Whale World

Happy Birthday Grandpa! It’s been a busy couple of days in Albany. Yesterday we packed up from Betty’s Beach and drove into town, going straight to the Wind Farm which is on a headland at the bottom of Albany and actually pretty cool – there’s 12 turbines and a couple of different viewing spots for them, including one that you can walk right under. I know some people think the noise of them would be annoying, but I actually quite liked the steady swish, swish, swish, I think it would kind of be like living next to the beach and hearing waves maybe. Anyway after that it was to The Gap and a natural rock bridge – they’re always amazing to see, things like that, although it always gives me a heart attack thinking about the boys skipping around with no railings stopping you from plummeting off a cliff top a couple of hundred feet into the see. I’m not the most relaxing person to be around there and Daniel was telling me yesterday that I was hurting his hand I was gripping onto it so tightly J Then in the afternoon we went to Whale World, which is the old whaling station here turned into a tourist attraction talking not only about whaling in Albany, but about whales and sharks in general. It sounds weird but it’s a good centre – although it freaked Conor out because part of the tour involves some audio of people telling about how they towed the whale in, pulled it up onto this big wooden chopping block and then basically hacked it up. There’s also the huge toothed saw there that they chopped up the heads with. He just couldn’t listen to any more and didn’t really enjoy it after that – I asked if it was the gruesomeness or the fact that it was about killing animals and he said both. Daniel seemed to enjoy it and Nick and I found it very interesting – there was a skeleton room with a couple of whole skeletons, including of a pygmy blue whale (whales that had died naturally) which were pretty cool. Also a section of blubber so you could see what it looks like, and even some whale lice (!) which were found on one of the whales that washed ashore dead (it was very unwell apparently).

Anyway that was most of the afternoon, then we moved to our new campsite, Torbay Inlet – we met someone who said that it was supposed to be a windy rainy night so we decided an inlet might have more coverage than a campsite by the sea. We got our tarp up over the tent and everything, and it was quite windy but with not much rain so we were fine. It’s been sunny again today but still pretty windy and not so warm any more. Today we did more touristy stuff, went to see the Brig Amity, a ship that brought the first European settlers here from Sydney to try and set up a penal colony (not so successful), and the museum which had quite a good kids area with some hands on stuff. Now we’re at the library so the kids could use a computer for a bit and we can use the power for our computer. Tomorrow we’ll pack up and head on, not quite sure where to yet (homework for tonight)

Albany

Albany

We had a bit of a driving day yesterday – packed up at Mason Bay and headed for Albany. We drove through Ravensthorpe where Nick and the kids went to the local museum while I went to the IGA –they were quite interested in a settler who got speared in the neck by the local indigenous people for something that he had done. It’s a shame that we missed out on Fitzgerald River NP – I finally rang the ranger from Ravensthorpe who said they were actually opening it up for camping yesterday, but by then we’d kind of made up our mind and decided to keep on our route.

Then we decided to take the scenic route at the Mason Bay ranger’s suggestion, and drove through the Stirling Ranges. They really were amazing looking mountains – just suddenly sticking up out of nowhere and I couldn’t decide how best to describe them – they kind of looked like someone had drawn a squiggly line as their top, leaving lots of little sharp peaks, or like the top of whipped cream can look (in peaks), or meringue, or even a bit like a person’s profile if they were lying on their side (nose, chin, stomach sticking out etc).

Anyway we didn’t stop anywhere but just enjoyed the view as we drove and decided to stay just outside Albany at Betty’s Beach, on the northern edge of Two People's Bay - we decided to stay out of town to make it cheaper, because we want to stay in Albany for a few days - it seems like there's quite a bit to see here and if we were in a $30/night caravan park that would make it expensive. So Betty's Beach was in our cheap camps book, but we didn't get there 'til quite late - partly because we got a bit lost and had to back track quite a bit, the long way around. It's a strange kind of campsite, we got there right on dusk and there were a few other young people there standing around a fire (having just passed the 'no fires whatsoever' sign) and a sign saying it's a salmon fishing spot, so we thought they might be people there for the weekend to do some fishing. We set up a bit further away and lit our own fire (there are even concrete fireplaces!) in between these corrugated iron shacks that look very old and pretty disused. They might have been put there by people going there to fish or something, we're guessing, as no-one is using them this weekend. It kind of feels like you're on someone's land though, even though they're not there. I’ve since looked it up in another booklet and saw that it’s supposed to be a commercial fishing spot! Oh well, we’re only staying one more night. When we got up we saw some of the other people out on the rocks fishing so haven't actually spoken to them before heading off into Albany, and then didn’t get back until dusk this evening as well. It's a pretty rugged but beautiful spot, not a swimming type of spot, quite windy, but still attractive.

