A bit of History for those who are interested – all from Google of course 🙂 Carnarvon is located 904 km north of Perth on the west coast of the Gascoyne Region of Western Australia. Lying at the mouth of the Gascoyne River . Carnarvon’s traditional owners are the Aboriginal Inggarda, Baiyunga, Thalanji, Malgana and Thudgarri people. They named this area long ago, Kuwinywardu (Kow-win-wordo), meaning ‘neck of water’. First Europeans The first European sighting of the Gascoyne River was in 1839, by the British explorer Lieutenant Grey. Lieutenant Grey, aboard the whaling vessel, the “Russell”, landed on the mainland (present day Carnarvon) to explore the area. He named the river “Gascoyne” after a naval friend, Captain Gascoyne, and then trekked up the dry riverbed, discovering a pool of freshwater. On his return, after a near fatal journey, Grey noted that the area around the mouth of the Gascoyne River was good for agricultural development. The Browns and the Brockman’s In 1858, twenty years after Lieutenant Grey’s first exploration, the area was explored once more by Francis Gregory who was looking for suitable grazing land for the government. Gregory returned to Perth with fair reports about Carnarvon. The area was settled in 1876 by the Browns and the Brockman’s, who travelled from York to Carnarvon, with 4,000 sheep. Brown settled on Boolathana station and Brockman established Brickhouse station. Afghan Cameleers The settlers successfully began wool production, eventually attracting farmers and Afghan camel teamsters to the area. Interestingly, many of the cameleers came from Pakistan, not Afghanistan.The camels were used to transport wool from the stations to the port ( One Mile Jetty ), ready for export. Today you can still see the reminder of this unique past in the 40m wide main street, which was built for the camels to safely manoeuvre around. During the 1920’s, transportation was to go through a massive change, with the arrival of the motor vehicle. Disappearing, virtually over night, were the camels and the cameleers. Sheep & Transport   By the 1930’s the Gascoyne area had over 1.4 million head of sheep, with the town serving as a port and supply depot, for the surrounding pastoral industry. Carnarvon became the centre of a successful wool producing area. The aviator, Charles Kingsford Smith, saw a golden opportunity for a transport company to be set up in the area. Along with his friend, Keith Anderson, the Gascoyne Transport Company was born. Around the same time a meat works was built to supply the local area with fresh meat, but it never eventuated as there was too much of a fluctuating supply of stock. However the building did not totally go to waste, it became a shark-processing factory for a short time and then a poor house for families during the depression. The building was nicknamed Silver City because the families who camped there were given government payments in silver coins. Bananas & Mangoes   You couldn’t possibly visit Carnarvon without at least tasting the Carnarvon bananas and mangoes . The success of the banana industry in Carnarvon can be directly attributed to Mr Jack Buzolic, who in the 1920’s, wrote an article about the potential for banana growing in the area. Putting his theory to the test, Jack planted the first banana sucker in 1928 and by 1930 he had his first saleable crop. The rest I guess is history. So proud of the town’s successful banana industry, the local tourist bureau even bought a 10m yellow banana , which now stands on the corner of Robinson Street and Boundary Road. Today, there are over 70 banana plantations in Carnarvon, covering 350 hectares and producing 4,194 tonnes of bananas annually. In recent years, mangoes have become an equally popular fruit grown in the region. Each mango season produces on average 1300 tonnes. HMAS Sydney   Following the outbreak of World War II, Carnarvon was to become involved in the worst maritime disaster in Australia’s history. On the 19th of November, 1941 the HMAS Sydney came under attack by a German Raider the HSK Kormoran. Somewhere off the coast between Geraldton and Carnarvon the Australian Cruiser with her crew of 645 sank and all souls on board perished. Following the pursuing battle the Kormoran also sank. Along the coast between 17 Mile Well and Red Bluff, 310 Germans managed to make it ashore. On capture they were held at the Carnarvon Goal before being sent to P.O.W. camps where they saw out the remainder of the war. The German Commander of the Kormoran, who was one of the survivors, remained adamant that the ship, fully ablaze, simply drifted off. In 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the sinking of the ‘Sydney’, the HMAS Sydney Memorial Drive (located along a section of Carnarvon Road) was built, in honour of the men lost in this tragic event. 645 palm trees were planted and 645 plaques were placed at the base of each tree. In 2005, the Federal Government gave funding for the continued effort in finding the ship. To this day her resting place remains a secret. Whaling Carnarvon, like many coastal towns at the turn of the 20th century, began commercial whale hunting. As early as 1912, whaling ships were operating in the waters off Carnarvon. In the 1950’s the Federal Government helped fund a whaling station at Babbage Island. This station became one of the most modern whaling shore stations in the world. It was believed that over 600 whales were killed per season. Fortunately by the 1960’s whaling ceased and the station was sold to the Nor-West Whaling Company (later to be renamed the Nor-West Seafoods). The ‘Nor-West Seafoods’ converted the whaling station into a factory for processing prawns, Shark Bay banana prawns to be exact. The company is still successfully processing prawns and even (ironically) running seasonal whale and dolphin watching tours. Salt and Gypsum During the 1960’s Texada Mines (now Dampier Salt) was established at Lake Macleod, which is situated 65km north of Carnarvon. The mine would become one of the world’s highest bulk solar salt producers. What does that all mean? Well, evidently the saturated brine in the lake is approximately 10 times saltier than seawater. This means that concentration ponds, which are normally required to evaporate water to reach “salting point’, aren’t needed. In 1978 the Texada Mines sold the venture to Dampier Salt limited, who have continued to process and export salt around the world. Dampier Salt now also export gypsum, which is a hydrated sulphate of calcium which is used in the making of plaster and in treating soil. Today   Today, the population of Carnarvon is approximately 9,000. The major industries include fishing (prawns, scallops and schnapper), pastoral (sheep, cattle & goats), mining (salt & gypsum) and plantations (bananas, mangoes, tropical fruits & vegetables).Over 115,000 sqkms of the Gascoyne is taken up by pastoral stations producing meat and wool.

