We headed into Carnarvon with little enthusiasm.  Everyone we had spoken to had slated the place.  We found a nice small town with all the facilities you need and a really nice caravan park.  We spent the day having a look round Carnarvon and refilling with food etc.  The following day we headed out to the Space and Technology Centre just on top of the hill.  It was a really very interesting place.  It was the tracking centre for the Apollo 11 spaceflight among other things.  We took a simulator flight of the take off and the first few minutes of the flight which was odd but quite enlightening.  The centre is run by volunteers but they have a wealth of knowledge and are really enthusiastic about it all which certainly rubs off.

 

In the evening we went to the ‘sausage sizzle’ which was run by the caravan park.  there must have been about 100 people there and it was lovely to chat to people about where they had been and where they are going to go to.

We had decided to go north just slightly to point Quobba.  This is on the coast and it has magnificent blowholes and the fishing was meant to be very good.  We checked it out on wiki camps and people said that it was hit badly by the cyclone.  We headed up there anyway – it was only 70km north from where we were.  When we go there we could see lots of the fishing shacks were in ruins with their roofs and walls blown away.  We found a nice quiet spot away from the rest of the campers – next door to a lovely elderly couple who had been to Point Quobba for the past 40 years.  We set up camp and went down to the beach for a bit of a fish.  Bob fished and Phil read!!!  Bob caught a Rock Cod – really ugly looking fish – but it was quiet tasty when we came to eat it.

 

There wasn’t much to do there apart from fish so we headed off down the coast road to the HSM Sydney Memorial.  That was quiet interested as the boat was sunk by a German boat and the only survivors were the Germans – no one seemed to know what happened the the Australians!

 

On the Saturday night we had lots of rain and the wind was blowing hard – as there was not much to do here we decided to pack up and go onto our next site. We headed south part Carnarvon and down to Hamelin.  This is where the famous stromatolites are.  They are ancient form of algal life and they are still growing.  the stromatolites are only found in Australia and the Bahamas, they dominated the earth billions of years ago and exhale oxygen enabling life to evolve. To us they looked like rocks!!!  It was educational!!!!! 

 

After our visit to the ancient stromatolites we decided to head for Tamala.  However – 20km down a gravel road the road got worse and worse and we were forced to turn back.  It was very corrugated and very sandy – we just didn’t want to ruin the van by going down this road.  We headed back out again and went towards Kalbarri.

We had read about a pace on the way which does 4wd tracks and looked at the website and thought it sounded great.  It wasn’t!!!!  We were the only ones there and they had a huge amount of rain and the place was not in good shape.  This is the road in…

The owner was lovely and I am sure that it is a great place to go when there is an event going on – which they run a few each year – but going on our own is not great.  But because we were there and that was 55km off the main road – we stayed and had a go at the 4wd tracks.  Some of the tracks had been washed right away – over some tracks there was huge ponds where the road used to be.  We followed the river road and that in itself was a challenging 4wd road.  We did head off to see what the special 4wd tracks were like but they were really steep and I think our car would have broken with them.  We did have some fun going round the speedway track.  We were the only ones there so there was no danger of us running into to anyone else.  We stayed there two nights and left in the morning.  We did try to tell the owner that the shower looked like a river had run through it but she seemed to have more pressing worries – one being her bore hole had washed away.  We did feel sorry for them, but they did have 300,000 hectares of land which they couldn’t seem to do much with.

    

 

They also had a real issue with Wild Dogs which have killed all the local wild life, however we did see a little lizard… about 4 feet long!

 

We left there with a filthy car, but pleased that we had done some more off roading.  Maybe we will get the chance to do a little bit more sometime soon.  We headed for Kalbarri.  Kalbarri is a lovely seaside town.  Nice beaches and one supermarket.  We spent Phil’s birthday here – in the morning of her birthday we went along the coastal road.  The weather had cooled down but was still sunny.  The flies were still out but not as bad as they had been.  We went on geocache hunts.  We went on four walks from the coastal road.  One took us to mushroom rocks, red bluff beach and a couple of places further down the road.  It was great to get out and see the place.  We had cake on the beach – although we did have to sit in the car as the flies wanted to join in too!!!

     

 

 

We did go down and watch the Pelicans being feed they are ungainly but fly with such grace.

 

After a couple of days there we set off again.  This time to the Principality of Hutt River.  We were intrigued what this place was all about.  We got there and was greeted by Prince Leonard.  Prince Leonard is 90 years old and is sharp as anything.  We learnt all about how the principality came to being and how it is not part of Australia.  They have their own money, own stamps and also you can get your passport stamped with the visa for Hutt River.  The Principality came about in 1970 and the family have lots of information about it and also about all the royal visits they had.  There was a chapel, post office, government building, shrine to Princess Shirley who passed away in 2013.  We stayed there one night in their camping area. 

 

We thought we were the only ones there that night but at about 8pm a caravan came in filled with a lovely family of mum and dad and 5 children.  We had a great evening with Joe and Jolene sharing our stories with each other.  In the morning we all had breakfast together and after the children had showed Phil their van and all their toys were were on the road again.

 

We headed to Geraldton about 1 1/2 hours down the road.  We stopped at Coronation Beach.  The site here is very quiet and right next to the beach.  We stayed here for four nights and on Wednesday we headed into Geraldton.  Geraldton is a huge lobster fishing area and they have the majority of the quota for Western Australia.  We visited one of the processing factory.  on the day we visited they had 7 million dollars worth of lobster in the warehouse – even then you couldn’t buy them from them!!  The tour was really good – it explained all about the fisherman’s quota and how it all works.  Western Australia is really tough on quotas as they want the fish to last so the fishery department are really tough on people.  The lobster fishermen have to buy pots and these pots cost them about $60,000 to buy the quota for the pot.  There is so much money in lobster but they are a really professional company owned by the fishermen and the lobsters are distributed throughout the world within 36 hours and they are still alive and they have a 99% survival rate.

 

 

 

It has now turned cold here at night and as you can see Bob is fully prepared…