Local Geraldton businesses step up for Valentine’s Day, with plenty of options for couples and singles

Love is in the air this weekend in Geraldton, as couples get ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day on Saturday with local businesses primed to help make it happen. Hospitality and retail operations are taking full advantage of the romantic occasion, with Valentine’s Day specials plastered across Geraldton. Of course, our beaches are perfect for a romantic picnic and there are plenty of outdoor options for those planning to celebrate the day in nature. Bizarrely, Trip Advisor lists the HMS Sydney Memorial as Geraldton’s top activity for couples. For any lovebirds that don’t plan to take a date to the historical monument, there are more conventional options available. Helen Guille-Harvey’s shop Geraldton Floral Studio bursts with flowers on the second biggest day on a florist’s calendar — after Mother’s Day. She starts preparing for the holiday in December, placing orders with flower growers and getting the packaging ready. Ms Guille-Harvey’s preparation so far in advance means that the more forgetful amongst us have an easy option to get that last-minute gift. “There is a few that come in early and know what they want, they’ve got a picture they’ve seen online, things like that,” she said. “But the ones that have come in last-minute, they’re just happy to take whatever we’ve got.” Jesse Commons, who was also busy preparing floral arrangements in the store, said often if flowers were delivered to someone’s workplace, they would receive an influx of orders from their co-workers soon after. For those not sure what they’re looking for in a gift, Read A Lot Books is offering a blind date with a book. The cheap reads, wrapped up by owner Jenny Bishop, offer information about the genre and plot of the book but not the title or author. “It’s just a bit of fun,” she said. “A lot of young ones like them. They think they’re a bit of a giggle.” Ms Bishop said online trends were responsible for the demand for romance books with young people. “With TikTok ‘romantasy’, so fantasy romance, is a big thing. You get a lot of it. It goes pretty quick, but it tends to be when it’s on TikTok, everybody wants it, and then it just dies,” Ms Bishop said about fast-moving online trends. Geraldton Regional Library has done a bit of a twist on classic Valentine’s Day theming. Instead of encouraging patrons to read books about love, they want readers to find a book that they can fall in love with. Bec Edwards, acting co-ordinator library services, said romance was always a popular genre, and the library had more than 1000 romance books on its shelves with a further 17,000 romance ebooks available online. “Our lives are very complicated and complex now. So people just want to escape into something,” she said. “It’s just a simple story that they can fall in love with the character, fall in love with their story, as that character falls in love.” Ms Edwards said there had been a rise of young people interested in classic literature, like Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, and that Geraldton library-goers particularly enjoyed love stories set in WA. If any single women are feeling a bit down in the dumps in the lead-up to Saturday and need a bit more than Wuthering Heights to stay occupied, Sirocco Bar & Cafe has you covered. “Galentine’s Day”, marked on February 13, is a celebration of female friendship popularised by the American sitcom Parks and Rec. Vicki Derreck organised a Galentine’s event at Sirocco Bar & Cafe to “have a couple of hours where girls can just come relax”. “For my single girlfriends, sometimes (Valentine’s Day is) a bit of a downer because they’ve been through break-ups or don’t have a partner,” she said. “So we turned it into a bit of a positive thing, being able to catch up with their besties.” The event on Friday night will have dessert platters and a special pink cocktail available for purchase. Other local venues, like Salt Dish and Tarts and Co, will be offering specials for the occasion.