29 February 2012

Bonus day! Leap year.

Yesterday we went to the Esperance Museum and saw amongst other things parts of Skylab which was a space station that broke up on re entry and crashed to earth near Esperance. Several bits of it are in the museum.
Lots of the musuem pertains to the ocean and boats as lots of ships came into the area and quite a few sunk here too.

Today was a big day for us. It was also our last day in Esperance, this time. I say this time as it is already very obvious to both of us that we will be back. What a wonderfully stunning piece of Australia.
So today we drove out to Cape Le Grand National Park.
We went to Lucky Bay first. Beautiful. Matthew Flinders used this bay when he was exploring Australia. There is a monument to his visit on the rocks overlooking the bay. There is a small caravan and camping area but getting a place looks difficult as it is very popular.

Lucky Bay

Then we went to Thistle Cove and Hellfire Bay (very pretty) and had a look at Frenchmans Peak which is a huge granite rock that the fit can climb. It takes a couple of hours hard walking to make it to the top and back but we could clearly see people on the top and one daredevil was doing handstands up there!

Frenchmans Peak

From there we went to Le Grand Beach. Wow wonderful, the sand squeaks under your feet at all these locations. It is so fine and so white. The ocean is clear and clean and such a pretty color. We saw animal tracks in the sand and they do say it is not uncommon to see kangaroos and other wildlife on the beach sunning themselves. There is another little camping area here and this one would suit our vehicle space wise but once again it appears very popular and getting a place would be like winning a lottery.

Le Grand Beach

On the way back into town we were planning to stop and visit the full sized replica of Stonehenge that someone has built just out of Esperance. Apparently they went to a lot of trouble to get it to accurately record/show the solstices etc, BUT, just our luck, it was not open today! Never mind we will see it next time we come this way.

Esperance Stonehenge

Cannot leave Esperance without thanking my old work mate and her friends for the hospitality. We have been wined and dined and given guided tours of the area and they all went out of their way to make us welcome. Thank you all. Looking forward to our next visit whenever it may be.

Tomorrow we head towards Albany. No rush. We will get there in a day or two but it will have to be something really special to beat this pretty little town.

28 February 2012

Happy Birthday Belinda!
Is t here any thing better than eating FRESH fish and chips beside the seaside???? I think not!
Tonights  tea was fresh fish and chips here in Esperance. The best. Eaten with the best friends.  What else can I say?

27 February 2012

What a shame! The visitors for today had to cancel. They are too tired after spending most of today protecting their house from a bushfire on the rest of their property and in the surrounding district. Poor them, most exhausting trying to fight a bush fire. Do hope they are gonna be ok. Fire is out but they are still on high alert just in case it reignites.
This morning there was a pod of dolphins out in the bay in front of our caravan. I got the binoculars out and watched them for about 15 minutes. There was quite a lot of them.
We tidied our van ready for the visitors and again realise how lucky we are to have such a splendid home. When it is sparkling clean and tidy it truely is a magnificent home.

26 February 2012

Today my friend picked us up at 1pm and took us on a tour of the local sights. We saw all the best bays. The sights were amazing. The seas were blue the sands were clean the surf was white white white and the views went on forever. What a stunning naturally wonderful piece of Australia.
Esperance claims the bay of isles and yep we saw all of them too.
After that we went to a property owned by friends of hers and that was a study in taste style and self sufficentcy. They have a largish place on the outskirts of town and grow their own vegetables and have their own orchard and pond which is stocked with marin and trout and are surrounded by natural bush. They also run a B&B and designed and built their own place. Marvellous! Stunning! etc......

We had a wonderful time tonite and it will be hard to leave such hospitable people and such stunning scenery. But of course we must eventually.

Tomorrow they are all coming to visit our place and stay for dinner. Really looking forward to that. They currently have some house guests from France so it is fun trying to communicate and work out the language. Been a long long time since my schoolgirl french lessons. The French visitors are coming tommorow too.

23 February 2012

This photo was taken out the back window of our caravan after we set up camp today in Esperance.
Yes we have walked over the road and been for a swim, well Himself did, I paddled in the shallows.
Have only booked in for three nights, will be interesting to see just how long we end up staying.

We were up early this morning and got away from Lake Grace by 8.30am.  Just as well too as the wind was blowing a gale and it was  hotter than hell. We had a bit of a chat about days with strong winds and hot weather and lo and behold out on the horizon we could see smoke. No idea where it was but somehow doubt that the local farmers were burning wheat stubble on a day like today. We pulled up in a lovely purpose built lay-by that even had an all weather picnic area under cover but it was too darn hot so we settled for a brisk walk to get the blood circulating and got back in the car to eat lunch as we drove with the air con on full bore!
Got to Esperance and set up our weather station which said it was 42C early this afternoon.It is still 42C and it is now 5pm. Guess they are having a heat wave!
Have called an old workmate friend who lives here now and she will be dropping in later to share some fish and chips with us and play catch up. Will be wonderful to see her again, its been a few years since our last contact. We come bearing goodies from her family in Perth, so we will be doubly welcome.
Sight of the day:
A farm with a town letter box. I said we should go back and leave them a note to say hey this is wrong get yourself a proper letterbox and stop showing such poor form. Farm letterboxes are traditionally made out of 44 gallon drums or similar cast off containers and some we have seen are works of art the way they are turned into all sorts of fascinating, quirky or downright beautiful pieces. But they are all BIG, easily found by mail contractors and here was this tiny little town letterbox on a pole at the entrance to a dirt road between paddocks out in the middle of the southern wheatbelt where it appears that the standard paddock size must be at least 1000 acres as fences are few and far between where the wheat stubble shines golden in the hot hot sun. Come on people have a little class please!

