After spending 7 excellent weeks at the Commercial Hotel in Meekatharra it was time to go. My last day of work was Tuesday but I decided to stick around until Friday just to say goodbye to the town properly (ie drunkenly). The lovely Aimee let me stay at the Royal Mail Hotel for free so I was free to spend all of my money on booze. :) Actually I had a very relaxing last few days, a very drunk last few nights, and a very sad last morning. It was very hard to say goodbye to Meekatharra and to all the people I had met there. My last night at the Mail was great, everyone came out to say goodbye, lots of drinking, dancing, and general merriment ensued. Carrie and Russell met me at the bus to say goodbye and Russell brought me a bunch of Meekatharra souvenirs from the Post Office. I was really touched by the gesture since I had no idea Russell really cared one way or the other about me. I boarded the TransWA bus on Friday morning and reached Geraldton by about 4 in the afternoon.
I had decided to treat myself and stayed at a real hotel (the All Seasons) for the first two nights. It was nice to have a place to myself but it was too far away from downtown for me to walk there, and it was pouring rain, so I pretty much slept for two days. I did get out of the room for a little while and got lucky enough to miss the rainshowers and get down to the beach. Thats the nice thing about Geraldton, you're never more than a few blocks from the ocean. The beach I found was pretty much deserted so I just wandered around, took some pictures, and (even though its was cold and windy) put my feet in.
On Sunday morning it was time to get back to reality so I packed up my stuff and taxi'd over to the Foreshore Backpackers. The Foreshore is actually quite a nice little hostel right on the beach, I mean I can hear the waves crashing in my room kind of close to the beach. This is the first hostel I've stayed in where I've actually gone for the group room and its not so back. My room only has three beds in it and last night they were all full but tonight there's only two of us. Since it is right on the beach and near all the shops its a little loud at night but for $25 a night I really can't complain.
The town of Geraldton itself is pretty boring. The beach is nice but there really isn't a whole lot of touristy type things to do. It feels more like a stopping off point for people on their way up or down the coast. I've spent most of my time reading, napping in the sun, and planning the next months worth of adventures.
And those plans are..
Well I purchased a hop on hop off bus ticket from Perth to Broome from Greyhound for around $450 and planned on doing my own thing cruising up the coast. NOT a good idea. I should have done a bit more research and realized that the Greyhound buses on the West Coast only operate four days out of the week (and are moving down to three next month) they don't go to a lot of the main tourist destinations, and their timing is very inconvenient. In light of that fact I decided to cancel my ticket, get most of my money back, and book an actual guided tour of the coast. Easyrider Tours (www.easyridertours.com.au) offers several packages up and down the west coast. What is really awesome about them is they are a Jump On Jump Off tour, which means you can get off anywhere they stop and stay for as long as you want, then jump back on again when you're ready. They still do all the guided tour type stuff, canoe trips, 4WD, paid accommodation for the nights they are scheduled to be there, but you have 6 months in which to use the ticket. This seemed like a pretty good idea to me so I e-mailed them and asked if I could jump on their Reef Cruiser tour in Geraldton instead of starting with them in Perth. I got a really fast response that said of course I could and they would knock $100 off the price since I was missing the first half of the first day. So I forked out the $650 and will be boarding the bus at 4pm tomorrow.
Thats pretty much all that I've been up to. I'll be sure to update on my current whereabouts as I head up the coast.
Oh and P.S. Grandma I've got my tickets all sorted and I'll be in Brisbane on the 17th of June (my birthday by the way!) and I will be on the same flight with all of you from Brisbane to Cairns.
Until next time!
came over from couchsurfing, crammed all previous blogs in one shot.
ReplyDeleteit's great what you're doing, and since I plan on doing it too, I will be following your blog faithfully, leaving little comments here and there so it isn't so lonely!
how is the internet thing working? hope everything is going swell!!