Carnarvon

13th May Tuesday

Good byes for now to Gavin and Rose who were heading for Monkey Mia. We will see them again in Carnarvon.  We stopped at Billabong roadhouse for lunch and a toilet stop for the 3 of us.  We are so happy to be in the Gascoyne as it makes us feel that we are finally on our way and closer to the Pilbarra and the Kimberleys which we both love.  The terrain is amazingly green and cattle, goats and sheep are all grazing on the roadside.  You have to be careful as you go because they will just cross the road in front of you.  Cattle, sheep and goats here are so much larger than our normal farmed beasts because once you hit the Gascoyne it’s all stations and they live wild. the roads up here go through these stations so there are no fences as the land mass for these places are so huge and it would cost a squillion to fence them,  so! you drive with care.  We were going to stop at Gladstone lookout but it didn’t look that wonderful and we misjudged the distance to Carnarvon as it was closer than we thought so we thought that we would push on and book in a day early.  We arrived at about 3, set up. Poured the tradional glass of wine and did not much else.  Took Hugo for a walk and had my normal chat with whoever is in the park and will talk to me :-).  I was walking past one caravan with Hugo and I heard “Oi, I have me one of them but mine is a short haired”, of course I had to stop and chat for half an hour.  He was an ex farmer and salt of the earth person and I love these people and  I love stopping and chatting as you meet the most awesome people who have the most amazing stories to tell.  Poor Ralphie is getting used to me being missing for ages because I have found someone to talk to :-). Hugo is always to blame for me chatting of course :-).

14th May, Wednesday

Another beautiful day in the Gascoyne.  We decided to have a walk along the 1 mile jetty.  The jetty goes right out into deep waters and there is a little train that runs to the end for those who are not keen on walking it.  We decided to walk but as soon as it got to deep waters I wasn’t that keen as the planks are really old.  I did most of it but decided to stay with Hugo while Ralph did the rest.  It was a bit chilly and windy but it was really early in the morning.  Quite envigorating, I suppose.  We took a drive into town and along the docks, bought some fresh fish for tonight because my man is not delivering :-).  He does promise me though.  He bought a new U-beaut fishing rod today to replace the one that he broke….. I live in eternal hope. We took a little detour into the harbour where the big fishing trawlers come in and there were 2 that were unloading their catch. It was quite fascinating as we’ve never seen these boats come in before.  We watched them unload.  One boat with tuna and another with prawns and crab.  We were quite amazed as how they were coming off the boat.  The tuna on the one boat were frozen and they were packing them into trucks.  The other boat with the prawns and crab were coming off in boxes. All frozen, processed and packed on board and ready to be transported when the boat came into dock.  We won’t be doing much more today.  We will have our fish tonight and will cook some chips on the bbq.

15th May, Thursday

It’s cloudy today and a bit humid. There is an expectation of rain but the rest of the week will be fine. We decided to go and visit Rocky pool which is part of the Gascoyne river. The drive was about 50kms from Carnarvon and well worth the visit. On the way back we stopped at a few plantations and bought some local produce. The fresh produce up here is sensational, for taste, quality and value. There’s no way I would buy fresh stuff in the supermarket while we are here. Can’t wait for Kununurra because the stuff there is even better which is hard to believe. The of the day was spent vegging.

16th May, Friday

We have decided that today is “Nothing to do or see day”. We went for lunch to a lovely seafood cafe. Got back to the caravan and I decided to be adventurous and see if I could bake a cake in the Baby Q. We had all these bananas that we had bought (you haven’t been to Carnarvon unless you buy bananas 🙂 ). I got a recipe for banana bread off the net, mixed it all up and threw it in and it turned out surprisingly well. I had to go to the camp kitchen to use the microwave to melt the butter (because, madam here broke the turning plate in ours) and there was a lovely young couple having lunch. They were from Bolzano in Italy (which we visited last year) and so the chat began again. :-). They are backpackers working their way around Oz and picking fruit, veggies, whatever is going at the time. I asked them if the money was good and they told me that they are earning $12 an hour. I was horrified. These kids are being exploited and there is nothing that they can do about it. I felt really embarrassed to learn what they were earning. :-(. Wasn’t happy Jan. Tonight our neighbours are coming over for a drink and what a wonderful way to finish the day and of course it’s Friday night, and the Ralphie has to watch his football.

17th May, Saturday

Another lovely day. Sunny skies and warm weather. We took Hugo to the beach for a swim and he thinks he’s a puppy again. We did some shopping and then back to the caravan park for our usual afternoonses. We had a sweet couple with a nearly one year old little boy from Canberra staying next to us. They gave us their details when they left and told us to look them up when we are there. He is a judicial copper and a very unassuming bloke. When they left I gave the little fella the monkey that I had knitted and the thought just struck me that he is going to live in Canberra…… a very fitting place for a monkey. :-). We are heading off for Port Samson tomorrow. We will do a stopover at one of the 24 hour lay-bys and then do the rest on Monday. We will stay for 2 days and then head off for a few days to Pardoo station.