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Published: March 6th 2008
Hello People!!
Here we are again, actually not far from where we last left you. It would seem we are only about 130km from where we did the last blog two weeks ago!
In fact we have slowed down considerably from the first weeks of our trip. Firstly we had actually planned to treck fairly fast as far as Adelaide, partly as we had done this route before, but also because it is not far from Melbourne and easy to do on a short trip. Anyway then we hit the Nullabor and really there is not too much to stop for as you’ve guessed from previous blogs. So basically in the first two weeks of the trip we traveled over 5,00km and in the last 5 weeks we have done about 1,000km!
We had roughly worked out a route and a time scale which seem to have both gone out the window. We never know what we will find. We had no idea that we would spend so much time in this area, the “South West of Western Australia” isn’t even somewhere we had heard of really but it has been amazing and we have loved everything. But
time waits for no man (or woman or Tilly) as they say and so this morning we are, regretfully leaving and heading north at last!
This area is a real mix of Beautiful beaches and amazing forests and we have bounced from one to the other landscape all month. Every time we arrive at a new place we settle in and then don’t want to leave it, when we do manage to drag ourselves away most of the time the next place is just as amazing!
We have still been traveling a lot with Pete and Nirbeeja who we met way back on the Nullabor. Several times we have said goodbye and waved each other off only to meet again a day later! We even managed to find them at the top of an eighty meter tall tree!
Pete and Beejee have been on the road around Oz for about 8 months I think. Much the same as us they decided to quit work and go find something more interesting to do instead! I’m not sure if it due to them having more experience “on the road” in Oz than us, but they have an amazing talent
that we aspire to, they can arrive at any given camp spot/caravan park/parking space and within 20 minutes it appears that they have been “in residence” for at least a month! Still we have a while yet to try to perfect that particular art!
One of the places that we stopped at recently for a night and ended up staying 4 days was near Pemberton. The campsite was in the middle of a forest of HUGE Karri and Tingle trees (I think Australia’s tallest trees.) The trees are amazing, you get dizzy looking up at them. The forest is very unspoilt despite the tourism. It seems that they have managed to provide facilities and places to see the forest without spoiling it. After our tree top walk in Walpole we were fairly confident about a “tree climb” we had read about. In fact after leaving Pete and Nirbeeja 3 days earlier we actually found them at the top of the 80 metre Gloucester tree. Well we found their car in the car park and called hello from the safety of the ground anyway! There was NO WAY we were going up the thing! It seems amazing as Oz seems
to be as overly safety conscious as the UK now (safety goggles to be worn for making a sandwich etc) but honestly, this tree was probably the most dangerous tourist attraction we have ever seen! Basically they have banged in metal spikes ever 50cm all the way up the tree, put a platform half way up and a little hut right at the top, and that’s it, no safety net, no ropes, no crash mats, no form signing NOTHING!!! Well neither mine nor Tel’s feet/brains/heart etc would allow us to get further than the third step up before we started to panic so we observed from the ground!
Having found the guys again we were keen to take them to our newly found campsite where we had spent the previous night. Big Brook Camp is in the middle of the forest of the tallest trees I’ve ever seen. We had spent the evening being entertained by the resident Kookaburras. They are the cutest birds; they really look like furry toys, and the sound they make is just amazing, they really do laugh, it sounds like old men in the pub telling dirty jokes! If you put bread or anything
on the ground for them they just ignore it, but if you get out meat and the BBQ you have to stand guard as it will be nicked from under your nose! We went back to the campsite with Pete & Nirbeeja who loved it to and we happily spent the next three nights there taking a million photos of kookaburras!
Since seeing the climbing trees, (there are 3 of them) and deciding that only the insane would attempt to climb them, I’d had yearning to give it a go! After several attempts and getting up the first 4 or 5 steps, on the last morning I was determined that it wasn’t gonna beat me! We headed of for the bicentennial tree to give it a go, arriving to find a group of 10 young Indian lads hanging around the bottom heckling each other to climb it. After waiting for them to leave I set off from the ground on my assent. I think I got to about 10 meters high and had stopped for a breath and to compose myself (ie stop shaking) when a guy at the bottom called up “can I come up and squeeze past
Made it!
