Day 84: A Look around Geraldton

It is time to look around the city before we leave tomorrow, and we have a perfect day to do so. Initially we drive in to the centre of town and park near the Batavia Coast Marina, so we can have a walk around the waterfront. This is a very large marina with quite a lot of development in its precinct. There is some serious money on the water here.

Museum of Geralton

Batavia Longboat

There is also a full scale replica of a longboat from the shipwrecked Batavia, which is now a "floating museum" and part of the Museum of Geraldton which faces the marina.

A rough guide to the waterfront and city highlights, is at the marina (red marker on map)

To the South of the marina is the town beach, with a few brave souls in the water enjoying their daily swim.

Our trip along the water front continued as we hopped back in the car and drove South toward the Port Area. Geraldton Port is Australia's second largest grain export port and also exports iron ore and other commodities.

The grain loading terminal at the port can be seen in the distance from the marina precinct.

The port complex is huge, and not for private vehicles, however we could drive around to the fishing port which in itself is also huge. We stopped at one of the seafood retailers to see what they had on offer and clearly the fishing ban on catching demersal fish, from a boat that are in place on this part of the WA, is having a big impact on the availability of some of  their favourite fresh fish. Much of what was on offer in this shop came from Shark Bay which is unaffected by the ban. We did buy some frozen whiting fillets.

Further South from the port we arrived at Point Moore and the site of the Point Moore Lighthouse.

Built in 1878 the lighthouse was manually operated up until 1985, when it was automated. It still operates today, and on information board the names of all 60 lighthouse keepers that operated the lighthouse are inscribed.

Opposite the lighthouse is a beach with a very shallow reef just off the shore. To our amazement, 2 fishing boats were darting through gaps in the reef and breaking water. There were buoys between the shore and the reef which were probably traps of some sort.

We now back track to town to go to the Esplanade which is a redeveloped waterfront precinct on the Eastern Breakwater of the harbour. It has a walkway going out to an observation tower at the end and along the way there are various information boards covering many aspects of Geraldton's development.

One that caught my interest was the display of the Yellow Submarine, an ambitious project to capture a particularly difficult  species of lobster which avoided the traditional wooden lobster pot. A local engineer was commissioned by one of the leaders of the fishing industry to build this solution. Sadly, it had lots of problems and was quickly decommissioned, but makes a great talking point along the esplanade

One thing you have love about WA is that no one here was afraid to have a go, and with the many failures there have been some outstanding successes.

The viewing point at the end of the pier is the highlight and you do get some great 360 views. Another great attraction is a colony of Australian Sea lions that  occupy the rocks out of the point after a hard days fishing. Our timing was not good, as they were obviously out fishing when we were there.  The other interesting fact was that this area is only used by mature adults and that pups are raised further South at Jurien Bay where we are heading tomorrow.

Looking North towards the beaches

Looking South towards the Port

It is time for a cup of coffee and we struggle a bit to find a cafe in this tourist oriented area. We drive a bit further North, went to a beach side coffee outlet that had little interest in customers, so after waiting too long for even a sign of acknowledgement, we found another cafe in a laneway who eagerly took our order but took forever to deliver.

On the way home we had to call in to see a quirky piece of artwork along the coast called the big marble, but the official name is Horizon.

Taking photos through the sphere inverts the image and creates some interesting shots, which I guess is the purpose of this art piece.

Lunch is on our mind and I need fuel, so I call in to a service station in Bluff Point who has very competitive diesel and I remembered that just down the road was a Vietnamese Cafe so maybe we could get Banh Mi. Sadly the Vietnamese restaurant was more Thai than Vietnamese, no Banh Mi, plenty of deep fried mysteries, so we moved on.

We ended up getting some Turkish bread toasties from the shopping centre near our park.

After lunch I went for a walk to buy something from a Repco Store. 1.2 km away. It turned out the store doesn't exist, but I had a very nice walk home finding a bush track along the banks of the Chapman River. 

Some of the phone navigation is getting worse. Yesterday we found a lot of dirt roads we didn't know existed. Maybe they are still trying to work out how AI interfaces with existing, previously somewhat reliable service.

Here are a few shots of the estuary walk along the banks of the Chapman river.

A mother and 3 ducklings on the river

The Chapman River Mouth

Tomorrow we head South to Jurien Bay.