Carnarvon WA

About Carnarvon

Carnarvon Caravan Park

We selected the Capricorn Holiday Park for no reason at all, mainly because it had good reviews, and it wasn’t too bad at all. Friendly staff and really clean amenities (maplink).

Quobba Blow Holes

We traveled out to have a look at the “Quobba Blow Holes” which are situated on a really rugged piece of coastline 75km north of Carnarvon. The seas were pretty big and the wind was howling so it was a bit difficult to get too close but they were really impressive even from where we were standing. The blowholes squirt seawater about 20 metres into the air from sea caves below the rocks.

We also drove up a dirt track to the Quobba lighthouse to gain a bigger view of the coastline and spotted a baby Peregrine Falcon nesting there (pretty cool). From here we drove up to the original HMAS Sydney memorial cairn (see below)

HMAS Sydney II Memorials

The most grievous loss suffered by the Royal Australian Navy occurred on 19 November 1941, when the cruiser HMAS Sydney was lost in action with the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran off the Western Australian coast. None of the Sydney‘s complement of 645 men survived. The Kormoran was also sunk in the action.

On 17 March 2008 the Australian Government announced that the wreckage of both HMAS Sydney and the German raider Kormoran had been found, approximately 112 nautical miles off Steep Point, Western Australia. Kormoran is lying at a depth of 2,560 metres; Sydney, approximately 12 nautical miles away, is at 2,470 metres.

There are several memorials to the disaster along the Coral Coast. We visited 2 in Carnarvon; one in the town and another on the coast near to the location of the Carnarvon Blowholes.

Some links:

• From the National Archives

Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum

The Carnarvon Space and Technology Museum is actually the former NASA base which was built for the NASA manned space program of the 1960’s – 1970’s and the role of OTC Carnarvon satellite earth station (maplink).

Today it is a museum about the moon landing and space exploration. Totally run by volunteers; it is a great place to visit when you are in Carnarvon.

We took a trip in the Apollo Command module (bit corny but fun) and landed the space shuttle in a simulator (after crashing about 5 times as a novice LOL)