and to hear the Federal Treasurer present the annual budget to parliament, rather an anti-climax to an otherwise excellent day.