141. Stage 8 – Day 88 – Another day, another country!

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Today is our daughter Hayley’s 36^th birthday, and also the day 25 years ago that Dick finished his solo flight around the world by helicopter.

Dick got up really early and went walking along the Swan River valley. On the way back he met the owner of the truck stop, who asked if Dick had heard a huge explosion at about 2.00 am. Dick thought he had heard something. It appears that a 4WD vehicle had driven into the main power connection board, shorted everything out, and turned the 24 hour truck stop off. The owner was busily trying to get a generator to get going.

**Wildflowers growing beside the highway**

**The sheep were enjoying the green pastures**

We headed north on the road towards Geraldton. It was like driving in an English country garden – a magnificent green. There had been drought for over 2 years, but now good rain had everything growing again. There was lucerne for the cattle and huge broad acres of wheat. This is close to the coast so it sometimes gets a reasonable rainfall.

As we drove we passed large flocks of birds. One particular parrot (called a 28 Parrot or Port Lincoln parrot) is green, yellow and purple – beautiful colours. Then of course there were our favourite pink and grey galahs, and the “cockies” as we like to call them, as well as large flocks of the white tailed black cockatoo and scatterings of other birds.

**White tailed black cockatoos flew over us**

When we were parked, Dick noticed that the batteries hadn’t come up to 100% from yesterday’s driving. He lifted the bonnet and put his finger on one of the battery terminals, resulting in quite a bad burn. For some reason corrosion had got in and there was high resistance, which meant that the two alternators in the engine bay were not charging the battery bank at the back.

**We stopped at a truck stop to make a cup of tea**

**It was fabulous to drive on the good smooth roads and we passed many ‘grey nomads’ towing their caravans around Australia**

**Notice warning about the road trains**

**Passing a road train with three trailers**

We quickly headed towards Geraldton and a friendly auto-electrician. He fixed the problem with 20 minutes of sandpapering and re-mounting bits and pieces.

We had departed at 8.00 am (Western Australian time, which is two hours behind Sydney). The road was in magnificent condition and every now and then we would pass road graders with flagmen.

We climbed to 837 feet. We were wondering if this was going to be the highest we would get until the Great Dividing Range near the east coast of Australia. There were beautiful flowers beside the road, so we stopped for a quick lunch of chicken on bread, and took photos of the beautiful flowers. It was 66° Fahrenheit (19° C).

**Blackboys or sometimes called grass trees**

**We saw many bushes of yellow flowers**

We left the highway at Dongara and drove down to the coast. It was a nice beach, however we have decided that the west coast of Australia is not as beautiful as the east coast.

We grabbed a little polythene container from the Earthroamer and Dick walked down on the beach to get some salt water from the Indian Ocean. We are going to deliver this hopefully to the Pacific Ocean.

**Dick filling a container with water from the Indian Ocean**

As we approached Geraldton the fields were even greener. We photographed the famous leaning tree. It is a river redgum which has been bent over in the prevailing westerly winds, but it is still growing.

**A typical Western Australian farm with a crop of canola growing in the paddock**

**Leaning Tree – A Western Australian River Gum bent by the wind.**

**A windmill pumping water from a bore**

After visiting the auto-electrician, we visited Dick’s old school friend from Koongara Rd, Michael Marsh and his wife Leonie. After a quick cup of tea we headed further north, before leaving the highway again to drive along a dirt road to the Hutt River Province.

**We passed this truck carrying six huge tyres**

Prince Leonard of the Hutt River Province seceded from Australia in 1970 because of the bureaucratic controls for selling his wheat – among other things. Dick has always had a kind spot for Prince Leonard.

Prince Leonard was not in his official regalia. He came out in his working clothes and showed us around the Principality and the location where the new Palace is going.

**Dick and Prince Leonard in Hutt River Province**

We realised that we had entered the Principality without a correct visa. No problem – this wasn’t like Russia or Kazakhstan. The Prince quickly stamped and prepared a visa for us, personally giving us approval to stay for the day.

What luck! Just as we were about to leave, Princess Shirley arrived from Perth. What a highlight! We were photographed with the Royals, including Prince Ian and his Princess Annette.

By the way, some people mightn’t really know if Prince Leonard is for real – but I can assure you that he is. I asked if it was 98% real and 2% fun and he said, “No, it is 100% real. I have now seceded and this is a separate country.”

We loved it of course, because we thought we were only going to get to a total of 14 countries, but it is now 15.

The sun was now starting to set so we headed back on the dirt road to the highway, and we are now camped at the Murchison River, right beside the old bridge.

Total today 568 kms 32,726 kms since Anchorage, Alaska.

Click here for the next day.

Click here to return to the Smith’s Overland main index page.