Geraldton, Western Australia

We arrive at Marjorie & Barton’s place which is a small sheep property just 20km out of town and they also run a Pet Cemetery there as a service for the community. We did some sightseeing and saw the HMS Sydney Memorial which is beautiful. It has a huge metallic dome made of some 642 seagulls, one for each sailor who lost his life on the Sydney which was damaged & was lost at sea during the war. (Actually the resting place was only just recently discovered in the last year or two.)

On Sunday we went to the 10am service at the Cathedral and then after the coffee after church we went onto a Quilt & Craft Show which is where I found a lovely necklace for Bob's Mum’s birthday. They have a good selection of quality crafts at the show - not just quilts. We were staying in Gero to help at the Seafarer’s Mission but as they don’t open until noon, we had lazy mornings.  We were working alongside the Chaplain Bill & his wife Jocelyn who runs the shop there. For once I worked more than Bob. We were to do some gardening tidying up but someone surprised Bill by doing it for him over the weekend, hence Bob did a few odd jobs whilst I worked with Jocelyn doing the stock take and recording it on the computer. We were surprised at one tiny shopping centre to run into Kathy and John, the couple we did a few camps sites together some time ago most notably the Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo. We all had so much to catch up on that we invited them to dinner where we had a grand time together.

A leaning tree right in town - that is how windy it can get here!

On our last night in Geraldton, we invited bart & Marjorie for a thank you dinner, and were given the opportunity to meet Richard, the minister from Wickham whom we had missed when we were passing through. It was great to meet him and hear about his work there and his life in and amongst aborigines there. Then on the morning we were to leave we had a quick reunion with the Kununarra ministry team, Garry, Glendon and Andrew. (There was a Synod being held in Geraldton over the next few days and many ministers and others were in town for the series of meetings.)