Tue 15th June '21 - Day 4

Cervantes to Geraldton

 

Despite booking three nights at Cervantes RAC Park we decide to abscond a day early as the forecast is overcast and, well, that’s what nomads can do; move as they please. If it was 40% full when we arrived, it is under 20% when we leave – have others travelled back to Perth after a long weekend or carried on North like us?

Just 25km up the road we stop at Jurien Bay just to add a souvenir coin to Sienna’s collection (Animal?). From there Seb is quickly asleep whilst Sienna quietly mulls the view. The road is single carriage, but a wide strip of red earth borders the bitumen. But beyond that it’s a moving vista of green fields, not unlike Sydney’s National Parks, not yet the red expanse you might expect. There are also many imposing sand dunes on the inland side of the road as we snake up the coast. There’s a morning tea stop next to a beach disturbing the one other caravan who were probably hoping for the space to themselves.

As we approach Geraldton after 2.5 hours of driving Seb is getting a bit tetchy and the gauge is on red so on the outskirts we fuel up and then Click & Collect at Woolworths. We snag one of the 24-hour RV spots in a car park adjacent to the port and whilst the kids clamber on a playground, I retrieve some burritos and sushi from shops nearby. Geraldton is an actual town (i.e. it has 2 Woolworths, a Coles, an Aldi, Harvey Norman, Kmart along the along with tourist cafes on the redeveloped waterfront.

In a logistics puzzle I move the Maui to another car park (which turns out not be 24-hour parking so we have to move again later) and then catch the trio who have walked to Geraldton museum. Although it shuts at 15:00 and its now 14:15, it’s not an issue as we all know kids’ attention span is limited. Sienna is distracted inside the compact but insightful museum finding items to collect letters to spell out a word. Meanwhile Seb, the other Great Hope, is setting off alarms after climbing under a rope and lifting bricks off one of the reconstructions of Batavia brick gate.

Good exhibit on Batavia Shipwreck (1629), on to an island, mutiny, rescue – on which I had several years ago read a book by Peter Fitzsimmons so had vague recollections). Also too an exhibit on the sinking of HMAS Sydney II in 1941, 125 miles off the coast, the German ship Kormoran also going down after tricking the Sydney in to range of its inferior guns.

Picked up another souvenir coin (of the Gate Seb tried to dismantle) and after another kid food snack outside on the wall, we walk the short but sharply uphill path to the HMAS Sydney memorial; a steel dome topped by 645 gulls, one for each seaman. The memorial was extended in 2011 after they located the ship in 2008 for a reverse fountain into the ground with a map showing the final resting place of the ship.

Power walk, downhill thankfully, to get to the tourist centre for the obligatory souvenir coin (three in one day) and told we have to move the van form its current spot in a ca park. We drive by and photo op with a 1.5metre glass ball that flips your view upside down; impressive against the setting sun. We try to park in the westerly lighthouse car park, but our Maui is too large for the spots so resort back to the port – which was to Seb’s great excitement has a goods train pass through just before bedtime. Here’s hoping there’s none more rumbling through during the night.