I am not sure whether it was the crying babies or
the noisy birdsong that woke us this morning, however I took the opportunity to
give my mother a call to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. Actually, I am not even
sure whether it is Mother’s Day in New Zealand today, however if I had missed
it last week, she would have been pleased to have a second one this week.
Unfortunately there was only the answerphone to take my call; I later learned
she was out for morning tea, one of my sisters taking the role of daughter-at-hand.
Mother’s Day for us marked the end of Kalbarri and the
start of another adventure, as it does every time we take to the road again. Despite
a rather lengthy Skype call from Chris’s sister in England, we still managed to
pull out of the park before 9.30 am and head south past Kalbarri National Park’s
coastal cliff section.
We caught sight of a couple of wind turbines as we
passed Wagoe, identified only by a Quad Bike Adventure road sign, and were soon
passing through sheep country, more populated with Paddy and Ghan Melons and
sandstone pebbles than sheep. We saw a feral cat and newborn lambs, but little other
fauna.
Sixty kilometres south of Kalbarri, we turned toward
the coast at the southern end of the Pink Lake, and drove the six kilometres to
Port Gregory. Photos on the tourist publicity had shown the lake to be bright
pink and so we were a little disappointed to find it far less so, just pink stripes
on the pale blue lake water. Apparently it depends on the time of the day and
the levels of beta carotene, and obviously today there were less than the day
the photographers took their publicity shots.
The reason for this enigma is the microscopic algae
called dunaliella salina which occur
naturally in salt lakes, these algae bloom under the right conditions; warm
weather and a high salt concentrate, and produces carotenoids, which in turn
help protect the algae from the harsh conditions. The algae are harvested to
produce the dietary supplements, the “factory” situated on the Grey Road.
A trip into Port Gregory is really only worth it for
another view of the lake and to understand why this port is obsolete. There is
a five kilometre long very narrow exposed natural reef that runs parallel to
the shore and I guess it was this that marked it as a convenient port. The town,
tucked back out of the wind behind the sand dunes, today has a population of
less than fifty. Today it was deserted and we actually wondered why anyone
would want to live or holiday here. About five serious looking commercial fishing
boats lay anchored within the reef, evidence that some here lead a purposeful
life. Those who fish for leisure have to launch their boats off the sandy beach,
dogs must always be on a leash and the reticulated water is not potable. The
settlement boasts a modern clean toilet block, a good parking area for the few
curious travellers and little else.
The port was established in 1849 and named after
Western Australia’s busiest explorers, brothers Augustus and Frank Gregory, of
whom we will hear more, I am sure. In 1854 the town was gazetted as Pakington,
later changed to Gregory. The port was initially used by whalers, pastoralists
and for the export of lead. Later salt from the nearby Hutt Lagoon was shipped
out but by the depression, all activity had ceased.
Back out on the main Kalbarri access road, we pulled
into the Lynton Hiring Station, the most intact example of a regional convict
depot in Western Australia. The depot was established in 1853 to supply labour
to the Geraldine Lead Mine up at Galena very near our river side camp the day
before we arrived at Kalbarri. The station was barely finished when it was
closed in December 1856 due to the harsh living conditions and transport
problems of the time.
Convicts were held here until local businessmen came
to hire them for labouring tasks on the nearly farms. There are stories where
the local farmers treated the convicts like slaves, frequently flogging them
for the slightest misdemeanours or simply executing them for minor offences,
but little evidence to support such tales.
By 1856, a store, bakery, depot, lockup, hospital,
lime kiln and administration block had all been built, however the health of
the buildings did not match that of the convicts; a lack of fresh vegetables had
them all suffering scurvy. By January 1857, less than four years after they had
arrived, the convicts were either shipped back to Freemantle or settled at Greenhough,
just south of Geraldton.
Life is full of coincidences and it was such that struck
me when I read that five women from the “Bride Ships” were known to have
arrived at Lynton. This morning Chris’s sister had asked if we were anywhere
near the Swan River because she was reading a novel about the loose women from
towns in England who were shipped out to Australia to meet the shortage of male
settlers, on “Bride Ships”.
 |
| Remains of the Lynton Hiring Station |
As we neared Northampton where we joined the North West
Coastal Highway, the land opened out to great expanses of rolling hills, steep
enough to require a gear change down to third. A great patchwork of crops and
grazed land lay spread out in front of us. I was curious to see that Northampton
celebrates the “Airing of the Quilts” in October. Is this a competitive spring
cleaning undertaken by all the housewives, women all out in their back yards
beating duvets, blankets and quilts, or something to do with the patchwork of
the landscape? Subsequent research has revealed that one can join the locals “to see an exquisite array of colourful
patchwork quilts hung from buildings down the main street. There are many
styles of patchwork quilts both old and new displayed, a must see for anyone
who loves crafts and the memories of yesteryear.”
Quite frankly this seems as bizarre as my own suggestions.
We pulled into Northampton very briefly, to buy a little
more fuel, here at the discount price of $1.55, the lowest per litre price since
early March this year when we passed through Parkes in New South Wales. It is
the courteous thing to do, if you want to fill the tyres with air. Yes, the
tyres are still a problem, becoming an obsession. My husband thought an extra
10 psi in each of the caravan tyres might improve the ride. Alas, there was no
great improvement.
This historic rural town, with a population today of
about 842 and a further 2,000 in the surrounding rural area, was classified as
a Historic Town by the National Trust in 1993. The town is one of the oldest
settlements outside Perth. After Lt. George Grey sang the area’s praises, lead
and copper mining commenced in 1848 and 1855, respectively. The town was
declared in 1864 and the first railway in Western Australia, from Geraldton to
Northampton, was laid and completed in 1879.
Today the surrounding agriculture provide the life
blood of the town and of course it is conveniently located for all those 40,000
grey nomads heading north, a quieter stopping place than Geraldine, which lies
52 kilometres to the south.
We pulled into a rest area just south of Northampton
and discussed our caravan park options for Geraldton. I had checked out the
tariffs on their websites; however we no longer trust these to be up-to-date.
We decided to head to the Visitor Centre to obtain an accurate list.
We were suitably impressed by this town of 33,000 as
we drove in from the north. Suburbs are stretched out along the sandy dunes to
the north and closer we found ourselves passing through a town that could be
any modern settlement in more populated sections of the country.
The charming volunteer in the Visitor Centre confirmed
the prices we had and engaged us for some time in conversation about local matters
and answers to my questions. We could have stood there for the rest of the
afternoon chatting with him however another caravanning couple arrived for
information, so we made our exit. Back in the landcruiser we narrowed our
choices to the more rural Batavia Coast or the central Belair Gardens. The
latter won, although as we drove out past the port area, we wondered if we had
made the right choice.
The receptionist was so very sweet and accommodating,
we were won over. Set up I could hear the distant beeping of port forklifts,
the far off toot of a train and the crashing of the waves on the beach. We have
booked for four days with options to extend.
Tonight we received two Skype calls, one more
welcome than the other. My parents called to acknowledge my telephone call this
morning, our conversation cut short by another call; that from Chris’s sister
to advise an end to the long drawn out suffering of their sister-in-law. One
can only be glad that it was not Mother’s Day in England today.
No comments:
Post a Comment