8GreatEscapes - 1. Escape to Ningaloo - Pe... - Day 3 Geraldton to Kalbarri : DriveWA

Day 3 Geraldton to Kalbarri

We started the day with a great breakfast at the Emerald Room at the Best Western Hospitality Inn and at 9am we arrived at Chimera Pearls and were met by Barry and Mary Humfrey and Kerrie Anne Grayson the owners and developers of the business. They have provided a great discount offer for WA Pass holders so have a look at that - they have a terrific range of outstandingly beautiful things which my wife and I love - she has a very distinctive a beautiful piece we purchased from them at the launch of their new range in Perth.

So it was off to another of my favourite places the Geraldton Maritime Museum – where I could spend all day and where we spent a couple of hours.

From there we drove a couple of blocks to the Geraldton Visitors Centre which is under reconstruction in a beautiful old building - it is an important stop for visitors to the area and then on to the Gull Petrolium 440 roadhouse where I always refuel as we go north and from there off to Oakabella Homestead where we met Loretta and owner Alan Jackson.

They serve lunches in the cafe they have established there and over lunch Loretta told us how she was called to this place as a mature adult after having a recurrent dream as a child growing up in Canada. She had us all spellbound as she read to us from her unpublished manuscript of her book about the vistas she saw in this recurrent dream. Then many years later after traveling all the way from Canada to Australia looking for the place in the dream she found it quite by accident - she tells of being taken on a largely unplanned outing to this Northampton property to see a racehorse - and as she was being driven down the drive to the Oakabella Homestead she saw the vista of her dreams opening up in front of her very eyes. She knew immediately she had found the place she had been called to for so long.

We were so impressed with the manuscript that later that afternoon we arranged for her to read those passages to camera sitting under the magnificent morton bay fig tree which itself sits as a haven for the local pink and grey galahs and other birds next to the old homestead – the tree and the homestead were majestic from a distance as we watched the process unfold.

Loretta took our presenters on the tour of the sheds and the home whilst Steve took the stills he loves to take around the place. Steve was not keen to go into the Homestead because his wife believes strongly in spirits and was not keen for him not to get a bad spirit attached to him. But I followed the tour listening to Loretta relate tales of the daily life and the highs and lows of living in those times and the deaths that occurred etc. It is indeed a fascinating tour whether or not you believe in spirits because of the insight one gets into life in another time.

Watch webisode 3 Geraldton to Kalbarri below

source: LocoTV

I found myself accidentally in front of the tour which was a problem as I was not supposed to be in shot – so I took off in front of them thinking I could get out of another door as many of the rooms had outside doors. Suddenly I was in the maids quarters – standing alone and listening when a very strange feeling came over me – as if I was being watched – there was a very strong presence in that room but when I looked over my shoulder there was only a statue of the maid behind me. I made my DriveWA escape pretty quickly from that room onto the verandah and later sought out Lorettas companion who took me back to the room where she explained that the spirits at Oakabella were friendly but like to know who is visiting them – so I introduced myself feeling the presence again. Then the feeling stopped and all seemed well. Strange and not provable but very interesting!

We were there much longer than we planned and so when we went on to Northampton we had to miss photographing the lovely old buildings in the town – we will have to go back again on another DriveWA northern escape to do that.

After visiting the Northampton visitors centre for some information – we drove off to the Lynton convict hiring depot which was really interesting and once again we proved that it’s a small world - our female presenters cousins name was one of the names carved into the wall – everything is connected to everything else and we are all part of the story.

From there we drove to the Natural Island Bridge and took in another magnificent WA sunset.

after which we drove to the Kalbarri Edge Resort where we checked in and checked emails, charged batteries etc

The reception manager at the KER allowed us to buy the makings of a great steak BBQ dinner from their kitchen larder and we had a great time using the BBQ on the balcony of the great serviced apartment and after that we reviewed the stills Steve had taken during the day.

Those stills were really interesting – but suddenly time stood still as Steve and I were looking at an excellent photo he had taken in one of the sheds at Oakabella – there staring at us out of the photo were three peoples faces in the walls and when we looked more closely we found what is an unmistakable face of a child staring at us out of the photo on the floor on the right hand side - once you enlarge the pic a little you can see more and we eventually counted about 6 faces in the photo – some on the sides some in the walls and the scary child and cat on the floor.

It was unmistakably and genuinely enormously spooky and though Steve had spent a lot of time setting the shot up when he took it he had not seen them till we started looking more closely at the shot on Marks computer. Steve had loaded the shots onto the new computer Mark was using to follow our track and keep the waypoints for us to use in the material we were compiling to support the trip notes etc.

The computer had never malfunctioned till that day and once we loaded that pic onto the computer all sorts of things started to go wrong for Mark and the car he was travelling in.

Over the next few days the data for the mapping function disappeared completely (we later found it but in a totally different directory), his car jumped into 4WD while he was driving along, he lost his phone charger, his alarm stopped working so he slept through the next day – the photo took over the trip.

It was a great finish to another great day filming DriveWA and we and it had only just begun.

>> Go to Day 4: Kalbarri