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).