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. 

 

There was a bit of a line up when we got there as you could only have 9 people at any one time up on the top platform so we chatted the people in front of us. I'd noticed that they were speaking a different language that I seemed to slightly recognize so I asked where they were from and they said some of them were from Columbia and one was from Indonesia and had become friends with them of married one of the others that weren't in the line with us. Anyway one particular lady reminded me so much of our dear Sister Evelyn back at Brighton which was lovely. We chatted to them for a while and then we all went up the tree as a group.

The Gloucester Tree, Pemberton

The view from the top!

 Our plan had been to get close to Albany today, but we seemed to be driving and driving and not getting much closer and we were starting to get quite tired, I started looking for free camps a bit closer to Walpole. I found one just North of Walpole.

 We briefly stopped at a house to get some fresh fruit & eggs.

So here we are for the night with only one other camper van just a bit further up the parking area.

The boys had a game of cricket as there was a nice flat wicket!

Monday 11 January

We were aware last night that the local council were doing some burning off close by and had rung the council that had a number on a sign to ring if anyone was camping anywhere nearby to let them know where we were camping and to make sure it was ok. They agreed that we would be fine as the burning off was further south than us. It wasn't much further up the road but nothing too major thankfully.

The main road runs a little way inland, so we checked out the map and saw there was a road down to a coastal town named 'Peaceful Bay' which we thought we might check out.

After morning tea we went down to the beach for a look at the 'peaceful bay', which did look nice but despite being January was quite cool and breezy. So while the boys were in bathers they pretty quickly decided this was a good spot to observe but not participate!

Peaceful Bay

Jude in the foreground with his hooded jacket - in the middle of summer!

 

Country in Denmark, WA

Our next stop was in Denmark, where we couldn't go past the Denmark Good Food Factory! The country down here is reasonably flat and very good for farming - it looks a lot like the country in the south east of SA, down near Uncle Brian's farm near  Naracoorte.

We had our own lunch rather than buying lunch. We try to avoid eating out as much as possible obviously because of the cost, and this was one that looked nice but we thought we'd save our money for something else.

The rest of our day continued without incident. Here are some nice photos of the drive.

 

We arrived near Albany about 4pm. This area is very light on free camps and there are only a few camp sites, with strict penalties if you try to camp anywhere other than in a designated camp site. I think this is unfortunate, but I understand some campers leave a mess, destroy nature and ruin it for everyone else. I expect that in years to come more of Australia will be like this, unfortunately.

That being the case, we tried one called "Cosy Camp" I think it was but this was full, however one nearby "Torbay Campsite" had some space, so we set up here for the next couple of nights.

Our site at Torbay Campsite

We're reasonably close to some other people as the sites aren't that far apart, but we have an OK spot. Plenty of shade, which is great for the cool but not great for charging the batteries! There's also a long-drop toilet close by.

At the mouth of Torbay Inlet

-- Mim and Greg