Geraldton is a much bigger place than I had imagined, after all the coastal town I had visited already I was thinking it would be smaller like most of them are, though it is actually quite large with and active port and a lot of old buildings still (again that is old for Australia). It is another place that is undergoing expansion and modernisation with new areas being built up and lots of new offices, parks and public works happening. There really is a lot of money being spent in Western Australia on the towns, really it has to be coming from the Mining companies, because it surely isn't coming via the Federal Government, the amounts being spent must be huge. I had to keep making dashes to the car between squalls so the pictures are limited and to be honest I left by about 10 past 10 so I could press on to try and get to Perth by dark.
Old Victoria Hospital, now a conference venue and offices and the Visitors Centre
From a sign, showing the Hospital when it first opened. The sign looks to say "Cod" to me.
It was a long drive from Geraldton to Perth, 414km, and was really quite stressful as the weather really was quite awful and it rained most of the way. More stressful was the fact that the clutch really is slipping quite badly now and naturally that dictated that most of the morning was spend going up and down lots of hills with lines of traffic building up behind as in this area there are lots of sections where overtaking is not permitted at all. That of course didn't stop some people doing it, I tell you if I had been recording the trip through Western Australia I could hand it to the police and they would have a field day with the number of cars and trucks that just roar past over double lines, regardless of whether they can see what is coming the other way or not. I can't count the number of times I had to jump on the brakes to let people back in so there wasn't a head on crash, which of course made it worse for the people behind me as I had to try and accelerate all over again with the clutch slipping away.
The afternoon improved, both in terms of the weather and the leveling out of the roads and finally the Count was able to just resume a nice steady pace along the highway without the added stress of hills. Cruising into Perth I was glad that I was arriving on a Sunday afternoon, as I was going into the city, rather then on a weekday, so much less traffic, so getting lost wasn't such a problem. After a number of errors I managed to locate the place I am staying at, checked in and then went out for a walk between rain showers, unfortunately without my tripod as it was a quick walk not having any idea of the area and where to go for views and not wanting to get soaked, so the only pics I managed to get aren't all that clear sadly.
In Perth now for a day or two...
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