Dongara – Cue
We loved
our 3 nights at Sandy Cape but were looking forward moving north to our next
stop at Dongara-Port Denison.
We loved Dongara on our previous visit, but this time we weren’t so
impressed. The caravan park is
right on the beach, but they’d put new cabins along the water, and the
caravanners and campers had been pushed back a row.
The sites were quite small, so we only just squeezed into our spot and
were surrounded by a large group who had their entertaining area outside our
door. They weren’t friendly
although not nasty in any way, and the kids were all really well behaved and
quiet. It always seems a little
crowded after bush camping where there’s loads of space, so maybe it was us more
than them that was the problem.
65 kms up the road was
Geraldton which had lots of shops so
we went in one day together, and I took myself in another day and did some
shopping – yes, I can hear you now - I do hate shopping but it was nice just to
wander around and leave Alan behind.
He had fun tinkering with his new DC-DC adapter which finally (and
surprisingly) arrived by mail. He
was tickled pink that it got to where we were as we’d missed it’s delivery in
Perth, and hoped it was following us up to Dongara.
Hopefully now it won’t matter whether we’re in sun or shade, as this
gizmo will power the batteries in the van and we’ll have energy to burn.
I’d recently bought “Batavia”
by Peter Fitzsimmons to read, so we spent quite a bit of time in the Maritime
Museum in Fremantle, and the Geraldton Museum tracing it’s history - a Dutch
ship from the East Indies Trading Co which was shipwrecked just off the coast of
Geraldton on the Abrolhos Islands in 1629.
It’s a rip-roaring tale of murder and mutiny which is very well known
over here, but very little on the east coast.
Both museums had excellent memorabilia from the ship which hadn’t been
discovered until quite recently.
Geraldton is also the
crayfish capital of the world, but you can’t buy a fresh one for love nor money,
so we bought green ones which are in the freezer waiting for a suitable time to
devour them.
As Geraldton was going to be
the last large town for a while we stocked up on supplies before heading inland.
We’d
recently seen an ABC Australian Story on
Wooleen Station.
David Pollock was just twenty-seven when his father chose him over his older
brother to take over the family’s pastoral lease in outback Western Australia.
Originally the size of a small town, Wooleen station had fallen on hard times as
over-grazing and drought decimated the landscape. David’s radical plans to
remove the cattle from the half million acre property and regenerate the country
shocked his neighbours (and older brother). The project may well have failed but
for the unexpected arrival of a young girl in her gap year from Melbourne.
Frances was 17 when she arrived at Wooleen with the temperature nudging
51⁰ C. She fell in love with
Wooleen, and David and her 2 week visit is now in its 4th year.
It’s a great article you can view online.
We were
the only visitors at Wooleen so had the place to ourselves.
We fell in love with Poppy the golf ball chasing Kelpie puppy.
She had a selection of balls scattered around the property and hounded us
day and night. To throw a ball in the pitch dark and have her retrieve it
instantly was amazing.
We saw
signs of land regeneration with millions of new grass shoots in the dry lake,
and had a picnic by the river. I
wandered towards the waterhole and as I took a step one leg disappeared
completely into the watery sand. I
was stuck fast, and memories of creepy TV shows and quicksand raced through my
mind. I managed to wriggle out and
was glad when I was on dry ground.
Thankfully Alan had the video camera rolling so there’s pretty good footage
J
We loved
our stay at Wooleen but headed further inland to the tiny town of
Cue where we’ll attend the Dawn
Service for Anzac Day tomorrow.
Cue was
an important gold mining town and the caravan park is full of gold prospectors
hoping to change their luck out in the dust, heat and flies with their metal
detectors. I just spoke to one old
guy who showed me a teeny-weeny piece of gold that he’s just found today.
There
are some beautiful buildings here, with one of them designed by Howard Hoover,
way back when he worked in the gold mines here and before he became the 31st
President of the USA. Isn’t
Australian history amazing??
We’ve
just come back from an excursion to Walga Rock, Australia’s 2nd
largest monolith after Ayers Rock.
We put out a dangerous campfire left by a careless camper, and then climbed the
rock with our best rock climbing thongs on.
Our newly purchased jar of $12 fly repellent didn’t work so we trudged up
the rock carrying a load of flies up with us.
It's like Uluru with the Devils Marbles scattered around with huge round
boulders sitting precariously on the main rock. One thing you won't find
on Uluru - goats! One area has a cave full of Aboriginal art and
strangely a drawing of a ship.
There’s plenty of info on Wikipedia, with speculation over whether it was drawn
by sailors from the Batavia rescued by Aborigines or some other ship. It is 325
kms from the coast, so who knows?
After
the Dawn Service here we go north to Meekatharra and into Karijini National
Park. More later …