A Pearler of a Day

A bit of a sleep in this morning as our Willie Creek pearl farm tour started at 10am. Picked Matt up at around 8:30 in the morning and headed out of town to the Cape Levique road turnoff and we were back onto the dirt until we reached the pearl farm. Jenny and Matt had a coffee while we waited for our tour to start in pleasant surroundings. Megan the tour guide was very funny and bubbly and was a wealth of information on a subject that we three knew very little about. As part of the tour they harvest an old oyster (known in the trade as a fourth seeder) and send it to oyster heaven as the parts of it were explained to us. This one had a few borer holes and inside were a couple of small starfish that are parasites and unwelcome and a small pea crab that is welcome as it does the house keeping for it. It is a bit of a lottery as to what size pearl, if any, is inside and this one was a big one worth about $2000.  Megan said it was probably the second largest she's found on all the tours she's done.

We were treated to morning tour on the deck which included yummy homemade damper with sultanas and then made our way down to the boat for a cruise up Willie Creek to the oyster farms.  The tide was very low and we had to walk down a number of steps to get to the boat but by the time we'd been out on the boat for half an hour or so learning more about pearl farming, the tide had turned and the bottom steps were already under water.  After we'd followed Megan back up to the shop and erroneously guessed the price of a number of pearls based on our new knowledge of how to know a quality pearl when you see one, we wandered back down to the jetty and the creek level was much higher and rapidly increasing as the sand bar between the creek and the Indian Ocean went under water and the ocean rushed up the creek.  Quite a sight to behold!

After the tour we picked up a couple of connectors so Larry could attempt to fix the TV reception problem on the caravan's TV.  He found the workmanship to be of a poor standard and Larry made it to an acceptable standard with what he had but it still would not work. We will leave it and get it repaired under warranty when we get back. Larry did send an email to Downunder RV about issues and also included a picture of Jenny, the Jeep and the van at a lookout overlooking the Cockburn Range which is now been posted on their Facebook page so we are famous!

A couple of quiet beers back at the van and we dropped Matt at the airport and headed off to the Sun Picture Gardens to see The Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The picture gardens is apparently the oldest running one in the world. It was a very pleasant experience and as it is on the flight path for the airport we had a low flying Qantas jet on final approach to land go directly over us.  Very loud at that low altitude but part of the experience as we both have not had a jet fly low over us whilst at the cinema before!

Got home to the caravan to find the grey nomads having a country and western singalong in the van across from us and at quite high volume.  Still, by the time the blog was written they had sung themselves to sleep.  Thank God.