Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Carnarvon – Day 7



On day seven pushing further south to find cool weather; we opted for a couple of days at the seaside town of Carnarvon. It’s a spit of a place with only 6,300 people and a few million banana trees. We’ve heard that there is a big banana here but we couldn’t find it. We did get to run our first test of social medicine while on the go. Glenda pulled up crook on the way down and we chose the hospital as our first stop. No waiting, no bill, no worries. Doc gave her some meds and we pulled into a caravan park for the night. The storm came in just as I finished putting out the awning. So with the help of my off color travel mate, we managed to fight off the driving rain and gale winds enough to stow the awning in the same manner that it had been only 20 minutes earlier. Two drowned rats now, dinner of baked beans on toast chased down with a 1998 Jenke vineyards Cab Franc was pretty damn nice ☺

Day 8 – Got to head to the Carnarvon Hospital. Again not much of a wait and this time we got free competent medical advice. Turns out that pain in the lower back was a kidney infection, which the drugs the night before had almost no odds of remedying. After an intervenous anti-biotic, we took a cruise around the town. Renowned for its fruit and seafood, we thought we should check out the local fare. Turns out both are seasonal and this isn’t the season. The best we were offered was a decent cucumber and our pick of fly blown mangoes at a $1 each. We bought the cucumber. In the afternoon we headed just north of town to a little beach called Quobba, noted for blow holes (holes worn into the sea side cliff by the surging tide which spray up like a volcano). Unfortunately the tide wasn’t high enough to ‘blow’ but we did find a little marine reserve at a lagoon beach with a colourful variety of fish happy to swim right around our ankles. The locals have created a cluster of fishing shacks, not much more elaborate than four pieces of corrugated iron leaning against each other, and lots of tables for filleting the bounty caught nearby. Interestingly, Australia’s greatest maritime combat took place here when the HMAS Sydney was attacked by a German Raider in1941. 675 Australian sailors perished, and 80 Germans. Some of the Germans made it ashore on life boats. Apparently details of the event are still shrouded in some mystery. We visited the memorial cairn there erected. On a tip we had dinner on the small boat harbour which turned out to be okay. Carnarvon was a lovely town, but maybe not best visited in February.

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