DONGERA/PORT DENISON

Just a short drive of 70 kilometres down the coast from Geraldton are the twin  towns of Dongera/Port Denison.  We chose to spend a week there, before heading to Perth.  Dongera is a pretty  little town, lined with Moreton Bay figs. It has quite a few historic buildings, and several shops.  Port Denison is about 5 kms. to the south, where the Irwin River runs into the sea.  Not so many shops, but plenty of houses.   It also has a sheltered bay for the many crayfish boats that work in the area.  Although they catch lots of crays, it's just about impossible to buy them locally, as it seems they are mostly exported live. 

Our caravan park was located next to the beach, and we could hear the waves crashing on the beach.  They have a bit of a problem, in that parts of the footpath between the park and the beach have been washed away, so they've built a huge rock wall to delay the inevitable.

Weather wise, some days were sunny, but we had the wettest day since leaving home during this week.  Not bad after 22 weeks on the road. 

We spent another day driving out to some small towns in the east.  Very pleasant countryside - more wheat and canola.  It took us a while to work out why so many large groups of birds, particularly galahs and corellas, were in the middle of the road.  But we guessed that they were feeding on seeds that must have leaked from the many grain transport trucks we saw along the way.

 

As well as seeing many more wildflowers, we came across some quandongs - a fruit I'd hard of, but never seen before.

On another day we drove south along the fairly new Indian Ocean Road to Jurien Bay.  We'd heard that a popular pastime in this town was skydiving, and happened to be eating our lunch right opposite the beach where some parachuters landed.  The first man landed next to us after coming down really quickly.  We discovered that he was filming the paying customer, who came down a little slower, strapped to the other parachutist.