Anyway we headed into Albany for the day, went to the Saturday markets and got some goat's cheese which we haven't had yet, then an ANZAC memorial where someone pointed out a whale in the harbour (kind of in the distance), followed by driving down to Middleton Beach, which has to be the best 'town beach' (as the Info Centre lady described it) I've seen. Amazing coloured water, people swimming lazily, a walk around the headland in search of that whale (didn't find it again), followed by fantastic fish and chips at the Squid Shack at Emu Point. I can see why Bron and Mike enjoyed living here - who wouldn't, it's just the most beautiful town, spread around a number of bays and inlets. It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful sunny day - all I needed to really make my day was to see a whale up close (still waiting). After lunch we went to the Princess Royal Fortress which has a lot of historical military stuff, including, most excitingly, old artillery guns that the kids can sit on and turn around and 'use'. Lots of fun, and it ended up taking up the whole afternoon. We might be here quite a few days with other stuff to see, not to mention a few beaches to hopefully go to - we stupidly forgot to put our swimmers in the car this morning or we could have made the most of the weather. We’re thinking of packing up from here in the morning, taking our trailer into town while we do more sightseeing, and moving camp to the western side of town, to a site which is slightly closer in.

Mason Bay

Happy Birthday Kate and Damo!

Well it turned out that we didn’t choose quite the right caravan park – we turned our noses up at one which seemed to be in the industrial area and chose one instead on the side of town near the wharf, but it turned out to also back onto a road that the trucks obviously use when coming into town (noisy brakes) and it was also very close to the railway crossing. The trains finish at about midnight and start again at about 5am, and seem to go off every hour, giving a big toot every time they’re about to cross the crossing…. So it was a bit of a noisy night. Otherwise there was a nice hot shower in the morning, clean clothes and clean hair, which is always a nice feeling.

We had plans to head off yesterday morning to Fitzgerald River NP, after first doing a few more bits of shopping – we were trying to find some second hand books for us and the kids, which we did eventually, plus investigating a new jockey wheel for the trailer and a new lantern to use while eating dinner. The jockey wheel we had had a big fat tyre which basically got flattened by the weight of the trailer every time we put it up and down (which made it hard to put it up and down) and everyone else seems to have a hard plastic thinner wheel. We found a camping store that sold them but it took over an hour to find one that fit, or more precisely make one fit. They were very nice in that they got us to drive behind to their workshop and helped, but it just took quite a bit longer than we were hoping, and in the meantime the Information Office had told us that Fitzgerald River NP is closed because of the recent rain – they don’t want people bringing in a deadly fungus on their tyres as it’s a very protected area. Anyway one thing that turned out great was that we stopped at a yabby farm just 5 mins out of Esperance which was great. It’s just a small privately run operation in a rural backyard, with about 6 tanks with yabbies of different sizes in them, but the lady who owns it knows quite a bit and the boys were quite interested, and we ended up buying a kilo of them for entrée.

The boys thought it very exciting to be carrying a box of live yabbies in the boot and kept wanting to check them, but I had visions of them spilling all over the ground at a highway stop and us chasing them…. I asked if we needed to eat them that night, as we already had dinner simmering in our thermal cooker in the boot, and she said no, but they’re nocturnal so if you don’t cook them tonight they’ll spend the night knocking and trying to get out of the box, and that wasn’t such a good mental picture either.

 Anyway we didn’t leave there until about 2pm so had a very late lunch by the side of the road and legged it to our new stop, Mason Bay, which was recommended by one of our books. It has turned out to be one of the best places we’ve stopped – we did get here very late but it’s just beautiful, we’re right next to the sea, there’s a pit toilet and there’s only one other caravan here which we can’t see (and haven’t heard a peep out of them). It’s like we’ve got our own private beach really. We ended up spending this morning on the beach which is, as per the other ones we’ve seen lately, beautiful, with fine white sand and not a soul on it. It was very relaxing to just hang out by the tent in the morning while the boys roamed around playing whatever game they were playing, then we all went down to the beach and built some serious sandcastles (architecture by Conor), and Daniel and I even went for a skinny dip because the sun came out and the water didn’t seem very cold at all (until we got in). Daniel thought that was very exciting and refused to get dressed for about an hour afterwards J we also made sandwiches and ate them on the beach for lunch while Conor described the set up of the by now sandcastle city (he was King and had granted Daniel and I extra land since he liked our sandcastle on a rock so much). Then in the afternoon we drove off in search of wood for the cracker fire we had planned for dinner. So now we’ve made a great noodle stir fry (great wok!) on the fire, the kids and Nick have toasted marshmallows and everyone’s cosy in bed. We’ve decided that since we can’t go to Fitzgerald River NP, tomorrow we’ll do a biggish drive and park ourselves somewhere just outside Albany, and do day trips in there for a few days, as there seems to be quite a lot to do there (and trying to avoid the cost of caravan parks).

