Day 70: Last Day in Carnarvon

 This morning we spent a bit of time in the town centre, searching for an ATM, getting some last minute supplies and having a walk down to the waterfront at the end of the main street. The end of the main street looks overe bthe water to Whitlock Island and towards the entrance to the Indian Ocean.



Looking towards the entrance to the Indian Ocean


Whitlock Island on the right

There is a nice walk along the waterfront away from the entrance to a footbridge across to the Heritage Tramway Walking Trail which is currently closed. The trail runs all the way to Babbage Island where we were yesterday going through the Heritage Museum.

Along our walk we also learned about Charles Kingsford Smith's connection with Carnarvon.


This info board provided details of Charles Kingsford Smith's his connection with this town which started as setting up a transport company with his mate Keith Anderson, who jointly bought a truck to launch the Gascoyne Transport Company and secured a contract for an 800 km mail run running east to  toi Meekatharra.

Ultimately the sale of this transport company raided enough funds for Smithy to buy his first aircraft.

Reading about his early years, it seems he was quite a colourful character. We head back to the shopping centre, bought a few groceries and topped up our cellar at BWS before going back to the van for lunch.

Before lunch I went for a walk down the main road into town which has farms on both sides of the road growing a variety of produce. Most do not seem to be huge acreages, but farming is intense.


Bananas and paw paws


Table grapes


Fresh salad veg




Near the entrance to our caravan park the bougainvillia is stunning

This afternoon we go back to the Port area to check out the frewh seafood outlet near the fishing boat marina. Called the Crab Shack, it was pretty disappointing. The only local fresh fish on sale was Red Emperor fillets at close to $100/ kg. They also had quite a few NZ sourced frozen products. Fresh prawns looked OK but no match for the Exmouth Prawns in our freezer.

We still have to visit the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum. It is an amazing museum, run by volunteers, and covers the involvement of the Carnarvon facility in many history making moments, including the moon landing in 1969. A number of leading astronauts including Buzz Aldrin have been to this facility to open different parts of the  museum. It is an amazing place covering the important contributions it made to many successful space missions, including the Apollo 11, moon landing.


Once inside the museum it belies the plain entrance, as there is a lot to see and it is much larger than the small footprint you see from the carpark.

We were given a buzzer at the registration desk, as part of the  entrance fee includes a session in a simulator devoted to the Apollo 11 mission, covering the launch.

Whilst waiting for the buzzer to go off for our turn, we looked into a few other exhibits, one room, was devoted to the first satellite TV transmission between Australia and the UK. The setting for the presentation of this was a retro lounge room setting with a TV set that we could vaguely remember.


There was also a lot of electronic hardware from the centre that was used in the period when the NASA space program was in full swing and when OTC Australia was a significant contributor.





Our call to the simulator came soon after entry and we did our short stint locked into the capsule to basically watch a video on the take off sequence and some very good footage of the take off and separation of the rockert from the rest of the module.


There was a piece of a meteorite that had been found on the Nullarbor Plain.


Full size replicas of modules from various launches were on display.


In section 3 of the museum there were a couple of simulators. One was a simulator to land a Space Shuttle. I did not do well.


In the final display room, they had a full size replica of the moon landing module. It was enormous compared to what I was expecting. They had a great video presentation explaining every aspect of the landing module and the development of the design. 


Once again, this is a great museum and a credit to this community who run these museums with volunteers.

Tomorrow we move on, having found carnarvon to be a much more interesting place than expected.

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