Saturday 23 July 2011 Geraldton to Carnarvon via Hutt River Principality 530km

We got away from Geraldton at about 7:30am, and then thought we had better find out what time The Hutt River Principality opened up for tourists. Sure enough, it didn’t open until 9am and we looked like we would get there about 8:30. So we stopped off at Northam on the way. It is like a lot of other WA country towns, sort of stuck in a time warp. The main street was lined with buildings of the early 1900’s and there were 1800’s building dotted around. We loved the look of the church and the old convent next to it. The convent is now a cheap, accommodation place, at least that is helping to keep up the maintenance on it.

We then drove north towards where we thought The Principality was, there are NO SIGNS anywhere directing you there. After a while we pulled over and googled it, and tried to get a map up on our phones , but the map wouldn’t come up. We decided to drive on and see what happened, and I said in jest” I bet the turn off is just over the hill!” I was wrong, it was at the crown of the hill that we stopped halfway up!!

31km of dirt road later, I wished Prince Len would spend more on his roads!! We got there and were given a very right royal reception, Prince Leonard himself greeted us as we stepped out of the car. He is a funny old guy probably a bit past his prime but still sharp as a tack. He gave us a tour through the main areas of the “Capital” of the Principality. (Princess Shirley never made it out to greet us, but I think I saw her hanging out the washing!  🙂  ) I was a bit hesitant about this stop off, but was pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed it.  Prince Len was a great host and guide. We got our visa and departure signed and stamped by His Royal Highness. We posted a couple of postcards to Dante, Tessa & Sophia, and Ella & Ethan. We hadn’t considered this before we got here, but Prince Len pointed out that we had now left Australia, and were in the second largest country on the continent.  If you are ever in the area and have the time, it is worth a visit for the novelty.   (Dante on your card I wrote that Hutt River seceded in 1973, it was 1970, can you change it for me please,  🙂 thanks, Nanny)

We then drove on towards Carnarvon. About 100km short of town, we took a detour off the Highway to take in the views from a lookout at the top of a high flat hill (I guess that makes it a plateau?). The views were great, looking down over the vast plains and some inland salt lakes. On the NW corner of the lookout was a small grouping of Gnomes. There was a sign on an old chopping board that read:

” We are the Northwest Australia Gnomesville Clan.

And tho we’re only a few.

New members are always welcome.

Whenever you’re passing through,

And travellers please remember to stop and say G’day.

But remember thee old gnomes curse,

You’re Never to Take Us Away'”

You have to see the photo’s on Flickr!!

We got to Carnarvon at around 3:30pm and were set up and out exploring by 3:50. We took a drive out to the “famous” 1 Mile Jetty. Yep it was a long jetty, but not quite a mile long. On we went to see if we could get some local produce from one of the many local roadside stalls, we could only find one and the produce looked a bit tired. LOL  We are a hard audience to please. J Then onto the Carnarvon OTC dish (Earth Tracking Station), it was built in conjunction with NASA and was an integral part of the first Lunar Landing, and all subsequent Apollo missions. It was also used by NASA for the Gemini and Skylab space projects. By the time we got there, visiting hours were over, and the dish was closed for repair anyway. We got a few pics from outside the gate.  🙂

You may be wondering if we are going to Monkey Mia (now well south of us!) After talking to people out on the road and what they said reinforcing some research we had done, we decided that a 290km detour to see a dolphin (yes 1 dolphin) get feed in front of herds of tourists at an over priced resort was probably not worth it.

Tomorrow we are off to Coral Bay, in the Ningaloo Reef NP. Hopefully we might get to swim with Manta Rays and other sea life, regardless of that I am sure we will get to spend a fair bit of time doing absolutely nothing. 🙂

(Yay)

I will be putting more Pics in our Flickr folder tonight.  See the link on the RHS to get there.