Rest of January, 2021

 Mim's Dad, brother Ben and his son Johannes, and us three boys went away for the January long weekend to Yanchep, which is a couple of hours up the coast north of Perth. Had a lovely weekend!

Jan19-20 (Day 334-335) - Goldfields to Wave Rock to Perth

800km - Jan 19 in blue, Jan 20 in red

Tuesday Jan 19 - Goldfields to Wave Rock

 

The water pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie
runs alongside the main road

We headed from our campsite and drove along the highway heading west towards Southern Cross. As we drove we could see the pipeline running alongside the road, the same pipeline we were camped near overnight.  This is the pipeline which was run back in the early 1900's from Mundaring Dam in the Perth hills out to Kalgoorlie to provide a stable water supply for the goldmines. It was this pipeline which helped the goldfields expand and become more profitable, as a lack of water was one of the biggest challenges they faced in the early days.

This little guy had two ticks in his ear! :(

After turning off at Southern Cross and hitting the dirt roads again, we saw another lizard on the road, a blue-tongue this time. But when we picked it up to move it off, we noticed it had two ticks living in its left earhole! :( So with some restraint and with Bek on the tweezers, we managed to extract the little blighters and give them a quick burial under our heels, while Bluey was released to the wild sans-bloodsuckers!

 

Removing the ticks in its ear

Lizard Surgeons 'R' Us

Jan 16 - 18 (Day 331-333) - Esperance, Kalgoorlie

850km - 16th in blue, 17th in red, 18th in purple

Saturday 16 January - Esperance

Today the temperature feels slightly warm, still quite windy but feels a bit more pleasant compared to other days down this way. We spent the morning catching up on school and business work in the van. In the meantime I looked up this to do in and around Esperance. I found a few things that I thought would be interesting so after lunch we left the van squirrelled away in its little spot and headed down to what I thought was an old jetty. But we couldn't get very close as they were revamping it and it didn't look anything like what I thought it would. Never mind I had other ideas for after this.

Jan 14 - 15 (Day 329-330) - Albany to Esperance

 

620km

Thursday 14 January

 Today was a slow morning getting some work and school work done. 

Lunch at Wellstead

Then we hit the road towards Ravensthorpe. We were hoping to get to a caravan park to be able to do some washing and have a shower but most parks are busy this time of year so we had to think outside the box a little. So I looked on Wikicamps for rest stops that had showers available (like we did when we first arrived in Esperance last November) and spotted one at Wellstead which was on the way to Ravensthorpe.

 On the way up the road was closed and took us on quite a detour before heading back to the main highway but at least we were still heading where we wanted.

We all throughly enjoyed our shower! Oh, warm, clean and smelling like violets and daffodils! :D

One way we get a bit of clothes washing
done while on the road

Washing on the road

I also got Greg to fill a bucket half full of warm water to use in our 'caravan washing machine', which is just a 20L mayonnaise pail. This is a tip we learned from other travellers and gets you by. It's pretty easy to use - put your washing powder in and water, dump your clothes in and then sit it on the front (or rear) of your caravan. In our case it lives in the front tool box. The bumping along the road acts as an agitator, so when you arrive at your next destination the clothes are roughly washed. You then change over the water and rinse a few times an then put back in the tool box for the next bit of the travel to shake around and rinse nicely; then when you get to camp simply wring out and hang up.

Since we had used the showers that were free we thought to help them be able to maintain these free facilites we would buy something from the shop. As we got into the shop the boys spotted this cabinet full of matchbox cars. They were in absolute awe.

An incredible matchbox car collection at the Wellstead roadhouse!

Today seemed to be the day of road works. Actually this part of the highway they seem to be doing a lot of work on. Maybe widening it or something? I'm not sure but we were sitting at this stop for at least 5-10 minutes.

This is the Wheatbelt region of WA, and they've now finished harvest so most fields just have the stubble left.

Sun on the stubble - after harvest in the Wheatbelt, WA

Ravensthorpe

We made it to Ravensthorpe by about 4.45pm where we needed to pick up a parcel at the post office by 5pm, which Mum had sent down from Perth as it had arrived the day after we left for this southern part of our trip. It was a new solar regulator as the other one apparently wasn't working properly. 

