Geraldton:

Geraldton is a lovely town which has undergone many changes recently with a big development on the foreshore. It has a very relaxed feeling. Apparently more money has been spent on Geraldton than any other town in WA.

We arrived in Geraldton just in time for a tour of the memorial to the sailors lost on the HMAS Sydney II which was sunk of the coast of WA by the German warship Kormoran. 345 lives were lost in this tragic event. A lot of the sailors spent time in Geraldton when they were not on active duty so this is a very fitting memorial to them. It was a very moving experience. The memorial consists of a dome made up of 345 stainless steel seagulls, one for each life lost. Each wing is touching so they are all connected.
There is a list of all lives lost in this tragedy on some huge granite slabs. There were many very young sailors. There is also a large tower in the shape of the bow of the ship which is the exact height of the ship. Whichever angle you look at it is in the shape of the ship bow. A statue of a mother looking out to sea represents the waiting of the loved ones for the ship to return. The memorial was built before the recent discovery of the wreck of the Sydney in March 2008 and it’s amazing but direction that the statue is looking out to sea is exactly the direction where the wreck of the Sydney was discovered.

We then went to the museum which is a very modern building on the foreshore and is very interesting. The Western Australian coast line was responsible for many shipwrecks in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, mostly Dutch ships who where trading with the Spice Islands (Indonesia). There were many lives lost. The most famous of these was the Batavia where the ship was wrecked on some nearby islands and the captain rowed a boat all the way to Indonesia to get help.
(There is a model of the row boat in the harbour outside the museum) The rest of the passengers had to survive on the very arid island and there many brutal murders of innocent people while the captain was away. We saw an excellent movie in the museum about this event and it makes you realise how gruesome the people were in those days. It appears that the first white people to live in Australia could have been Dutch. A couple of wrong doers were put in a boat and forced off the islands. There is evidence that they landed on the mainland and could have connected with the aborigines.


There is a magnificent cathedral in Geraldton which was built by Monsignor Hawes who was a priest/architect. It took 22 years to build with the help of volunteers and lots of problems. He was also servicing his parish at Mullewa which is 100kms away. He built lots of churches in the district and made a great contribution to the area.

After our time here we had to do some shopping and then returned to Coronation Beach after an enjoyable day.