Now there's just the matter of getting down!you?” now you have to realize these spikes are only about a foot long, I’m not the slimmest model in the world and this Guy looked like he’d been eating pies since the day he was born! Well then the panic set in that he might just take up that stupid suggestion and so I beat a hasty retreat back to the ground.
Never one to be beaten, (or bloody minded, however you want to phrase it!) We made our way back to the Gloucester Tree that the guys had climbed a few days before.
I started off up the “steps” making for the middle platform 25 meters up, with Pete following close behind. Well it took a while with much shaking and sweating of palms, (never good when you have to hang on to a bit of metal!) but I finally made it to the platform and lay there trying to calm myself down panting like I was having a baby! Then it dawned on me that the only way out of this was back the way I came. Now getting onto the platform had been a challenge, getting off of it looked impossible. I was running through
If picture paint a thousand words....
They'd all begin with F!
Thanks Pete for the pic my mind how were the rescuers going to get me down whilst telling Pete “I can’t get off!!” Anyway, eventually, with much encouragement/cajoling/bribing/ threats from Pete I did make it back onto solid ground, which is where I intend to stay in the future, I politely declined Pete’s kind offer to go climb the other two!
So once again we waved off Pete and Nirbeeja, (this time actually with a plan to meet up again in a week’s time in Bussleton) and headed off to the Margaret River area. Margaret River is famous for its winery and surf beaches. Now not being surfers and surf beaches being no good for snorkeling (you tend to drown!) we thought we knew how we could spend our week. However we soon discovered that within a 20km radius of the area the price of everything doubles. We spent a night in the cheapest caravan park we could find (still way over budget!) and had our heads done in by the “Park Regulars” Terry actually got told he’d parked Tilly facing the wrong way!
After one night we beat a hasty retreat further north before either we needed a bank loan or Terry
stabbed the old busy body next door, (“you’ve parked the wrong way, it’ll rain tomorrow cause a leaf just fell backwards, you’ll be sorry you parked in that spot you mark my words” etc!) We made our way to Wellington National Park and found an idyllic campsite beside a swimming lake, when we arrived there were two other couples on the (fairly big) site and we thought our luck was in. However we didn’t realize it was the Friday of a bank holiday weekend and by the following night the place was packed, people were even camping on the lake side and on the road in! It actually wasn’t as bad as it sounds, people were all friendly and in high bank holiday spirits, and the place was FULL of very friendly ring necked parrots! We met a really nice couple Chris and Naomi and there 3 (gorgeous) boys Travis, Jarred and Fraser who have set off on a trip round Oz 2 weeks ago. We had a lovely couple of days with them swimming and relaxing and laughing at the boys’ antics!
Terry had thought when we arrived that it would be an ideal place to be able
to do some Yoga on the lake side, he did still manage to find a quiet spot but then was scared off of it…..one morning as he was carrying his mat down there a group of what appeared to be the village people and the drag queens of WA came roaring in on their Harleys, I think that were in fancy dress and doing a charity thing as one was dressed as a nun! But anyway Tel decided it was neither the time nor place to practice his “Down Facing Dog position!
Well a few days ago we caught up with Pete and Nirbeeja in Bussleton, they had some friends from back home (Canberra) fly out to spend a couple of weeks with them. We stayed at a really posh (aka expensive) caravan park for 2 nights with them which was really nice. Richard and Lisa were lovely, and thankfully almost as silly as us! We spent a day getting fairly worse for wear visiting half a dozen wineries (thanks for driving Lisa!!)
We said a sad goodbye to the guys last night (again!) but really this time for a while, we have to press on north and
they are going to find some work.
So this morning finds us here in Bunbury catching up on the blog, doing the laundry and giving Tilly a bath before heading up towards Perth…..
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