Distance hopping in Australia with a Piper Comanche must be close to freedom travel at its best. Stow your overnight bag in the airplane, takeoff and like an Apollo moonshot enjoy the ride until figuratively splashing down at the next stopping-off place. From Coral Bay it was just a short 40 minute orbital hop south, tracking the red-sandy shoreline that characterisers Australia’s western extremity, before it was time to prepare for landing at the small coastal settlement of Carnarvon.
It’s been a Bazflyer experience that inevitably the unexpected can usually be anticipated on a typical visit to any small Australian rural settlement. Carnarvon did not disappoint. The surrounding area is intensively cultivated. Known as the fruit bowl of Western Australia, the town of Carnarvon produces 80% of WA's total fruit and vegetable crops. It is also home to a thriving prawn, scallop, crab and fishing industry. But dig a little deeper and it has a surprising history.
At the outbreak of WW2 the warship H.M.A.S. Sydney was a military icon of its time. Victorious in battle the Cruiser class ship returned to duties off the Australian Coast in the early 1940’s. It was while engaged on a mission off Australia’s West Coast in November 1941 that the ‘Sydney’ was sunk by the German Raider Kormoran, disguised as a merchant ship, with the loss of its total compliment of 645 crew. No bodies were ever recovered. This engagement and wartime tragedy occurred in the waters about 200km off Carnarvon. Most of the Kormoran’s German crew made it ashore or were rescued. It was not until March 2008 and using the most modern technology then available that the resting place of both ships was found. A wonderful memorial to this not so well known navel episode of WW2 stands proudly in the settlement of Carnarvon.
The richness of Carnarvon’s history extends into the modern area where in the 60’s this small community played a key role in the USA space program and putting man on the moon. The Carnarvon Tracking Station was built to support NASA’s Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs. It was the last station to communicate with the space capsules leaving the earth orbit, and the last to make contact before splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The facility closed in 1973 and at the height of the operation it had a staff of 220 people. Bazflyers visited the museum that now occupies the site and recalled our own young memories of men walking on the moon.
Coral Bay south to Carnarvon
Memorial to the crew of 645 men lost on the H.M.A.S. ‘Sydney’
Flowers growing in the red West Coast sand
Inside the Space and Technology Museum
Art depicting the local fishing industry
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