22 February 2012

Surprise surprise, we got out of a park before 10am!! Up early and organised enough to make it through the packing stage without tantrums and still happy by departure, my my things are going well.......
If you go to Mandurah do stay at the Mandurah Caravan and Tourist Park, the folk that own and run it are wonderful. Very welcoming, bend over backward to be helpful and they even remember your name. Simply marvellous people who are a credit to the caravan park industry. If only more were like them!
Nice days driving, a bit on the warm side but still a nice day. Only 40C. We even found a user friendly public dump point that was accessable in Pinjarra.
The scenery today was varied. We started with a nice gentle mountain climb. Lots of State Forest trees and appropriate signage. Was good, I did NOT hit any panic buttons (sorry BB), it genuinely was a gentle (ish) climb over the tail end of the Darling Ranges to the never ending broad acre wheat country on the other side.
We passed all sorts of interesting little country townships to finally end up in Lake Grace on our way to Esperance tomorrow.
Lake Grace is one of those towns with a main street, a couple of pubs, a shire office and not much else, oops hang on I forgot to mention the obligatory wheat silo......and the train line to carry all that wheat to a port somewhere for export!!!
Tomorrow we will pass through Newdegate, site of the biggest field days in WA on our way to Esperance. Never been to Esperance so really looking forward to that.

21 February 2012

Moving day tomorrow. We had planned to go south but there is a big bushfire between us and our destination, so will reverse the planned route and go east first then south later when the fire is safely out. This is the same fire that blanketed Perth in smoke late last week. The smoke cleared so we thought it was out. The television reception here is pretty ordinary, in fact it is downright woeful, all we get is crackle and pixilation most of the time, so we rely on the internet for our news, and it is telling us there have been evacuations and all hell is breaking loose so we will stay as far from there as we can for now. 28,000 hectares is not just someones back paddock, well it would be if we were up north, but down here that is a sizeable chunk of territory most of which is national park or blue gum forestry projects. Lots of fuel for a fire.

19 February 2012

Due to move tomorrow but we like it here so are going to stay a bit longer! Nothing like the peace and quiet of the country. We even have two chooks scratching around under the van most days. I offered them a nice warm bed in my turbo oven but they clucked off!

17 February 2012

Grrr, wishes people would give clear, concise, simple, easy to understand directions??? Today we were given bad directions by a Tourist Information Centre. They really should know what is in the town before being allowed to send visitors up the garden path! No we did not misunderstand!  I always thought their job was to make visitors feel welcome in their district. This particular person just wanted to clear her queue so that she could go to lunch, heaven forbid one of the great unwashed should actually be worthy of her attention or get the a hint of a smile. Oh well you live and learn.
We took a little (cough hic hic cough) drive through the country today. We went to Pinjarra then took the road less travelled to Bunbury via Harvey and Brunswich Junction. In Bunbury we drove around in circles trying to locate a particular shopping centre, eventually stumbling upon it despite the old hags misdirection only to find it was not what we wanted. We gave up and drove back to Secret Harbour to visit our old friends from Kalbarri who are in town doing some visiting of their own.
Was a long days touring. Very pleased to see camp tonight. Hoping we get a sleep in tomorrow.....

15 February 2012

Spent the day in camp being bone lazy.
Had a super long sleep in then got going and did a spot of washing. While that was drying I read a book cover to cover and cooked a roast dinner. Himself played a few computer games and that is really about all we achieved today.
Maybe tomorrow we will feel more like playing tourist!
Funny how life goes. Here we are out in the country and all we want to do is sleep. I wonder if we are playing catch up for all that city noise???

14 February 2012

I know I already posted on this date, I am NOT having a meltdown, look at the time lines and you will see that the earlier post was really about yesterday.
Today we slept late, so nice to be out in the country with the country peace and quiet versus the constant air traffic at the last stop, then did as little as  possible for the morning followed by a trip to the local shops around lunchtime to find food, I had lasagne, Himself of course had fish and chips, then it was into some serious shopping. My favourite store was having a nothing over $20 sale so bought a couple of tops then we raided the grocery store. Seems someone (me) did not look when turning the fridge back on after our travels yesterday and hit the wrong button which means it did not actually turn on but instead spent all day yesterday and most of last night turned off! Bugger! Found it totally defrosted and all the food at room temperature at 3.00am when I opened it for a cold drink. Huge donation to the rubbish bins this morning and a trip to the shops to restock the blessed thing. Lesson learned. Do not allow oneself to be distracted when breaking camp and double check everything when  making camp at the next stop. Much more of this can become expensive!!!
Over the fence beside our camp we have two bull arab dogs, a shetland pony and assorted chooks. Up above us in the very very shady trees we have so far seen assorted warblers and parrots. On the way to the rubbish bin this morning I was bitten in broad daylight by at least 5 mosquitos. The blurb from the office suggests we watch where we walk during summer as the local wildlife includes bandicoots and dugites and tigers....    An interesting assortment. Guess we is genuinely out of the city limits now.

14 February 2012

Couldn't decide if I really wanted to keep doing this blog, so took a break over the Xmas holidays. 
Hey even the dedicated get tired occasionally....
We spent two and a half months in Perth, been there, done that.
Its sort of nice being back where you know how to find everything, but if you stay long enough in any one place you eventually begin to remember why you left!
Yesterday we hitched up our wagon and hit the open road again.
Stay tuned, maybe we will all get a laugh out of this years travels.