Morning Came the 26th and 27th Days....

 And with daylight, our first real view of Geraldton. Blue sky, brilliant sun and gentle sea breeze. Monday (10th May) was an exploring day. We started off down Cathedral Ave ...

And found St Xavier's Cathedral. It looked very unusually from the outside....

And even more so inside.
I was sure it had mid-eastern or spanish influences but no. A young priest and architect, John Hawes, from Yorkshire was the mover behind it. 

Seems he was also a bit of a builder! Our target was the Info centre..will we never learn; closed on Mondays!  It is housed in a now restored building, together with the Art Gallery. The building was saved from demolition by community outcry, so it is fitting the featured sculpture is named Protected Memory.
Different view on FB.
Explored Marine Terrace. The waterfront has been totally redeveloped, taking away old railway yards and installing a continuous wide walkway. We did all the trails.

Features are: all bollards are decorated; history focuses on the Batavia, ship wrecks and HMAS Sydney, so there are lots of art works and info boards. We ended up at the WA Museum- stayed till closing time.



 



Somehow we connected with Miriam, front desk woman at the Museum. She chased us up on her bike and invited us to dinner with a few friends ...all French! A font of local knowledge, she guided us how to walk there. It ended up being 4 kms but sunset happened along the way- how very fortunate.


A striking memorial to organ donors. A perfectly formed granite ball, continuous rotation by the flowing water. But there's another ball......

It was darkening. Everyone was after "that shot"

The last light...just enough to get the old  Lighthouse Keeper's cottage at Bluff Point

Now it was really dark! Eventually got to the Wintersun. A fun evening of chatter with Myriam, Carolyn, Genevieve and Karen. And they drove us home.

Tuesday ( 11th June)- late start. Forgot to say, yesterday my fave Keens b/w sneekers developed a split in the rubber toe cap. No!  Purchased some supaglue and had a go. Sadly supaglue doesn't work when there is a complete hole in the underlying canvas.RIP.  Now sporting new Rollies.


NB Mary! So, have new shoes, will walk further.
Headed for the harbour.  The revelopment included the pier, right next to the harbour. We were like a pair of kids watching toy boats. Vessels are limited to 60,000 tons but still impressively coming in with a pilot and three tugs. We could use a QR code to get an audio of the pilot's instructions  through the channel.

Far...then near,

Turning round in the port to berth.  
 The foreshore from the pier, much changed from your visit Dad and Karen- I'd say for the better.
After the show was over we took part of the heritage trail home.  This struck us as funny. The old Customs House still in use as Border Force.

At night we taxied to town to a waterside eatery.. Skeeters. Watched the sunset and ate  Abrolhos scallops.- exquisite.
So ended the 28th day with another 2.4km walk. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morning Came the 70th Day

Image
 ..with uncertainty  We have been SOOOOO lucky regarding Covid borders/ lockdowns. Now all we wanted to do was to escape Sydney and get back to the ACT. We left the Vibe, masked- wasn't a bad place to stay I felt we were almost there when we arrived at Central. The station is still a bit disrupted while they complete the Sydney Metro. The Grand Concourse remains though- What a surprise when we went to get a coffee (knowing the quality of train coffee!). In the marble floor was a fantastic map of Australia- too big to get in one shot. I just couldn't resist! It was actually mapping the original rail lines across Australia. Safely on the train in 1st Class. Guess what? No different from Economy on this train. 3 carriages come to Canberra, two carriages split off at Goulburn and continue to Leeton. We were racing, mistakenly thinking we had to be in the ACT before 4pm to avoid having to isolate. Made it by a minute but it didn't matter. One had to leave Sydney by 4pm- well and...
Read more

Morning came the 7th Day...

Image
 And we were at the bus stop at 7am, to catch the school run to Queensland. "You can pay by card, just phone the office, or I'll call at the IGA and you can get cash". No trouble! Luke popped into IGA. Again a great, talkative bus driver, Pat. On Friday he will drive us to Derwent Bridge. Today he called the driver of the bus who will take us onto Hobart- just to make sure  Targa wasn't disrupting All good. Kids here went back to school today. Couldn't help overhearing conversations, "What did you do in the holidays". Needs here are simple. "We went to Devonport. And we had fast food". 20 mins of discussion. In this area there are no fast food chains. The sun came out. We took advantage and decided to walk. Quite a steep one up a significant hill called Spion Kop. Great all round vision of Queenstown. We were here in 1995; a very different landscape. The desolate hills scarred by sulphur, mining and rain have been revegetated and look very heal...
Read more

It's All In The Preparation

It's the week before Easter and all through the house......... is the realisation that we are actually going to do this challenge - A round A ustralia by P ublic T ransport . The AAPT tour. Why? Because we think we can, we need to get out, and we miss having a travel challenge.  Anyone can drive the big lap, we have cycled a fair chunk of it, but to do it by public transport takes a deal of planning an coordination. So this is all about the journey, not so much the destination. We know where we will end up eventually - home!  
Read more