24th May, Cape Le Grand

View from Frenchman Peak looking south - can just see Lucky Bay on the left

One of the amazing flowers in the park

Yesterday turned out to be a beautiful day, so we convinced the kids to ride our bikes up to Frenchman Peak nearby – we think it got its name because it’s a mountain with what looks like a beret on top. There was lots of complaining on the ride there (it was a bit longer than we thought and mostly uphill) but climbing the actual mountain was great. It was quite steep and rocky but Conor enjoyed that part of it, and best of all at the top there’s a huge hole right through the mountain and out the other side that you can stand in. Apparently it was caused by waves crashing through a loooong looong time ago, when most of the hill/mountain was under water. The ride back was also much more fun (mostly downhill). Conor then found that the boy staying nearby likes monopoly almost as much as him, so it was a match made in heaven. Nick bravely volunteered to play with them and that took up the whole afternoon. A few other people arrived that night that we had met at Fowler’s Bay, we are all obviously going in the same direction and roughly the same speed. We would have really liked to stay longer at Cape Le Grand, it’s just so beautiful (plus the kids wanted to stay with the other kids) but we had literally run out of food by this morning, so had a quick walk up towards Thistle Cove and headed for Esperance.

It’s quite nice being in a ‘big’ town for a little while – we got some takeaway for lunch and sat on the esplanade eating it, then did a $200+ shop at Woollies to stock us up, hopefully for some time. We’re staying at a caravan park in order to do some laundry and shower/wash hair, plus charge up the laptop and camera battery. The kids even got to watch some telly this afternoon in the ‘tv room’ which they kind of enjoyed, except that they only get ABC1 here and they were really hoping for Scorpion Island….

22nd May

We ended up going for a drive as well yesterday afternoon in between rain showers, to Thomas River which is a beautiful little deserted beach. There’s only 3 camp spots there, the reason being that probably not that many people get in there – it was a real 4WD track in, with driving over rocks and sand and varying points, and we wouldn’t have taken our trailer in. It was fun though, and there’s also the ruins of a little homestead you can walk in to on the way. The walk was very overgrown and I think that might be where Daniel picked up a tick, at least we worked it out that night and took it out, although the side of his face had swollen up a bit by this morning. He’s had some antihistamine though and it’s helped it go down a bit so all well now. It was a good thing that my first aid kit includes a couple of emergency chuppa chupps, because there was no way he was letting us take it out otherwise. He’s had them before and knows it’s not so pleasant.

This morning it looked like more of the same weather so we decided to pack up and head for the next stop, Cape Le Grand NP. It’s also stunningly beautiful – the Lucky Bay campground (another place named by Matthew Flinders!) is quite busy now so I can only imagine that it’s packed in warmer weather. It’s quite swish compared to last night – flushing toilets, drinking water on tap, BBQs, rubbish bins and a camp kitchen with hot water. It’s right on the beach so we had a walk along that this afternoon – again it’s such a shame that it’s not swimming weather. The rain has pretty much held off, but it’s still pretty cold and windy. The big attraction here though is some other kids at the campsite! A 5 ½ yr old boy and a 9 year old girl – their family is from southern Qld and they are also going around Australia, but taking 8 months and doing it in a little caravan. They seem very nice anyway, and the kids are all really happy to be with other kids. There are some good walks around here by the looks of it, so hopefully we’ll convince them to do one tomorrow in between playing. We’ll stay 2 nights total, by which time we’ll be out of food and will head into Esperance for some shopping and laundry.

18 - 21 May

We crossed the WA border first thing on  Thursday morning, went through the quarantine station where they open up your trailer and look through your car quite seriously, and then kept driving driving driving. We gained 45 minutes as we crossed the border, and then another 45 minutes I think at Caiguna – I never knew there was this extra 45 minute time zone in a couple of towns of eastern WA – so we decided to make the most of it, slog on and keep going to Balladonia. None of the roadhouses are anything particularly enticing to stop at anyway – even though the scenery is pretty amazing, in the vast expanses of flat nothingness, just little scrubby bushes (and probably a fair amount of wildlife underneath that I guess). I’m not sure what I was expecting about crossing the Nullarbor, but the roadhouses are pretty unattractive old run down motels so they don’t really seem like a nice place to stop after that driving. The pull-ins beside the road are also quite heavily littered so aren’t particularly nice either. I was a little bit nervous about water too, even though we’ve got 2 jerry cans as well as our tank, as every roadhouse has a sign up saying ‘don’t ask for water’ (fair enough too, some of them have to get it trucked in) so we weren’t quite sure how long it had to last us, or how long before we got to somewhere that had enough for us to fill up.