We had travelled through Ravensthorpe on the way from Esperance to Perth preparing for our lockdown, so we started to recognise a few spots from here on.

Then we found a lovely little spot just south west of Ravensthorpe for the night. The weather has been so bitterly cold the last little while since getting down towards Albany which is a bit unusual for us as we've been in the warmer parts of the country for ages. Only needed our jumpers a few times here and there but down here we have needed them pretty much every day since about Augusta. But I must say it is nice in the evening when it comes to bedtime and you can snuggle under the quilt because it's cold. Much more bearable than sweltering and not being able to sleep because you are so hot.

Our camp for the night, about 10km south of Ravensthorpe

Friday 15 January

We headed from our rest stop down to Hopetoun to have a bit of a look around and hopefully drive along the coast towards Esperance.

We spotted a bakery on the way through and just had to have a little something. The boys had a quick play on the playground and then we went for a short walk down the street to the bakery and got some goodies to share between us all.

The coastline and beaches look so lovely but because it's so cold we haven't gone for any more swims.

Greg has been hunting and hunting online to try to find a bull bar for the Pajero. You'd be aware we hit a kangaroo on Cape York Peninsula July last year and we're going to be getting it repaired in Perth before we leave, but we're hoping to install a bull bar instead of just getting a new front bumper. It's been very hard to find something exactly right, and he made a few further unsuccessful phone calls while we were having morning tea.

Beautiful shoreline east of Hopetoun

From Hopetoun there was a road running along the coast for a while before it rejoined the main road further along, but we thought it might be nice to have some scenery of the coast so opted to take that road. We pumped up the tyres at a service station (we'd let them down a little while ago for a dirt road), then carried along the road out east for a while and got some nice views of the coastline, however the road was reasonably skinny and after a while it turned into dirt! Having just pumped up the tyres we weren't inclined to drop them back down for a smoother ride, so after a minute or two's vacillation decided to chicken out and head back to Hopetoun then back up to the main road. Times like these are why we've said how good information centres are, and this is the price you pay for ignoring your own advice!

Along the way we spotted a blue tongue lizard which Matthew went and rescued off the road and we let it road the car for a few minutes and then release back into the bush.

Along the road from Hopetoun back to Ravensthorpe a few farmers have put these large pieces of art around the place. This is just one of them but there were about another 10 pieces of art that were a bit further down other roads which we didn't go down. 

On our way to Esperance I made a few phones calls to caravan parks but every one of them was fully booked out so next best thing is looking on the satellite map and spotting bush tracks and finding somewhere we can squirrel ourselves away in that's free and to ourselves. We found one just 12 kms North West of Esperance and we'll stay here for 2 nights. There's not heaps of phone signal but enough to get some work done.

Our camp near Esperance

-- Mim and Greg

Jan 12 - 13 (Day 327-328) - Albany

150km

Tuesday 12 January

We had quite a slow morning catching up on school and business work while I looked up what things we could do nearby and in Albany in the afternoon.

I remember coming down to Albany as a young child (not sure what age) to stay with Uncle Steve and Aunty Nola Higgs. I don't remember much about the countryside but I do remember seeing the Dog rock and also going to a blowhole near the beach. 

After lunch we made our way into Albany. On our way out we thought we would just check out the beach close to where we are camping as it's a 4wd track and we'd left the caravan behind. It was a bit hilly with softer sand than we'd expected so we needed to keep the speed up a bit, however the tracks were also quite skinny with lots of blind hills and corners. So it was a bit of a hairy drive, especially as we still had hard tyres from road driving. We got to the end of one track which we hoped led to the beach but it was just a look-out, so we checked the satellite map and found one that led to the beach. This was a long downhill one so we started down the track, but came across another car coming back up the other way. Eeeeek! He of course needed speed to get up the hill and had to stop. We needed to keep moving but also had to stop. He could roll backwards down the track but we had to reverse back up the track from a standstill! So hardly surprisingly we started sinking in the sand. We quickly got the recovery tracks off the roof to give us a bit of grip - these helped get us moving a bit, but we couldn't get enough speed up on the tracks to take us any further than the end of the recovery track, at which point we had to reposition the track and try again, all while the other people were waiting further down the track. After a few goes we let the tyres down to 20psi which helped, and after a few more tries we got to the top where we could turn around (after sinking in a few more times!). Our mild interest in seeing the beach had utterly evaporated by now, so we headed out onto the main road to find a petrol station up the road to pump the tyres back up again.

