We felt pretty exhausted after our 3 hour Zoom session with the Mind,Body and Soul programme. We didn’t participate in the exercise program as we would have had to do it outside of the van and we are a bit shy. The rest was basically meditation with a talk on the health benefits and a couple of practice sessions. Lunch was needed, then a short rest before van chores (emptying the toilet cassette and filling up the water tank). We also needed food and headed for the nearest IGA. Of course, we ran into Geoff who was able to tell us about their day, which included going to a little known reserve on the road to/from Mullewa with beautiful wildflowers.
Then we set our navigation for our second free camping spot in Geraldton. It’s actually in an outlying suburb. There are five campervan only bays and no one else was there which meant we could take the best spot with a view to the beach. This is not a good swimming beach with lots of low lying reefs causing rips and unstable water, but it is lovely and the better for being rather wild.
It was sunny when we arrived and we were just thinking how lucky we were when the sun went in and we had a few drops of rain, plus an old car with teenagers onboard pulled in with the radio blaring. It almost spoilt things, until they turned the music down a bit and I realised it was quite good music.
We are parked in front of the ablution block and the toilets are clean and quite usuable, in fact the cleaning person arrived in the morning – which suggests they are normally well cared for. The showers are cold water only, not tempting. We didn’t see any lights, but they came on automatically after dark. Fortunately we are parked nose in and our blinds blocked most of the light. We felt a bit safer as well. There was one other campervan, but it didn’t use one of the designated bays, perhaps avoiding the bright light.
An evening walk along the beach revealed the extensive erosion. We thought people building mansions just across a lawn were very brave, especially as they could no longer use the bitumen road near the beach. It does look like one big storm would go right up to the houses and begin to wash them away as well.
We had a fairly healthy meal of frittata and fresh fruit with only a small amount of rather decadent icecream. We watched our round the world youtube channel for entertainment.
I went to bed early and then had an awake time in the night. It was mostly pleasant as I was happy anticipating more of our trip and going back over the good experiences so far. The waves are very noisy, but it is different to man made noise somehow. It makes me want to live near the sea as I love the colours, the fresh air, and the way it changes over the day.
Some photos from this morning at sunrise.
We are booked into Big River Ranch Kalbarri for three nights and have let them know we will be arriving later today. There are hot showers, toilets, a campers kitchen and there might even be washing machines according to Wikicamps. I will need to do washing by tomorrow and otherwise we can use the laundomat in Kalbarri. We won’t have hookups and are hoping for a sunny camp site.
It might be very crowded which makes us particularly grateful for our overnight here at the John Batten Community Hall. We’ve had a few dog walkers this morning, plus the cleaner coming in, but otherwise we have it to ourselves. As I’ve been writing this blog and uploading yet another family movie I have a view of the sea – ultimate happiness. Stephen is doing some singing practice using a tiny piano keyboard on his iphone. I don’t hear the piano, just his voice sometimes, and he is singing very softly.