Hi All We have been at Geraldton for 4 days. We have visited a few places and had a drive around. One of the places was the memorial to the HMAS Sydney 11, it is a magnificent memorial to the 645 sailors lost in 1941. We had a guide who was very good and explained the circumstances very well. Each Silver gull in the memorial represents one sailor, there is a statue called the “Waiting Woman” it was placed before the ship was found. When the found the ship it was discovered that by looking over the right shoulder of the statue you were looking at the exact spot where the ship was found. We drove around the port area it wasn’t possible to get right onto the wharf so we had to be satisfied with a drive by look. There were other places we were going to see but time won’t allow. Some of the time here has been spent doing a few repair jobs and a general cleanup for the car as it was filthy, there is a shortage of water over here so the only way to clean up was by bucket. On the way here we spent one night at a farm stay called Lynton Farm. There are some old historic buildings on it. The original plan was in 1853 to set up Port Gregory as a main port and Lynton was to be a convict processing place for labour. It took three years to build most of the buildings then it was found that the port area wasn’t suitable so the town was abandoned. On the farm was a large house that was built for the commanding officer, it was on a hillside with an excellent view. From the farm we visited the Principality of Hutt River. We were a bit surprised as we thought there might be some sort of buildings showing something of royalty, instead all that is there are a farm house, a chapel, and a caravan park. The park was like everything else very run down, it didn’t look like it was used at all. Our guide was Prince Leonard himself his wife Princess Shirley died in July, we had our passports stamped and bought a couple of souvenirs. The most interesting part was reading about how it was all set up in 1970, he had thousands of acres of wheat but the wheat board would only allocate the equivalent of 100 acres. The politicians laughed at him because he seceded, he declared war on Australia then in three days declared the war over and because the government of the state declaring war, him, stopped the war that government had to be recognised. Very clever. Tomorrow we are off to the wildflower way, we are going to be doing some free camping. We have changed some of our lights to LED and have ordered some more to finish the job, with them we have less risk of running the battery in the van flat. Another place we are going to is the Pinnacles, that will be in a few days. We have booked into Perth on the 26th. Cheers for now Graham and Jenny
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 14:41:49 +0000
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