April 7 (Day 336) - Perth to Geraldton

 

450km

 I say 'Day 336' because according to my calculations that's what we're up to in terms of days actually travelling, rather than total time away from home. Our last day of travelling on the road as such was heading back to Perth from Kalgoorlie in January.

After another slower morning than we'd planned for, we managed to get packed up and left the Bundesen's. What a lovely family and what a lovely couple of days of relaxation after a busy pack-up week and a busy weekend together!

Getting ready to leave the Bundesen's

As always seems to be the way when we're leaving, there were various odds and ends to attend to, even though yesterday I made a special trip out to attend to what I thought was the full list of odds and ends! We dropped into a Jayco dealer to pick up a door handle that broke this morning while packing up; we then had to do a bit of shopping to stock the fridge with some basic supplies, after which we were famished and got Subway for lunch. After having had a bit of junk food over the weekend we wanted something a bit healthier than white bread cheese and bacon rolls from Woolies which had been the plan. But at last after 1pm we got onto Leach Highway, then Orrong Rd, through the Graham Farmer tunnel under East Perth, and out onto the Mitchell Freeway northbound.

 

We stopped at the Gingin Gravity Discovery Centre on the way up north, partly because it's got this very interesting angled tower for various gravity experiments, and partly because a YouTube channel I stumbled across a while ago shot some of their content here, which I discovered after a bit of detective work. We didn't go inside but it's pretty interesting even the things they have from the outside - there was one experiment with a long steel cable stretched between two poles - you hit the cable and could see the pulse of energy travel back and forth along the wire. This is useful for visualising how light behaves.

 

We continued on to Lancelin where we returned to our customary spot tucked away behind the bushes. We were all feeling pretty tired so stopped here for a 40 minute powernap - it felt like hours, we were so tired! We had intended to leave for the trip up north straight from Pinjarra Bible School, so the extra two days of relaxation at the Bundesen's meant we were fairly behind schedule. Today we were supposed to be travelling out to the western-most mainland point of WA near Shark Bay, several hundred kilometres to the north! So we felt the need to push on as far as we could.

Jude having his day sleep in the car!

So we continued on up the North West Coastal Highway through many of the lovely spots we'd traversed on our December 2020 trip up this way - Cervantes, Jurien Bay, Dongara where Jude broke his leg in 2019, and into Geraldton for some more fuel. 

The kids were pretty bushed by now and Bek and Jude were asleep in the back.

We were getting pretty tired too so stopped about 80km north of Geraldton for the night. As we turned around sharp to the right we heard a bit of a crunch followed by a clinkling sounds as we drove. When we stopped we found the wide tow hitch on the back of the car had snapped off where one of the safety chains was welded onto the drawbar of the caravan! :( Splendid timing since Luke Bundesen who we'd just been staying with does trailer repairs in Perth!

The snapped chain loop under the silver plate

Cyclone!

Remember what I said in the last Travel Plans update? Well just as we were heading to bed I noticed something on the news about a cyclone in the North West of WA. I had heard about this while we were at the Bible School and heard it was supposed to hit Port Hedland on Thursday. Now they were saying there were two cyclones which were likely to come around to Exmouth / Coral Bay / Shark Bay around the weekend - the very area we intended to be in! We've never been in a cyclone before, let alone a Category 3 or 4, but didn't think a caravan was the best way to try it out! So we'll have to review information as it comes to hand in the morning and reassess.

-- Greg