Cervantes

The last few days in Geraldton were spent sightseeing close into town. The Alinta Windfarm was quite inspiring. You look across the undulating hills and see 54 turbines standing 78 m high with a rotor span of 41 m, underscored by purple fields of patterson's curse, the blue of the ocean visible in the distance and the only sound is the gentle whoosh of the turning rotors. It was quite beautiful and I would not have any problem with this type of energy production in my area.

We also visited Greenough Hamlet which certainly takes you back to the days of village life. The other items of notoriety in this area are the leaning trees. We certainly noticed the strength of the winds here but you just don't anticipate that some trees would be so severely affected as to basically lie down!! We had hoped to have lunch at the Olive Grove Cafe but they were booked out so we adjourned back to the Marina at Geraldton for our Fish and Chip lunch.

We left Geraldton on the 11th and drove down the Ocean road which did not have much traffic, put on a show of more wildflowers and invited you to visit the villages of Leeman, Greenhead and Jurien Bay along the way. The beaches here are quite extensive, the sand fairly white but the bottom covered in a lot of places by seaweed - some of the sea grasses were quite varied in colour but photographs did not show this very well.

The Caravan park in Cervantes is 300 m from the beach so we have walked on the shore each day. Surprisingly there are very few people on the beaches even though we only saw a couple of blue bottles.

The main points of interest in this area (apart from fishing) are the Stromatolites in Thetis lake ( to me they looked like rather large dried cow pats sitting in water but apparently are of some significance) and the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park. Driving to the Park we were struck by the incredible whiteness of the sand dunes - they looked like snow. The Desert loop with the Pinnacles is about 3 Km in length and these limestone protrusions vary in shape and size quite dramatically and as Rob said they are a photographer's paradise - thank heavens for digital cameras.

Our trip down the west coast is now nearing its close as tomorrow we set off for Perth via New Norcia to have a look at the Church and Monastery. We anticipate spending about 3 weeks in Fremantle so we can have a good look at the area before heading off to Margaret River.