Dec 13 -15 (Day 317-319) - Billabong to Carnarvon to Billabong

Sunday 13 December

We set off promptly next morning and drove most of the day before reaching Carnarvon about 3pm.

Before heading to the caravan park, we decided to go past the market gardens we'd been to last time. This one's accessed by a dirt driveway to one side of the Caltex service station on the main road which leads to the farm direclty behind.

 It's such a lovely place! Tall trees, banana plantations, orchards with lush green grass and chickens and turkeys grazing amongst the trees. It's exactly the type of place I'd like! This time we bought some bananas, pumpkin, paw paw and a couple of dozen eggs.

The driveway into the plantation

 

Buying some fresh produce from the family who own this property

Plenty of spiders around to nibble up the nasties!

A happy chicken

We also went back on the 'Fruit Loop', which is simply a route running past a series of farms with roadside stalls selling their farm-grown produce. Unfortunately being Sunday afternoon, most places were closed so we didn't end up getting anything else, but it was still a nice drive.

Our camp spots - Mim's parents' van in the foreground,
ours in the background, and not much else past us!

This done, we headed to the Wintersun Caravan Park and set up our sites for the next few nights. It's a nice place, made even nicer by the fact the kids stayed free (thanks TAWK - see previous post if you missed the details on that).

The park was pretty empty as you can see from this photo, so we picked two spots right by the camp kitchen and the pool!

Toilets, laundry, camp kitchen and pool!

Mim's dad and I went to the shops to get a few supplies and we had a lovely BBQ tea!

Monday 14 December

Pretty quiet day today. Had a cooked breakfast, kids had a swim and we all got some work done plus some more swimming!

Tuesday 15 December

Leaving Carnarvon already! We had to start heading back as Mim's parents needed to get the caravan back to someone else. One thing we really wanted to look at though was the...

Carnarvon Space Museum!

You wouldn't think of Carnarvon being a space place, and it's not as far as rocket launches go. Its role was as a radio base for space communications during the Apollo space program, and was in active use from the early 1960's up to 1987. Key instructions and two-way communications for the first moon landing of Apollo 11 were transmitted from Carnarvon, including footage of Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon.

The site is still used in solar scientific research to this day, but the prominent infrastructure appears to be retired. However in 2012 the Carnarvon Space Museum was opened to highlight Carnarvon's important role during the Apollo program and show off some of the equipment and facilities on site.

Inside there are numerous old pieces of equipment like this valve-driven scope.

They had a basic planetarium where you sat and looked up at some displays of the stars on a 180 degree all-around roof, although it was a bit uncomfortable as they just had normal chairs so you got a sore neck after a while.

One of the main attractions in the first part of the museum was the replica of a part of a space shuttle, where you could sit inside like an astronaut, watch footage of a shuttle launch and hear some of the communications.

A view inside the 'shuttle'

Further in there were a number of interesting interactive activities - a chance to try a space shuttle landing simulator; some old 'Space Invaders'-style arcade games; examples of solar powered radio transmitters and a range of other hands-on activities which is where we spent most of our time. There was even a chance to get a family photo 'on the moon'!

We were there from about 11am to its (summer) closing time of 2pm, after which we stopped under the shade of a giant satellite dish for lunch.

The view from the top of the dish, looking north west (L) to north east (R) over Carnarvon.
Note the banana plantations at about 1 o'clock.

Lunch done, we headed south.

Mim's dad makes a habit of a morning walk and often collects cans for recycling along the way. The kids have noticed this and decided they wanted to get in on the action, so yesterday as we were driving there were numerous wistful looks at cans on the side of the road and requests to stop and raid bins and even collect stray cans on their own (as though the economics would make sense of stopping the van from 90kph and getting back up to speed for the sake of a 10c can!). At one point we stopped at Wooramel Roadhouse to fill up the car from the jerry cans and get some afternoon tea, and the kids promptly disappeared into the bush across the highway, returning with a few bin bags full of recyclables! Later in the day we stopped for the night back at Billabong roadhouse free camp again, and once again they scattered, returning again with more aluminium and plastic 'gold'.

It's funny to see this interest in cans and bottles- of course in SA we've had cash for containers since the 1970's so it seems normal to us to get money for cans, and we used to collect whatever we used at home and cash it in occasionally. But having always lived with it, it's strange to come to a state like WA where they've only gotten it recently and there's the novelty of the 'initiative'. We've never actively collected recyclables either, but for the kids it's great as they can get some extra money by doing some proper work, and help clean the environment too!

Overnight at Billabong Roadhouse free camp

-- Greg