We were also all getting pretty sick of just staying one night before packing up and more driving and wanted to stop somewhere for longer. We ended up staying at the Balladonia roadhouse in their ‘caravan park’ (ie large open space next to the roadhouse) which was fine. We asked the guy working behind the desk if there were things worth seeing around about and his response was “nah, I’ve been for a bushwalk this way and that way [indicating with thumb] and it’s pretty much just bush”. It seems like the people who staff it are mainly backpackers who do it for 3 months to make good money to finance the rest of their trip. He’d only been there 2 weeks so could hardly be expected to have seen much I guess.

Yesterday we had to decide whether to take the shortcut Balladonia road down to Cape Arid which is 4WD only, or go the long way via Norseman and Esperance. Everyone says that Cape Arid is really beautiful and remote, but the main query was the state of the road since they’d had quite a bit of rain the few days before. We rang a few people and no-one really knew, but one nice National Parks guy said that we would be able to work it out pretty quickly once we got onto it. So having asked Jane to keep an eye on our Spot tracking we headed off and it turned out not to be a problem – it wasn’t so much the ruts with water/mud in them that were a problem (we could drive around them) but the corrugations which made it a real bone rattler of a ride the whole way. We came in via Condingup to try and buy a few food essentials and continued on to one of the more remote campsites down here, at Seal Bay. Everyone’s right in that Cape Arid is stunning, with beautiful remote white sandy beaches, the only thing is that we’re here at the wrong time of the year. It started raining not long after we went to bed, that wouldn’t be so much of a problem but the wind was blowing an absolute gale so Nick and I were up a couple of times during the night adding poles and guy ropes, tightening things and trying to move to the car broadside to the tent to act as a windbreak, as the tent has a real lean and some rain gets in in the corners next to the kids’ beds. So it wasn’t a very restful night – although luckily the kids slept soundly through the whole thing. The other thing we were aware of all night was the noise of some frogs, well we think they were frogs, who kept it up from the moment it got dark all through the night. They were persistent little buggers, through wind and rain (maybe they like it that way) and never gave up their chorus – mostly all in time with the occasional one a bit out. Their sound was like something between a broody hen and a formula one car in the distance. All night. I had mixed feelings of admiration for their persistence through that weather and wishing they would give it a break!

We’ve had a short walk amongst the sand dunes and along the edge of the beach this morning in between showers and the seas are huge and impressively intimidating. This afternoon I think it will be some boardgames – we’ve put up two of the annex walls for the first time this trip to try and give us a bit of wind protection, and have our favourite Broome Chicken dish marinating to warm us up tonight. Might have to come up with a desert as well in this weather… Happy birthday Colette!

Somewhere near the border

Had a nice shower and hair wash this morning, although I keep finding that I’m waking up earlier than everyone else, and this particularly seemed to be the case in this caravan park and because it gets light so late – so I gave up trying to sleep at 6am and got in early (no competition for the shower at that time), but then had to twiddle my thumbs for ages waiting until I could make some noise when other people woke up.

Anyway we cooked another delicious stew before leaving, put it in the thermal cooker (brought to you by Aldi) and left it stewing in the back of the car while we drove along. It was pretty much just another driving day, although we stopped at the Head of Bight Whale Watching Centre which is in the middle of nowhere, but has a good big platform right on the edge of a cliff with a good view onto a bay that apparently the whales visit every year. We got lucky (since it’s very early in the season) and saw one a little way off shore. Most of the time it was just sitting on the surface but once it waved a flipper at us, which made the hour we spent there trying to watch it worthwhile. I can imagine that in the peak of the season when there’s lots there putting on a display it would be fantastic.

After that more driving, we couldn’t decide whether to spend on another caravan park again in Border Village, but ended up just spotting a pull in at the side of the road that was a bit set back and that someone else was already in, and it turns out that two other cars joined us since. It’s quite big though so we haven’t even seen the others. We were nice and early, and what with the thermal cooker stew all ready to go, we had lit a fire, had dinner and washed up before it got dark, so had time for a game in the tent – we retired to the tent because the flies have all of a sudden gotten terrible. I’m sure it’s only the beginning but they were pretty annoying at dinner, had to eat with one hand so the other hand was free to swat. We could have set up the annex with walls etc, but it just doesn’t seem worth the bother for only one night. We have finished almost all of our veggies though, so tomorrow morning it’s orange juice and loads of honey that we have to finish because we can’t take them over the border into WA. Just trying to work out where we’ll stay tomorrow night – it would be really nice to stop somewhere for a couple of nights for a break from all of this driving but we’ll see.