Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme

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DAY 172

Another broken night as we were disturbed by the teen party goers, they just seemed to wander around the area, thankfully at times out of earshot and then they would wander back to their fire and then you would hear the sound of branches snapping as they were gathering more firewood.

I have no objection to them partying but it is against the law to snap off branches from the trees in conservation areas and of course, party away but do have respect for those around you who want to sleep.

Of course at 7.00 as we were getting up, they left and so left behind them, bottles strewn around, broken bottles in the fire, lots of litter from food packaging.

For me this conservation area as beautiful as it is, I think this one is going to have a big black mark against it in my Camps 5 book. We are told that there is a problem with places like this close to town.

Anyway, on with our day, Andy has the kettle on and while he does that I make the bed and make sure the inside of the tent is ready to be folded away. We will have breakfast a little later as we want to get on the road this morning.

By 8.00 we are pulling out, the Leschanault Inlet looks beautiful with the morning sun shining across it and the birds catching the early morning sun. On the highway the traffic runs freely as most people go back to work today after the long weekend. Tomorrow may be different as the children go back to school after their Easter break. The electronic roadsigns signal the reminder to people that when the kids are back at school the rules on lowering your speed in school zones kick back in.

We decide to stop at Maccy D’s on the way for our breakfast of Egg and Bacon McMuffin with a McCafe Latte and of course to do some blogging. We stop for a while and watch the world come and go and perhaps the Mums are treating the kids to breakfast before they go back to school and of course some workers pop in for their morning coffee before going back to what they are doing.

We continue our journey to Perth, but first we stop at Forrestfield to pick up my contact lens that I ordered last week and the remainder of Andy’s prescription. We find our way through no problem at all, of course while we are in Forrestfield we pop into Woolworths to see Irene and discuss the complaint we had with their Caltex petrol station last week as we want to close the issue out.

A quick phone call to Sue to let her know we are on our way over to their house, I did say we would be about an hour, but it was quicker to get across Perth than we thought, not like driving across London and the continual stop start heavy traffic. The views of Perth from the freeway look great, the few tall buildings piercing the skyline, we find the freeway goes into a tunnel and we suddenly pop out on the North side of the city.

Cliff and Sue live in Scarborough a suburb of Perth, it is a busy area but the street that they live in is tranquil. Sue tells us that their next-door neighbour is 80 years old and she has lived in the house next door since the road was a dirt track and there were horses to get around with, she also used to wear Wellington boots to walk up the dirt track to the now busy main road of Scarborough Beach Road, which was also a dirt track, to catch the bus to work at Bones (a department store that has long since gone).

Cliff and Sue’s house is what we have become familiar with in the now typically modern Australian home and very open plan. Its beautifully decorated and very well presented. Andy tells Sue not to worry about making the bed and that we will use the sleeping bag, I heard Sue say, “No, Caroline mentioned the desire to sleep in a bed with crisp sheets”. Oh joy, I think to myself, thank you Sue!

I suddenly feel that I don’t know what to do with myself, we are in a house and it feels weird because it is not just a house but of course a home, the last time we were in a home was at Woodstock with Robert and Helen.

We bring our luggage in and almost immediately I go and have a decent shower, although the bush shower was great and of course does the job, there is nothing like a decent hot shower back in civilisation.

While we sit down and have a cup of tea, Sue appears with the two items of mail that we have been expecting, but had forgotten about.

With excitement we opened our mail, excitement especially as we have not had mail for 6 months (we are grateful to Mum and Dad for taking care of that in England for us), one of our blog readers, Reen from Bundaberg has very kindly sent us two books, after reading our blog thought that there was a book that would interest us and wanted to share with us so we arranged with Reen to have it delivered to Perth for our impending arrival.

A very big “Thank you” to Reen for sending us these two books that we will take with us on our travels once we leave Perth to head up North. Reen also kindly sent us a little LED torch that will be handy to keep in our glove box especially handy for not tripping over the tent pegs on these dark evenings.

After a cup of tea and a chat Sue and Cliff drive us down to Scarborough beach, the sun is setting, the sea front is lively, people are speed walking, cycling, running and of course there are people just sat relaxing watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean, just beautiful.

Sue has cooked a fabulous lamb roast for our dinner and plenty of roasted vegetables, this goes down exceptionally well we then look through some of Cliffs photos of the rig that he works on and some of the pictures from the open mines. Then we listen to some music, I cannot tell you how good it feels to sit and relax here with a glass of wine and of course listen to some of our favourite music from Snow Patrol, Led Zeppelin, ACDC, my Chemical Romance, AFI, Nazareth, The Doors, Linkin park, Blink 182 some real feel good music to relax with!

It was time to retire, my eyes were feeling heavy, it had gone 10.00 and we are normally in bed by then, I went up ahead of Andy looking forward to sinking into a lovely bed with those lovely crisp sheets. The weird thing is that when we are in the tent, we have our sleeping bags, two blankets and two sheets, which is now plenty warm enough. Now in bed and lovely comfortable, I am finding that it is quite a warm night and barely need any of the bedclothes.

Andy crept into the bedroom at around 12.30 and I was fast asleep, Sue and Cliff have been extremely generous in letting us stay with them and we appreciate their kindness.

Sweet dreams everyone.

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