Perth to Geraldton 19 Feb 2017

Our Western Australia exploration began today with an early start in Perth. We left the hotel at 0800 and briefly visited a petrol station to collect some water for the journey. We discovered that the suburbs of Perth seem to go on forever! Eventually, back near the airport we found the start of the Great Northern Highway, Western Australia Route 1.

Initially, this road follows the Swan River Valley and is lined with vineyards, olive groves and fruit farms but by the time we reached Muchea, it was mainly cattle farms we were passing. At Muchea, we turned off the Great Northern Highway onto the Brand Highway, still the Route 1. The further we got from Perth the more sparsely populated it got and eventually we ran out of farms and it was just scrubland.

After Gindin, we could see the next settlement was Badgingarra about 120km up the road. I put the car in cruise control at a speed of 110kph, the posted speed limit, and we didn't come out of cruise until we reached Badgingarra!  Some stretches of the road were straight for up to 15km. There wasn't much traffic either way, just the odd Roadtrain. One lorry with up to 3 trailers behind, some as long as 36.5 metres long. They travel at over 100kph too!

At Badgingarra, we stopped for a leg stretch, the loo and a coffee. It felt very remote, the next settlement north was over 70km away. Several locals were in the little cafe though, I guess they lived on farms somewhere in the scrubland.

Back on the road, we had a similar distance again to drive to get to our destination at Geraldton. We thought we'd seen some vast empty areas both in Australia and North America, but Western Australia probably trumps everything for remoteness. The only other place I've seen like this is the Dempster Highway in the Yukon and NW Territories of Canada.

South of Dongara, the Brand Highway is joined by the Indian Ocean Highway, a road we will take next week as we return to Perth. Finally, about 1315, we arrived in Geraldton after about 5 hours drive and 450km.

Geraldton is both a holiday town and a deep water port. As we'd been driving north we passed the signs for several mines and Geraldton is where the the Bulk Ore Carrier boats dock to collect the various ores that are dug out. The ore gets to the port by rail. The town is quite nice, but as it's Sunday, everything is shut.

We checked into the Best Western Hospitality Inn and have a pleasant motel room. It has a pool, sadly, when we went to check it out, it is empty of water!  No matter, we have the Indian Ocean at our doorstep, so it was off down to the beach. With the air temperature around 35C, the sea was a great way to cool down.

Finally, I learned a new expression today in the bottle store! I was wished, "Enjoy the rest of your Arvo"! Oh and the locals call this place Gero!