Geraldton

I arrived in Geraldton on Remembrance Day to visit the HMAS Sydney Memorial and the Geraldton Museum. Both places were some of the most powerful experiences on this trip so far.

As you can see in the pictures, the Memorial sits overlooking the city towards the Indian Ocean. The center piece is a steel dome constructed out of 644 seagulls, representing the the lives lost on the Sydney. The 645th and final seagull is in an adjacent circular structure, pointing its wing towards the sky. It represents the final resting place of the Sydney found in 2008. The Waiting Woman sculpture captures the sense of anxiously waiting for news of the ship and a return that never happened, and, ultimately, the pain of this loss. Even if you're not as close to the the story of the Sydney, this is a really powerful experience. There will be a memorial service held on Nov. 19th and I wish I had planned a little better, but I'm flying back to Sydney that day :(

Today I went to the Geraldton Museum and the lady at the reception got really excited when I told her why I was visiting. She said they get a lot of visits from Australian families connected to the HMAS Sydney but she couldn't remember someone connected to the Kormoran visiting.

The Museum has turned the video footage from the 2015 expedition to the wrecks of both ships into a short 3D film, which was one of the best things. I have seen so far on the trip. "From Great Depths" didn't only put you under water with the wrecks but would also cut to photographs of the relevant locations from the ships before they were sunk. So you would see men on deck or at the cannons - right after you saw the deck or cannons and what they now look like under sea. The 3D effect brought it even closer, especially the men on the Sydney. Unfortunately you can't capture 3D with a normal camera, so you just have to imagine it. Or come visit yourself.

The museum also had the "leftovers" of a German gun on display. This gun was found by a surfer at Red Bluff, where my grandfather's lifeboat came ashore. (Read the official report here.) I talked about this with Michael Gregg in Fremantle; he told me that the Germans threw away their guns when they came ashore, as not to appear hostile to the Australians who would eventually pick them up.

Finally, I went to the Geraldton cemetery to pay my respects at the grave of Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark. If you remember from a previous post, the body found in one of the Carley Floats from the Sydney was only recently positively identified. So what was previously marked as a grave of an unknown soldier now has a name to it.

Moving up north from Geraldton, I a now camping in Denham, Shark Bay. Shark Bay is the the Western-most area in Australia and the closes land to the location of the shipwrecks.