Busking in Carnarvon

 One Mile Jetty at Carnarvon

Apart from crossing the Tropic of Capricorn for the fourth time, the trip from Cape Range National Park to Carnarvon was without event. This is a HUGE state with not much in the top half except hidden coastline and deserts of the Great and Little varieties. The kids got really excited just outside Carnarvon where the water from the Gascoyne River allows agriculture. "BANANAS!" they shouted. And indeed there were. Bananas, tomatoes, fruit, corn, market gardens ... Truly exciting after all the nothing! The Gascoyne River is interesting in itself. It is WA's longest river (760kms!) and an "upside down" river, in that it flows normally for 120 or so days, and the rest of the time flows under the dry river bed.

We happily set up camp in a fairly empty campground and went for a drive along the Fascine Waterfront. The first thing you notice about Carnarvon is the wide streets. They were up to 40m wide to allow the camel trains to turn. Lachlan was very keen to have a look at One Mile Jetty. He was even more excited than about the bananas! "Can we go fishing here?" we all chorused as it came into sight.

I made several phone calls to organise busking at the Growers Markets on Saturday. We have permission, but the Council didn't seem to quite be able to remember what to do about licences. We will just turn up and hope the officious Ranger from Alice Springs is not here! We tried to busk in Broome, but after about 8 phone calls and several emails were not returned, we gave up. We got a very pleasant email as we arrived in Carnarvon welcoming us to busk in Broome ... just 1000 kms and 2 weeks too late!

Next morning, we caught up on Marcus's belated birthday breakfast of sausages, bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and grilled tomatoes. As you can see, he was pretty pleased!

After a music practice under the shady trees at camp, we drove to the Dish - a huge communication satellite dish which helped put man on the moon in 1969. We also drove along the HMAS Sydney II Memorial Drive, an avenue of 645 plaques and palms honouring the greatest single Australian maritime loss of lives during the Second World War. "Small Boat Harbour" was full of not-so-small fishing vessels, with one up in dry dock as well, which made it easier to understand how much of the ship was actually under water.

Church fleet at Small Boat Harbour

Lachie and Jackson rode the skateboard and ripstik for a while as we wandered along the waterfront and across the footbridge to a tram station in the middle of the red sand dunes! The tram used to run from the jetty back in to town, but has only historical interest now.

Tram station in the middle of the dunes

Marcus has been encouraging us all to follow his lead and speak in "Bigglesworth". Dave has been hitting his head with monotonous regularity when exiting the caravan, and usually lets loose a string of profanities which sends Ella, our self-appointed Language Police, into indignant apoplexy. However, this morning he outdid himself with a heartfelt "By Gad! That hurt!" which had us all in fits of laughter.

A grubby bunny

Ella lost another tooth this morning, so we can now add Bunny Faces to our busking repertoire! Although the markets were only small, busking went very well ... the acoustics were excellent and most of the crowd stayed for the set. We were given free coffees from vendors and an old fellow in his wheelchair bought sausages for all the kids! The lady in charge invited us back next season. A tempting offer, but it's a bloody long drive!

The kids wanted to have a "blob day" after returning from busking after lunch, so we decided to prolong our stay here in Carnarvon and happily obliged. Lachlan was not so happy to find that our definition of "blobbing" did not include fishing, but tomorrow is another day!

Stay tuned ...