Day 70 Sunday 21st August

Day 70 Sunday 21st August

We had an uneventful journey to Geraldton again enjoying the many varieties of wild flowers lining the road. After settling into a lovely caravan park and having lunch we decided to visit the Western Australian Museum of Geraldton. It was located down near the new marina area in a  very flash building. It was free but a donation was encouraged and we thought quite deserved. We wished we had arrived earlier as the museum was closing at 3pm. It had so many interesting displays about the history of the local area but the things we really enjoyed were the displays about the ship wrecks located off the coast of this area, mainly Dutch ships from the 1600s and the infamous Batavia mutiny shipwreck artifacts. I remembered these from our last visit 16 years ago. A new stunning display was that of HMAS Sydney that had disappeared of this coast during WW2 in Nov 1941 with 645 souls lost. It told the story and then the search which went on for decades with the Sydney being located of the coast of Shark Bay in 2008. With the museum closing we visited a moving memorial to the HMAS Sydney located on a hill over looking Geraldton. It has a huge marble wall with the names of all the men who had been on the ship and a beautiful metal dome covered with the shapes of birds. Also there was a bronze statue of a grieving woman looking out to sea. It is interesting to note that this fabulous memorial was built in 2001 and it is said that the direction the woman is looking is where the Sydney was located 150kms out to sea in 2008.