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Published: April 2nd 2010
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GERALDTON, WESTERN AU
This day was completely different from all the others. It was a tender port and the seas were very rough. Getting into the tender was a matter of timing the waves. After a twenty-minute rocking ride we docked to find a lovely lab waiting to greet us. He got his monthly rations of petting.
Four of us rented a car. Polite little me didn’t push and shove so I was left standing on the wharf while Tam did the paperwork. The Avis driver promised to come right back for me but I was a crispy critter before Tam drove up. It seems the driver was flagged down by a group on the street and didn’t have room for me again. Poor me!
All settled in we drove out to the “dry”, the WA countryside. The Indian Ocean was on our left with large sand dunes. To the right was brown grazing land with wooden windmills. It looked like a combination of the Upper Cape Cod, St. Croix and the Nevada desert.
Our first stop was Oakabella Homestead, a pioneer sheep station. We had planned to stop for tea and scones but found the entire tearoom had been
reserved for the ship’s tour. However, if we promised not to tell anyone they would serve us at $50 a head and include a tour of the homestead. We politely declined and after a consultation an offer was made of $10 for scones and $15 for the tour. We politely declined again. We walked around the homestead, checked out the old buildings and machinery, the sheep herd and windmill. When the tour bus arrived we took off for Northhampton.
Before I tell you about Northampton, a word about Australia’s nation bird, the fly. They don’t bite, thank goodness, but they are ubiquitous and are looking for moisture. That’s why they land on your lips or on your nostrils or on your eyelids. They are pesky and determined. I will have to get a hat with fly netting in front if I plan to do much outdoors in Komodo or Darwin.
Northampton is small community, friendly and interesting. There was an antique and collectables shop that was chuck full of interesting goods and I kept telling myself “subtract, don’t add” over and over again. I really enjoy exploring these small towns. The folks are not in the tourist trade and they
are sincerely interested in who you are and where you come from and happy to tell you all about their town and it’s history. We enjoyed a light lunch at a local café and it didn’t cost us $10.
Then we headed south to Greenough, pronounced grenoff, an important 19th century mining town. Here the buildings are stone, the walls two feet thick, the interiors cool while the outside baked. This was a town as compared with the pioneer homestead of Oakabella.
This was a low key, rambling sort of day that gave me a real idea of small town Australian life.
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