Dreams...: Geraldton

On our way from Monkey Mia to Geraldton, we spontaneously stopped at Oakabella Homestead, the most haunted (hantee) house in Western Australia. Making our way there over an unpaved road (pst, don't tell the car rental company :)) we saw a 2 meter long dark brown snake as it was crawling across the sand. As we passed it, it raised its head and hissed at us... Upon arrival we were greeted by the keeper of the place, Loretta. She served us tea and scones as well as a very yummy piece of homemade carrot cake. As she asked us about our trip, she would all of a sudden take this weird tone and ask questions that didn't have anything to do with the subject: "can you smell it?" ehm, smell what? "the cigarette smoke..." Ehm, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Politely we said yes, although we couldn't smell a thing. She also asked Christine in a strange voice and with glassy eyes: "Are you in the medical profession?" We enjoyed her stories very much. She said the ghosts called her there and that they were looking after her the same way she was looking after them. It was a very interesting and somewhat spooky experience. But even though we enjoyed her company and her baking very much, we decided we wouldn't want to spend a night there. No point in going and disturbing the ghosts of the little children and the Chinese cook that died there a looooooong time ago...

Heading further south we stopped in Geraldton. To us, this town seemed bery big compared to what we had seen since we left Darwin. It even had a McDonalds :)

The guy that checked us into the backpackers was a bit strange. He had this very noticable French accent, and when he read our passports he asked if we spoke French. So we asked him what region of France he was coming from. And he said: "Ben, Normandie, Bretagne, region Parisienne, quoi." ... Hm, well, a bit strange. We didn't think that someone from Normandie would say he was from Bretagne and even less from Paris. Oh well...what can you do.

We went to look at the Western Australian Museum and at its shipwreck gallery. Quite impressive to think that the Dutch came to the Western Australian Coast almost 200 years before the British, but that they just used it to get some fresh water on their way up to their colony of Batavia, which would now be Jakarta. But many ships sank here, including the one called Batavia and the Zeedijk.

Another famous shipwreck off the coast is that of the HMAS Sydney, which sank after a battle with the German raider Kormoran on 19 November 1941. Both ships sank, everyone one the Sydney died and most on the Kormoran were saved. Both wrecks were only found in 2008. A memorial to the Sydney stands now on a hill overlooking Geraldton and the sea.