Geraldton to Monkey Mia

April 24-27 Highway 1 Geraldton to Monkey Mia, Western Australia

On the road again, continuing to move north along the east coast, through very interesting country side. Thursday’s drive took us through many little fishing villages: Greenhead, Leeman, and Dongarra. Crayfish (rock lobster) is the major industry. We arrived in Geraldton this afternoon and made camp. This is a nice town, population 30,000 of so. We did a bit of grocery shopping; we have learned to buy groceries/supplies at the corresponding markets to the local gas stations. When one spends at least $30.00 in the store you get a voucher for 4 cents off per liter of fuel. When we fuel up if we buy at least $5.00 in the gas station shop they give you an additional 2-4 cents off per liter, so with diesel fuel at about $6.00 a gallon we try and take advantage of these offers. We have found Australia to be a bit more expensive than we had anticipated. Eating out is quite expensive, a lunch for the 2 of us in a café, (not fast food) can easily be $60.00. Driving the little Moho has been a great savings for us; we try and eat at least 2 meals in a day in it. We arrived at camp and took a short walk over to the water. We watched kite surfers skimming across the water, they were a beautiful site. We saw the Point Moore Light House, handsome old red and white striped light house, the tallest metal one in Australia.

Friday morning we got up and went to the HMAS Sydney Memorial. It was good timing as April 25^th is ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) Day. The Aussies are very patriotic and are very appreciative of those who have served their country. The memorial was beautiful, up on a hill overlooking the city. The memorial was built to remember the sailors who went down in a battle off of Geraldton in 1941. The HMAS Sydney has only just been recently discovered by divers. The dome of the memorial was formed out of 645 sea gulls. The sea gull is supposed to be representative of the soul of a missing sailor. Quite beautiful and moving to see and read the story of the ship the sailors. Back on the road we made it to Kalbarri, a beautiful seaside community that was somewhat disappointing because of the FLYS. I mean the most annoying flies; they buzz your ears, fly into your mouth, up your nose, land all over. We remembered having a bout with these “buggers” on our earlier Australia visit, but to date we had not run into them. We wanted to go and walk to some of the beautiful cliffs along the ocean, but could really not stand their pestering. We got to camp and held up in the rig until sunset when the beasties were somewhat less aggravating. We walked over to a Kalbarri land mark for dinner, Finlay’s BBQ. This was a very interesting adventure. They offer no service, no tablecloths, no glasses, no bar, just good fish and steaks. The food was very good and portions more than generous. This was all served with insults. The cook would call out your order # and then say some pretty un-printable things about you as you picked them up. It was all in good fun, the classiest part was the roll of toilet paper they had up at the counter that you could pick up and use as a napkin and the tubs of margarine that they served with each order of damper (a biscuit type of bread).

With 400km ahead of us we got on the road and Mike put the pedal to metal to make Monkey Mia by evening. It was a good highway with again minimal traffic. We stopped along the day at 2 different roadhouses: truck stop type of locations complete with taverns. We stopped at Hamelin’s Pool to see some more stomatoltes. We thought we had seen some in Cervantes, just a few days ago, but according to the expert here, we had actually seen thrombolites, a simpler form of life and they were actually dead. So we fought the flies and walked out to a nice boardwalk where we could walk amongst these old creatures. Off again into the beautiful Peron Peninsula and Monkey Mia. They had no sites available for our little Moho, so we have enjoyed 2 nights in a nice room with a real queen sized bed and air-conditioning, both of which were greatly appreciated by these campers. This morning we were down at the shore line to greet the dolphins,(Indian Pacific Bottle-Nose dolphin) 8-10 of these amazing mammals swam right up to shoreline. We were able to be with in arms reach, but the rangers were very careful to remind us not to touch. Several people got to hand these gentle fish. It was a great experience. We then boarded the Aristocrat 2 and sailed out in Shark Bay for a couple of hours. We saw several more dolphins, a dugong and couple of sea turtles. A great way to spend a morning. After lunch we walked up the beach a ways and snorkeled for an hour or so, not much luck in seeing anything, but the water was warm and clear, and very salty too. We have been able to view a couple of pretty sunsets the last 2 nights, fun just to sit and enjoy the view for awhile.