Dec 4 (Day 308) - Perth to Guilderton - back on the road!

170km

Today we're on our way again! Our plan over the next couple of weeks is to head up north and then back to Perth with Mim's Mum and Dad. We're not sure how far we'll get in that two weeks but that's the broad plan. Beyond that we don't know exactly where we'll go. But we do want to go at least as far as Geraldton, because last year Mim and Jude had to fly with the Royal Flying Doctor Service from Geraldton to Perth when Jude broke his leg, so they've not travelled that bit of road before. We expect to get at least as far as Shark Bay, possibly Carnarvon. But we'll see.

The best laid plans of mice and men stated we were going to be heading off together first thing in the morning, after having gotten everything packed the night before. Oh how promising that always sounds. Our intentions to leave Adelaide at the start of our trip in mid-January sounded just as promising (we ended up leaving on 1 Feb!). If you've ever tried to head off at a particular time you'll know there are so many 'last minute' things that the last minute tends to take several hours or more! And so it was this time. Given the pace things were moving, I went back to the doctor for a face-to-face appointment rather than the intended phone appointment given I expected we'd have been on the road by then.

 

Our original plan was to stop at Guilderton at the mouth of Moore River, which has long been a holiday spot for Mim's family. However Mim's Mum and Dad were visiting some friends in Cadoux which is  a couple of hours inland, so we decided to go our separate ways for the first night.

By about 3pm we were ready to leave and headed off up Roe Highway. Oh how nice it was to be back on the road again! This was a bit unexpected! We'd of course really liked being in a house again for a while, as per the previous post, however in a house we all tend to spread out and do our own things a bit more. In the car and van we're all in the same space so much more, hear each others' conversations, share each others' activities and so on. Even now writing this on the morning of Dec 6, the kids are all sitting at the table in the caravan, I'm sitting on our bed, and Mim's three metres away at the kitchen. You really don't get such closeness in a house, and back in the car all together again I felt this keenly.

First stop was a fuel station to fill up the tanks. Mim's Dad referred us to a self-serve place in Forrestfield which has quite cheap diesel ($1.03/L) so we did that, then stopped at a BP to reset the tyre pressures (at the recent service they rotated the tyres front to back which meant the pressures were now incorrect - we run the back tyres with higher pressures than the front given the extra load of the van over the rear axle). Last stop was a wrecker's in Midvale to get some new rubber seals for some under the bonnet which had started to perish.

We then headed west towards the ocean along Reid Highway (which runs east-west on the north side of Perth) until we met up with the Mitchell Freeway (which starts in Perth and runs north). By this time it was about 5:30pm so we stopped just north of Joondalup for tea.

How we found our campsite for the night

This done, we looked closer at Wikicamps to find a free camp for the night. Unfortunately there's not a lot in the way of free camps up this way. We found one reasonably close to Guilderton, but it was fairly full and very close to the road. After this there was nothing for some distance apart from sites which were right in the middle of sand dunes, which we didn't want to go into with the caravan. Wikicamps has plenty of camps submitted by councils or private individuals. But sometimes there are simply no suitable options.

The satellite map showing some shubbery with a track

So we opted for another trick we've used recently when there's nothing publicly declared available. We looked at a satellite map to see if we could find any tracks heading into bush. What we're looking for here are dark patches (trees / forest / shrubs) with a track leading from the road that's wide enough for a vehicle and with some space to pull off the track. Fortunately we found something a little way up the road.

The little track off to the left leading to our campsite

The entrance was very nondescript, and driving past it you'd hardly even notice it, but the satellite map had shown the track went inland for a while. So we took this track, followed it along for several minutes and then came to a clearing (shown with the arrow on the photo above) where we pulled in.

Naturally if there's any signage advising people to keep out we respect that, but in the absence of that we take the view that we take nothing but photos and leave nothing but tyre tracks. It's possible it could be private property or state forest, in either case the custodians may not encourage visitors. We also try to head off fairly early in the morning. But we feel if we take a very low impact approach that if someone does happen to turn up at some point that a reasonable person won't be concerned at our presence.

A bee enjoying some native Australian
flora (taken the next morning)

The site looked to be an area where someone had laid out heaps of bee hives to harvest on the native flowers nearby (lots of yellow Banksias at least), however they were almost all asleep by the time we pulled in. This was far enough from the road to be quite quiet and certainly completely concealed, so it was perfect for us.

 

 

Bee hives in our camp spot.

 

Our campsite for the night

-- Greg