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Carnarvon, WA

S 24°52'48" E 113°39'43

Thu 12 - Mon 16 Sep 2002


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Thursday 12th

We needed to pick up the mail and to fill up with water so we drove in to Carnarvon and booked in to a caravan park. I unloaded the car and drove into town to the Post Office where a parcel from Ferny Hills was waiting for us.

Friday 13th

We left the caravan park and parked the Motley in a caravan drop-off place provided by the local council while we toured the town in the Little Motley.

We had morning tea at a cafe at a fruit farm called Munro's out of town along the river. River here is a strange concept as it is almost always dry with the only water being underground. Judging by the number of fruit farms along the river, there is obviously plenty of water to be pumped.

We also went out to Babbage Island which has a 1 Mile Jetty and a Lighthouse Keepers Cottage Museum. The museum is housed in a renovated cottage which housed first the lighthouse keepers from the late eighteen nineties and later tenants until 1980 when it fell into disuse and then disrepair. The local Historical Society raised enough to renovate it and have it registered as a Heritage building. It contains representative furniture and fittings from its early days. The brochure asks the question "do you recognise any of these things?" to which I reply "This looks just like the house I grew up in in the early 1940s." The guide's comment was "Yes' it does age us doesn't it.

We filled up with diesel and prepared to leave town when we got a call on the CB to stop and come on into a camp set up by Ruff Diamond and Boomerang. This is in the grounds of a now disused roadhouse which is presently used as a road train assembly area. We settled in, had lunch, whiled away the rest of the afternoon, had happy hour, and were driven indoors by the chill and the mozzies.

Saturday 14th

The weather has broken with much cloud cover in the morning.

We took the Little Motley and drove to the Blowholes at Quobba 75 km (50 miles) north of Carnarvon.

photo of the blowhole

The Blowholes are quite impressive as there is a constant swell coming in from the Indian Ocean.

There is lots of camping here but it is either very exposed to the wind which is pretty constant at this time of year or tucked in behind sand hills which spoils the view. In my view, it is about as inviting, or uninviting, as Cape Range National Park.

We stopped to chat with the Kennedys and had a cup of tea with them.

In the afternoon, several more big rigs came into the encampment and happy hour was quite large.

During the night it rained!.

Sunday 15th

Today dawned overcast and very windy so staying indoors seemed like a good idea. In preparation for departure tomorrow, I went into town to do the laundry and a little shopping.

Monday 16th

I had to do some work on the Chapter General Meeting and it was very windy so we decided to stay another day.

The weather improved during the morning and it turned out to be a beautiful day.


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Created by Robin Chalmers on - 11.09.2002 and last revised 17.09.2002