Geraldton

This must be the first time that I have not set a foot outside the bus between last night and departure. Marjo, my brave lionheart (hey, we’re Dutch after all) took the challenge and singlehandedly fed the dogs (who had today’s special of dry food with fly), took in the magnetic fly screens, turned off the gas and closed the trailer. The packing up of chairs, dog rope, dog beds and stuff we already did the night before when the flies went wherever they go after dark. Flies buzzing around my face and crawling in orifices I never knew I had is just not my thing. So we sped off, leaving some rubber behind.

Then we were on the road again, just missing one of those tailless animals and a tail-only animal.

We arrive at the camping on the outskirts of Geraldton, that we booked ahead of time. Because it is still school holidays and we want to give the bus a service we did not want to be in a situation where we wouldn’t have a bus and nowhere to stay.

The camping was close to the coast, which meant, there was no road between the campsite and the ocean, just a large field and dunes. It took Marjo and Nossi over half an hour up and down dunes as well chased by flies, to get to a seaweed infested beach. Dotti and I decided to guard the bus and didn’t regret that decision.

The camping otherwise was nice apart from a lot of local miners who tend to leave at 5 am and don’t believe anyone else should sleep longer than them. So we were up bright and early ready to drop the bus off for its service. We decided that there was no point for Marjo and Dotti and Nossi to stay at the campsite so they came along to Geraldton. We drove along the shore to look for an appropriate spot to stay for a couple of hours and found that the shore in Geraldton town is mainly developed with a large marina, a port for late container ships and even a mine site.

More south we found a nice beach with sun shelter where I dropped them off.

Then I went to the mechanic, leave the bus in their capable hands and walked up and down the hills to town. I walked around a little to kill some time, bought a capo for the guitar and at 10 am went to the WA museum which explained why this is called the Batavia coast.

After midday the bus was all ready. I then made a stop at Bunnings for a bag of grout for Marjo’s mosaics and a stop at Hungry Jacks for hungry Marjo and Axel. Then onto the beach where we had our lunch and a play with the dogs.

Then we went back to the campsite and did not too much. Well we cleaned the fresh water tank, cleaned the bus, cleaned ourselves with showers (not that this did anything to deter the flies) and had a night of Bones on the iPad.