THURSDAY 10 JUNE      GREENOUGH

After breakfast, it was back into Geraldton again, so John could do a tour of the cray fishing factory that he’d found out about yesterday. I did not want to do it – would feel too sorry for the crayfish!

John said the tour was great and he learned a lot about the Geraldton based industry. He also bought two crays – cooked! They would be for tea tomorrow, as I had prawns for tonight.

Whilst in a “tourist” frame of mind, drove across town to view the memorial to the “Sydney”. This was an Australian battleship that was sunk in late 1941, by the German vessel “Kormoran”, off the coast of this part of WA. Geraldton was the last Australian port the “Sydney” visited, before being lost at sea. Plans for this memorial took shape in the 1990’s, and it was dedicated in 2001 – on the 60th anniversary of the Sydney’s loss.

The memorial was most impressive. To begin with, it was high on a hill – Mt Scott – overlooking the town and the sea. Its central feature was a dome shape, made up of an open weave pattern of silver seagulls – 645 of them, to represent the 645 men lost on the Sydney. In older times, it was believed that the souls of drowned sailors lived on in seagulls, hence the symbolism.

Apart from the dome, there was a very evocative sculpture of a woman waiting, looking out to sea. The intent of this was obvious.

I was very glad that we had made the effort to at least see this place, even if we hadn’t done much else around here.

After lunch back at the van, drove to the Greenough Woodworks Gallery. We were not particularly impressed with what was on show there. I thought John’s work was as good as what we saw there – whereas in the galleries we visited down in the south-west, there was much that was clearly better than he could do.

I made honey prawns for tea – excellent.