Geraldton gave us the chance to catch up on some maintenance. Service and new tyres for the car and second jab and haircuts for ourselves! The last time I was in Geraldton was with work about 15 years ago. At that time you couldn’t access the beach as there was a railway line between it and the town. That’s all changed now with a new foreshore development having been built that includes a marina. The museum had displays on Sydney II (the third one we’d seen but probably best), the shipwreck coast, pastoral/mining and Indigenous history. Also visited the outdoor Sydney II memorial. A lot of Sydney II memorials along this part of the coast!

Sandy Cape was our last stop on the west coast. It’s near Jurien Bay and we travelled that bit of the coast the last time we were here. There’s a limestone reef about a kilometre off shore and with the wild weather, it was a line of white water on the horizon. You can see why this is the shipwreck coast. I would hate to have been in an old square rigger with a howling westerly and seeing that line of jagged rocks and white water in front of me! There were many wildflowers at Sandy Cape and while on one of our walks we came across a quandong tree with ripe fruit on it. Jude was more interested in looking for seeds though for her jewellery.

Toodyay (pronounced ‘too jay’ by the locals) is a small historic township about 80 kilometres from Perth. As luck would have it the TargaWest was on with a stage just up the road from where we were staying. We were a bit late for that one but drove about 40K out of town to one of the other stages. Reminded me of my old rally days – especially seeing some Datsun 240Zs.