Diary:Thursday 1 June 2000

Thursday 01 June 2000

Checked in Post Office for CD autochanger but it hadn’t arrived. CD autochanger story so far: It was working fine when the landrover went into the container in Madras… but wasn’t when we tried to play it in Perth. Unfortunately we had left it full of CDs as well! It was still under guarrantee (unfortunately not International) so we sent it away to the menders. It arrived back in Perth in working order on Monday and asked the shop to send it up to Carnarvon by next day delivery. Checked at van park, in case they had sent it there. Not yet! Looks like we will have to stay here another day!

Dumped the Laundry for a service wash and went on a tour of Westoby Banana Plantation. Actually, tour is rather a large word for ‘standing by one particular tree but it was interesting to hear how the plantation was run. It would be interesting to know if they made more money from tourists or the banana crop – the banana part of the site was only a couple of hectares. They had the ‘Indian’ technique of drawing you into the shop afterwards. Fortunately, they hadn’t learnt the Indian ‘hardsell’ technique. They provided a taster of delicious dried bananas, which we bought and of mango wine, which we didn’t!

Continued with the tourist thing and went out to visit the 1 mile jetty (and associated scrap iron that is part of the museum next to the jetty). Wandered to the end of the pier and back again. Surprisingly few people fishing. We saw loads of fish in the water, though. Explored the rest of Carnarvon in search of a fish & chip shop for lunch. Eventually found one and spent the remainder of the day Route planning for the next 3 or 4 weeks.

And now for Freds view of today: “We have just spent the day doing the "tourist thing" in Carnarvon. It is now 3pm and I am back in the caravan having a beer. That tells you just how much there is to do around here! It is really wierd though, there are several hotels/motels and at least 5 van parks, so one would assume that in peak season whenever that is) that it would be absolutely heaving here. What do they all do though?

We walked along the One-Mile Jetty (we could have been lazy and taken the train - but then we would have been back by 2.30 instead + $4 worse off!)

We did what was slightly oversold as a banana plantation tour this morning. Banana plant tour would have been a better description. We went about 20 paces from the cafe/gift shop, stood in front of one "tree" with a largish bunch of malformed bananas, and were told the sob story of how desperate times were in the Banana industry (you know, the ususal stuff: Drought, cyclones, floods, price fixing by supermarkets etc etc) after this we were led into the gift shop and invited to support his impoverished family business by spending obscene amounts of money on an assortment of banana products. The only thing that wasn't bananas about the whole experience was his business sense. 7 people, $3 per head for the tour + about $10-$15 for produce/souvenirs easy $100 for 15 minutes of rambling.”