Museums

Ok so Geraldton does not have much to do. But I managed to find a few things of interest.

I began my day with a dip in the sea, cause why not. Bit of a swim and reminding myself this is somehow my reality and I'm not dreaming.

Then headed out to the museum. I may have accidentally walked into a thrift store and left with two books. But I had a very good reason, the books needed saving from this boring little town. One is on serial killer couples which is awesome. and the other is a LGBTQ+ book and there is no way anyone in this little racist town was ever going to by it. So I performed a powerful daring rescue and left with new reading material in tow.

Also on the way was the arts and crafts centre. It is situated in the old goal making it both a point of interest historically and arty. However for some reason the front door was looked for 'security reasons' and told me to go to the other door. The other door had a sign that read 'locked on mondays'. So I'm not sure how I was supposed to get in. Very strange but it didnt look great from the window so no big.

Finally arrived at the museum. For a place so small it has a rather large museum. There was the standard section for the aboriginal heritage of the coral coast. Lots about the old lore and how the british 'discovered' amazing things thanks to the aboriginal guides showing them. There was another section on a tv show, I think it was at least. It is set in a modern setting but the characters are all superheroes and it's based on aboriginal stories. At least that's what I thought it was. I'm honestly not sure as there was little to no text on the walls explaining it and most was in the aboriginal language. So I got throughly confused.

The final two sections were the ones I went to the museum for. The VOC, a trading company based in the Netherlands in the 15-17th century used to use the west coast of Australia to get up to Batavia (now Jakarta in Indonesia) where they did trading with Asia for Europe. However the west coast had notoriously large amounts of tiny island, reefs and random shallow waters. As a result a large number of boats run aground here during their voyages. The museum is responsible for the protection of these ship wrecks and the artifacts within them.

Most simply crashed due to not knowing where they were thanks to dreadful maps they had. However a few of note had sections in the museum. One run a ground after its captain decided they would chart a new route and hit land instead. Another managed to survive the reefs and outlying islands and hit instead straight into the mainland cliff. This one is interesting as accessing the wreckage is still extremely difficult today, and evidence was found at the top of the cliff, of survivors. If this is true, then neither the British nor the Holland sailors who first arrived here are actually the first settlers. However there is little evidence beyond the cliff so that is impossible to confirm.

And finally another ship called the Batavia, name after the companies headquarters in Asia ran a ground. The survivors not only split into factions on the islands they were now stranded on. One faction beginning a brutal annihilation of any who opposed included the women and children sailing for pleasure aboard. The captain and other higher ranking officers had taken the remaining lifeboat and managed to sail all the way up to Batavia and somehow survived. The final group created an alliance with those running from the first group and managed to build themselves a boat out of the wreckage. They luckily did not have to test its ability as the captain returned soon after.

What is also interesting is the boat held a large number of stone slabs. These slabs were intended for Batavia and when placed together created a massive arch way that would have signalled the opening to the city. Needless to say, this boat being lost had a lot of significance to both the people aboard and the company that owned it.

Once thoroughly impressed and freaked out by this museum I left for lunch. Did a bit of stuff on my ipad and finished my world packers profile. Fingers crossed something comes of that but we shall see.Read more