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Published: March 13th 2010
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But we woke up to a slightly damp beach. Luckily, it had stopped by the time we wanted to set off and brightened steadily through the day (today I wore jeans for the first time in 8 weeks!!) We said goodbye to our neighbours and drove off congratulating ourselves on finding such a good site ... and the fact that it hadn’t cost us anything!
Not long after we set off we passed a winery ... and thought, well, why not?! So we had a great hour tasting the wines (with poor John having to spit his out!) and leaving with a few purchases to keep us warm in the evening. I bought a Voignier, which isn’t a wine that I would normally purchase, but it was wonderful. We also had clarification on ‘clean skins’ which we’d seen in the liquor store. Apparently if a winery has a glut, they will sell some of the wine in bottles without labels for a lower price. No prizes for guessing what we bought!! Oh yes, we also treated ourselves to a muscat, another wine we’d usually run a mile from but it was sumptuous!
We drove down to
Denmark, which is famous for its beaches, especially with the surfing fraternity. We saw a couple of guys with body boards, but I don’t think surfers like the cold too much! Denmark itself looked a pretty town. We are finding it a little strange - a dark black dot on a map will give you a town with a small main street (one or two storey buildings), and a light dot will probably give you a filling station and a bungalow. We have even been through one town which only had the roadsign giving its name!! Nothing else there at all!
Along the way, we stopped at some arts & crafts, alpaca showrooms, cider producer and a toffee ‘factory’ - which charged something like £1 for a small square! We ate the freebies and left!!
Onto Walpole and the Valley of the Giants - giant trees that is! This whole area in Western Australia was responsible for supplying timber to the gold mines - and when you see the trees that remain, you can understand why. We were looking at 400 year old red tingles (eucalyptus) that can reach 80 metres high. The yellow can only get to
60 metres. Apparently the Karri can get much higher. We saw a tree called Grandmother Tingle who is estimated 450 years old and is 85 metres high.
Now, some of you may have trouble believing this, but I voluntarily went on the TreeTop Walk - and even more surprising is that I actually suggested it. As I told John, it’s probably going to be the only time in my life when I will utter the words ‘we’, ‘should’ and ‘walk’ in the same sentence without the inclusion of the word ‘not’! Having said all that, the Walk was absolutely brilliant, slowly rising up through the trees until you’re looking down over the forest. There were some beautiful birds, with one little chap on a branch at the top of a tree virtually looking me in the eye.
Yesterday we saw some roadsigns showing turtles. Today we saw some with Kangaroos. We really do intend to take a photo of these at some stage when it’s safe to stop the van. I had visions of saying something like got the roadsign, can’t find the animal. But to our absolute delight we have seen kangaroos twice today. And the second
time, they are actually on our site!!
We have actually had to drive onto a commercial site (but recommended by our book) as we needed access to electric hook-ups to power our pc to write to you lot!! There was also the lure of the washing machine, which could not be denied! Anyway, as we drove on, we could see the kangaroos and were thrilled. We were even more thrilled when we were chatting to the site owners and they called the kangaroos, who came over. These ones are actually semi-tame as they are ones where the mother has been killed in a road traffic accident and the baby has survived. After approx 12 months being reared by bottle, they are passed to the site owners to toughen them up and ready them for being released into the wild. Not sure how that is done by encouraging visitors to pet them and feed them bread, but I’m not complaining ... they’re gorgeous and I’m truly smitten!!
Now there are some eagle-eyed people out there who may be asking a very pertinent question: how on earth could they be running short of PC power when they have 2 batteries
that last for 9 hours each ... how long are they spending writing their travelogs for our entertainment? Well, unfortunately we discovered the spare battery attempting to mate with a banana in the bottom of John’s rucksack, and frankly, it hasn’t been the same since ...
Whilst I’ve been writing this, the night has drawn in, the level in the Voignier bottle has dropped and John has become more and more delighted with the sky - he says it is the best he has ever seen! We bought the guide to the night sky yesterday, and he has been busily trying to identify what is what. We have seen the Southern Cross (which appears on the Oz and NZ flags), Alpha Centuri (the closest visible Star to the sun), and the Magelenic Clouds (two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way). He says a lot of the familiar constellations are in odd positions; Orion’s doing somersaults, Leo’s lying on his back, and Castor and Pollux, the twins in Gemini, have blood rushing to their head! So, if you will excuse me, I shall say a fond goodnight to you all and switch the lights off, so that we can get
a better view of the stellar sky!
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