DAY 86 – CARNARVON SPACE & TECHNOLOGY CENTRE

It was a public holiday in Western Australia today for the Queen’s Birthday so Carnarvon was very quite. 

Steve and I were up early and as I had done our washing the day before,  and the other’s still had washing to do, we decided to go for a drive and have a good look around Carnarvon, as we hadn’t done it the previous evening when Ian and Kathy went out.  

The Big Banana in Carnarvon Western Australia

The Fascine Precinct - Carnarvon

Amazing children's parks

The main harbour side precinct on the Fascine has a memorial to HMAS Sydney and the German ship Kormoran which sank each other during a battle off-shore during WW2. Over 600 crew were lost on the Sydney but 319 of the 400 on the Kormoran were rescued. Nearby is a rather lovely kids playground and we walked along here to go across the old tram bridge that crosses the Gascoyne river and used to connect to One Mile Jetty.

Memorial to the 645 men who lost their lives on the HMAS Sydney in 1941

We drove down to the main harbour side precinct on the Fascine.  This area of Carnarvon is beautiful with a walkway right around the edge of the water.  It looks to be a fairly new area and has a memorial  to HMAS Sydney and the German ship Kormoran which sank each other during a battle off-shore  during World 2. Over 600 crew were lost on the Sydney but 319 of the 400 on the Kormoran were rescued. There is an anchor monument on the water front that also lists all their names of the soldiers who lost their lives on the HMAS Sydney.

Nearby is a rather lovely kids playground and along here also is the old tram bridge that crosses the Gascoyne river and used to connect to One Mile Jetty.

Lobster pots

From here we drove around to the boat ramp and wharf area of Carnarvon to check out the boats, and also look for any good fishing spots.  Even if you don’t get a chance to fish, it is always good to sus them out in a town you visit.  

One Mile Jetty

Closed due to unsafe conditions... such a shame

The old lighthouse

From here we drove out to One Mile Jetty and the Historical Precinct at the Jetty.  It was still closed, apparently it only opens from 10am to 1pm daily so we will have to leave going through here until after we have been to the Space Museum and see if we have time then.

It didn’t stop us from taking photos though.  Unfortunately these days the One Mile Jetty is no longer open, as it is in need of serious repairs.  It is kind of sad to see it in that state as it really could be such a good tourist attraction for Carnarvon.

Pelican Point was next on our places to visit and it was around from the One Mile Jetty along the water's edge. There is some serious sand drift areas along here and in places the road was covered in sand that had been blown off the sand dunes.  

By this stage, Kathy had rung to say they had finished their washing and were ready to head up to the Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum, so we headed back to the caravan park to join them.

The Carnarvon Space and Technology Centre is located just behind our caravan park and we could easly see the big telescopes from the park.   The centre is no longer functioning and is now just a museum.  In it’s lifetime though it had a very substantial role to play with NASA in putting men into Space, and they have had several prominent astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Andy Thomas spend time at the centre.

It was interesting to read about the operations at Carnarvon and see some of the footage of man landing on the moon.

  We even got to sit in a replica space shuttle and pretend to be blasted into space like an astronaut. My goodness their quarters were very confined. 

We also visited Phase 3 of the Space Museum which houses lots of interactive scientific displays and spent some time trying out some of them. 

There was a hand eye co-ordination test that they give to prospective astronauts to see if they qualify to even been considered to travel into space.  

Only person I manage to see do this without it touching

I watched several people try doing this, including myself and none of us could get the hoop all the way around the obstacle course without the hoop touching the wire except for Steve.  He managed to do it twice without the buzzer going off.  I must say I was pretty impressed.

We also watch a movie on the discovery of spaced which was very interesting.  The presentation was a 360degree movie so you really felt very much part of it. 

We enjoyed our time at the Museum and it was probably after 1pm before we left.  It was now to late to visit the Historical Precinct down at the One Mile Jetty.  That will need to be left for another time.  

We did however head back into town after being at the Museum, as we still had a few things we wanted to see and photograph. 

Our lunch stop... not as good as others we have tried.

These old houses had lots of potential

This one probably needed to be pulled down.

The trees on the drive into Carnarvon are all very bent from the wind and I wanted to capture a photo of them, as well as go and check out the Chinaman Pool.  

 Before we did this though, we headed back down to the water front to photograph some of the very old buildings down there and also to have a bite to eat at the bakery. 

 

My friend Kerrie-Laurae used to live on this site when she was younger.

 I also wanted to take a photo of a building right on the water front for one of my teacher friends back home who used to live right in that spot.  It was where her family home was until they sold it 12 years ago.  

It was probably after 3pm by the time we arrived back at the caravan park.  Time to have a bit of a rest, a good cuppa and then we all decided to go and have a game of Lawn Bowls. 

The Caravan Park Lawn Bowls Club House

Light shades

This was a bit of a hoot as none of us have really played the game much before.   In fact there was more laughter than anything.   

We didn’t even know which way to lay the mat out on the green.   We were into our third game when we had a spectator by the name of Peter come to watch us play.  You could see that he was just itching to join us, so on our four game we invited him to play with us.

          
It was very evident that Peter was a seasoned lawn bowler and took the game quite seriously which was the opposite to what we had been doing.   Still we continued to have fun and ended up playing about five games before we had to give it away due to the sun setting and the cold winter chilling our bones.  It was a great way to end our time at the Capricorn Holiday Park. 

We move on tomorrow heading further south..