Geraldton/Dongara

Well! This was a different week! Kieren had to fly home for work for 5 days (including travel) so we set up at Dongara – a very sleepy little town an hour south of Geraldton. There’d been a spate of robberies in Geraldton caravan parks so I wasn't keen on spending the week alone there. In hindsight, being close to airports and hospitals may have saved many hours driving! 

My awesome crazies :P

We dropped Kieren off at Geraldton Airport and then made our way to Geraldton hospital to have Mr J’s arm re-xrayed (as requested the previous week at Carnarvon Hospital). This time the swelling had gone down enough and the fractures were obvious; unfortunately not just obvious but rather concerning. Mr J managed to fracture his radius in his forearm and also sustained 2 fractures of his humorous near the elbow joint just where a tendon inserts (which makes it difficult to heal). 3 hours later (with 4 kids doing school work in the ED waiting room!) they decided that they’d like to take Mr J to surgery to put a screw in his bone. This floored me! How do you help a child through surgery with 3 other young children and live in a caravan an hour away??! Times like this you wish your family were around the corner and you hadn't just waved off your husband on a plane! Unfortunately Jesse had just eaten though so they weren't able to complete surgery that day~(yay!!) Instead they decided to put him in a full cast and re-xray at Fracture Clinic the next week.

When we got back to Dongara another family had arrived with 2 children 5 & 7 and a little girl aged 18 months that Miss E doted on! It was their last 2 nights on the road after 12 months of The Big Lap! What an achievement. We spent the next 36 hours hanging out and REALLY appreciated their company in an otherwise grey nomad landscape. The Jumping Pillow certainly got a workout! We had a little “end of journey” party for them the night before they moved home. We were a little sad to see them go. THANKS heaps Rutland family :)

The next 3 days went VERY slowly with only us and another 2 sets of nomads at the park. (see –told you it was a sleepy town!) We visited the Library lots (they even gave us a library card) and the op shop as well. A fair amount of school work and movies were completed as the weather was pretty cold & windy. (We watched Rabbit-proof fence and marked the girls' journey on our map!)

The last day we did a few touristy things on the way to Geraldton to pick up Kieren – we saw the Greenough Tree (grows sideways cos of the strong winds) and Greenough Museum. I also shouted the kids to an afternoon at the Dongara Activity Park where we played mini-golf and outside puzzles & watched lots of rare birds. After we picked up Kieren (Mr J cried he was so pleased to see him!), we had fish & chips on the Geraldton foreshore.

Can't believe this was an actual product for sale 100 years ago!

The next day was back to Geraldton for Fracture Clinic where Mr J got a cool camo cast! (To match his clothes & hat!) 

Then YAY! We can leave Dongara – not a place I’ll miss in a hurry! Especially these rainy & windy storms most days!