Jan 10 -11 (Day 321- 322) - Milyeannup State forest, North Walpole Rest Stop and Torbay Campground

330km

Sunday 10 January

We had a lovely slow morning this morning. It was a lovely cool temperature and we had some sprinkes of rain a number of times while we enjoyed our nice warm bacon and egg burgers.

After this we did our own meeting on Genesis 19 on the theme of 'Choices' - seeing that there are only two choices in life, and looking at Lot's wife and her response to being told to leave Sodom.

Mid morning we drove for some time through large amounts of beautiful forest down towards Pemberton where we enjoyed some pies for lunch. They weren't the best pies we've had but it filled our bellies non the less. 

Crossings Bakery, Pemberton

On our travels down to Pemberton for some reason the thought popped into my head that I remembered somewhere down this way there was some tree you could climb to the top of so looked it up and thankfully it was in Pemberton where we were headed. 

It was called the Gloucester tree. It has stood tall in the Karri forest for many years being used in the early 1940s to look out for fires before spotter planes were introduced as it stands 53 metres tall and you can scan the landscape for miles for signs of any fires from the very top. Obviously today it only used by tourists and visitors how are of the more daring type to climb to see the view.  To enter you need to park a fee of $15 dollars per car but we had an Annual parks pass that covers most of the national parks in Western Australia. 

Jan 8 - 9 (Day 325-326) - Tuart to Darradup (Milyeannup State Forest)

280km

Friday 8 January

Last night we were joined by quite a few roof top campers and camper vans of various different nationalities. We couldn't quite believe how close they decided to park next to us at such a late time but thankfully they didn't seem to bother us with noise or music, only their engine running for quite some time both when they arrived and before they left in the morning. 

Today was a pretty unproductive day in terms of progress along our trip (spoiler alert: we ended up staying tonight at the same place we stayed last night!). The intention had been to look around Busselton and then head down towards Augusta. However there are NO free camps at all between Busselton and Augusta, so we knew we had to head off fairly early in order to cover all that route. Sadly we slept in a bit so didn't get on our way until after 10am so things weren't looking great!

Jan 7 (Day 324) - Herron Point Campground to Tuart Free camping area

We were woken this morning by some strong winds which were making our awning rattle and shake the whole van. Then our neighbours decided they were going to leave early as well, and treated us to an approximate rendition of "The Caravan Hitching Chorus". It goes like this:

'Just a little bit more, No not that far.
Some more to the left. Bit more, nah nah!
Now you've gone too far, take it back to the right,
Oh strewth Les luv, this'll take all night!'

And then the chorus:

"Now she's hitched on, let's pretend our Prado's a Mack,
And let 'er idle all hour, and make the neighbours crack!"
 

Having listened to an approximate version of this, we gave up the idea of sleeping any further so got up and had our coffee to start the day. It's going to be a warm day today so finding a nice spot to swim is on the cards.

We headed down the freeway towards Bunbury area and came across a huge playground and cafe that we'd heard about. It's called the Crooked Carrot. It was set up so beautifully. Lots of homemade jams, preserves & other such delights. We got a coffee to share and a muffin and went out to the playground area. 

 

6 Jan (Day 323) - Perth to Herron Point (start of south-west 2 week trip)

 

95km

Wednesday 6 January 2021

Today we started out trip down south. Our original plan when we crossed the border back in November was to go along the south coast and make our way up to Perth but the quarantine time totally changed that plan. We had also hoped to do this part of the state on our last trip but Jude was on crutches after having broken his leg so it would have been too difficult.

The plan for this two week leg of our trip God willing, is to head along the south coast to Albany, along to Esperance and then back inland to Perth via Wave Rock and the Wheatbelt.

We are calling this 'Day 323' of our trip as far as it relates to travelling. Since we've been landed for a couple of weeks we'll just exclude those days in the official 'days of travel' count.

Anyway we headed off after having some morning tea at Dad & Mum's and made our way to fill up with fuel. Our first stop was about 200m away at the Thornlie Library for some essential reading material for the kids!