perth and bunbury - rain and routine

Dear all
welcome to our new additions to the blog and love to our existing avid readers(we hope!)

We left you last heading into perth for 2 weeks, we need to tell you, don't always trust navman as the following story shows. We left GinGin just 50 odd kms north of perth to head in early monday morning so we could set up at the caravan park and take our car for service. So we drove on the highway and suddenly navman tells us to turn right. We thought wrong so we ignored, then it told us 10 kms down the road again to turn right. We thought we'd better listen this time so we did, thinking we only had 15 kms to go. Well, what a scary drive we experienced and secretly wondered would we ever come out alive. Turns out we were on unsealed road which was bumpy enough, but quickly and to our horror turned to sandy dunes (ok for the 4wd but the 2.5 tonne caravan?) It was isolated and full of rubbish and every few kms there were burnt out cars. I was nervously watching the phone hoping we didnt drop out of range, we may need it. All the way we kept discussing should we turn back? when should we turn back, should we keep going? How far til the next road and is it sealed? Well we did keep going and popped out in suburbia north of perth in somewhere called Wangara? (If anyone can shed light on what we drove thru that would be good) We think we drove thru a army practice rifle range or an aboriginal reserve that we werent supposed to be in. someone did tell us they thought it might be the speed way which would explain the banged up burned cars, but we still never really found out!

Anyway that adventure survived and even the caravan cupboards and doors stayed locked so everything miraculously remained intact. We soon settled down into 9 out of 14 days of unseasoned rain. Apparently Perth is never that wet in september. lucky us. Didnt stop us seeing the magnificence perth has to offer, we really enjoyed perth's gardens and parks, suburbs and subiaco park. We went to freemantle markets and the thai food was superb, and a cafe in subiaco also did fantastic lattes. We went on the Perth wheel which was great but cost a fortune. And rang the bells in the bell tower on the water front. We did an old city trail tour discovering original building and sites which were impressive. most of Perth became seriously established in 1820's. On the sunday there was a wild fairyland day at kings park, our all time fav park. And so we and 1000's of other fairies descended to enjoy the free shows, face paint, unicorn ride (suspiciously looked like a pony with a empty glad wrap roll strapped to his head) and Claudia's highlight, the perth ballet company. As they invited fairies up to dance with them after their performanced. Apart from becoming drowned rats as every half hour it bucketed down rain (no htought to bring coats, they dont fit over wings you see) it was a delightful fun filled couple of hours. Perth won me with that generous display. We also did a trek into CBD on bus and train, easy and fulfilled lorenzo's need for trains and "ooooooh......tunnellllll! Once we finished up seeing the suburbs of cottesloe and subiaco we thought we should finalise our time in perth and spend the last day watching the AFL. Biggest dilemma was would sime come with me to meet a friend from school days and watch it there and be a social leper or stay home on his own after we had disagreed about his flying to melboune to see the game. In the end he came with me and watched the game they didnt bother hime too much and he became more sociable as geelong looked to secure their victory.

Then on to bunbury via harvey where we have friend we met in the atherton tablelands and promised to pass through if we came this way. As it turned out it was right on our way to simes new job so we pre organised to stop and they kindly had us over for lunch. Great things come from Harvey (apart from les, syl, jeff and lyn) oj, milk and some of the best cheese I have tasted, probably most of the fruit and veg too. As you can probably guess, there are lots of wogs in harvey and dont they know how to grow a veg or two, (or at least boast about it) so we enrolled claudia in south bunbury primary for a month and we have been to Bussleton and margaret river where it is all green and fertile and watershed wines got us for lunch and it was peaceful and took me back to driving a tractor on our vineyard when i was 5. As long as you could hold a steering wheel relatively straight, you got the job!

So now we wind up our time in bunbury after a few invites to dinner and hosting our own with this wonderful produce, we say goodbye to school and temperate weather and Lorenzo says goodbye to all that just "Mummy and me" time. We find that he increasingly becomes like his sister in that he talks about everything he is doing and is starting to boss everyone around so he now grows a little more into a big boy (dry jocks so far) and claudia's legs and arms begin to out grow the rest of her, we will set off edging closer to melbourne.

We will head to the Sunshine coast for a job for simon in december and try our hand at the wet season, see if we cant catch a few buckets and send them down south.
Love to all those who read about us, keep us informed of yourselves as we love a good catch up!

Love S G C L

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