Kalbarri

Last Friday I was sitting in our local coffee shop at Burswood feeling very sad. I had woken up to the news that the Queen had died. She was 96, the same as JL. The nearby shopping centre was displaying lovely portraits of the Queen and the West Australian was full of stories about her life and achievements. Anyway, as I was sitting there, my neighbour Sue came up to me and said: we’re going to Kalbarri next week to a Stayz house and there is a spare bedroom. Do you want to come? I was very touched by this invitation, so here I am.

I left home on Monday and drove up to my usual stop at Geraldton. The day was sunny but black clouds rolled in at about 5.00 pm. The weather forecast was for dangerous winds. All night long, winds and heavy rain lashed my window and the outside door rattled as if someone was trying to break in. Eventually I wedged a heavy chair against it. Next morning there was a very angry sea and on the radio was news of a yacht running aground on the reef just off Kalbarri.

It was about a 2-hour drive from Geraldton. The roads were fairly quiet and the “dangerous winds” were still in evidence. I wouldn’t want to be towing a caravan in those conditions. I had to pull off the road twice when a short sharp downpour stopped all visibility. When I got to Kalbarri at midday, Sue and Gavin were walking on the foreshore with their friend, another Sue, plus their two little dogs. All eyes were out to sea at the yacht stuck on the reef:

There have been several shipwrecks off the West Australian coast, 3 of them belonging to the Dutch East India company. At the top of the hill near our house is a memorial to the Zuytdorp and from there I had a better view:

We enjoyed a lovely dinner of lasagne and salad;