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Published: December 2nd 2010
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Mauritzios Christmas Cake
Italian cake with layers of amazing Italian custard. Awesome So, on the road, we spent our first night travelling with Mauritzio, Mirella and kids, a lovely family of Italian descent (Mauritzio is/was a chef -awesome food) that we met on the first half of our journey. As always it was really nice catching up with these guys and we spent the night chatting and as always with them, eating. Mauritzio cooked up his home made pizza, I don't know how he does it but he somehow manages to put nothing on the things and they taste amazing. Following that was a curried prawn salad which was as nice as it sounds and then we finished off with his self invented Christmas tree cake. Layers of an Italian cake with Mauritzios beautiful Italian custard between, this was the last time we'll get the custard for a long time and we were so happy that he made it for us one last time.
On the morning of our final departure from Perth we decide a quick visit to where Mauritzio was working and a trip to the Karrinyup swap meet should finish us off and we'd be gone by 10am. Mauritzio happened to be working at a fun day put on
Deliverance
Geoffs hand poking through one of the tunnels in the Baden Powell rapid. by the council and we spent all morning there on free jumping castles and stuff while Belinda and Mirella whipped off and managed to get some free books for us. In the end we did lunch with them before finally saying a very sad goodbye and heading for Dwellingup and the Lane Poole Reserve.
After a short 1 &1/2 hours in the car we arrived at our first night camping for nearly 12 months. Lane Poole Reserve sits on the edge of the Murray River (not the famous one) with a mix of typical Eucalypt forest and Pine forest. Where we actually camped was right on the edge of the river in a huge and almost empty camp site under the pines. It was quite hot but the water was nice and the night cooed down beautifully. We set up, had a swim, some dinner and went to bed early, all of us exhausted and had a great sleep.
Day two of our camping was to be an exciting day, a quick trip to Dwellingup which turned into a longer trip to Pinjarra (Dwellingup is tiny with no shops) for some supplies and to meet the Westlakes who
Waterhole
The waterhole at Baden Powell were coming to camp with us for the night. When we met them at Coles we had six very excited kids who needed feeding at the local Bakery (yum) and the back to the campsite. Thankfully they had brought one of their kayaks with them and with our big foam board we were able to have a lot of fun in the water for the afternoon. Our swimming hole at LPR is great, deep, clean and big. At the bottom side of the hole os a line of rocks that channel the water into a narrow channel, in the wet it's a level four white water chute, but at this time of year it's a little waterfall/rapid that drops about 20m in elevation over 50-60m in length, Baden Powell it's called.
Over the 24hrs or so that the Westlakes camped with us we spent a good 8-10 of them either in the water or exploring the previously mentioned rocks and waterfall. We were lucky enough to meet a couple of local kids who knew the waterway very well, they were swimming in amongst the rocks in the rapids which we had avoided for fear of being sucked under the rocks. As it turned out you can get sucked under the rocks and that was exactly what these kids were doing, then swimming in under them through little tunnels and coming out in another pool. Geoff, being a big kid at heart was straight in there and diving under anything that would fit him. It took me the night and morning before I was game enough to try one, I hate small spaces, especially under water, I did it though.
One night was all we got with the Westlakes at LPR, the kids got into Lachlans glow sticks, we had spag bol and a couple bottles of red wine, lots of good chocolate, good conversation and all in all a very nice night. Our last morning with Geoff and Sally was spent eating, swimming, more eating and more swimming then finally a very sad goodbye, Geoff and I even hugged, that's how much we like these guys.
Once they'd left it was all very quiet, and we spent a relaxing afternoon just reading and playing games and chatting. Late in the day we had dinner and went down for our last swim for the day and the washing up before wandering back to the tent for bed. Just as we were settling down for the night two car loads of guys rolled into the site and set up about 80m away from us. Understand that this campsite is about 10 acres and there was only three tents in the place until these guys rolled in just on dark. Instead of going to the other end of the campground where there was nobody around they set up right near us, turned up the music and proceeded to get pissed. We couldn't believe it! I gave them until about 10pm before I walked up (armed with our big mag light in case they got violent) to ask them to quiet down a bit, thankfully they were nice enough and toned it down a little, not enough but I finally managed to drift off to sleep around midnight with comforting thoughts of my revenge in the morning. We planned to wake early and let the kids loose with all the noise they could muster as well as turning our own music up full blast to wake them all up and hammer their hangovers. But then, just to rub the salt in it, the partiers all got up before us, made a heap of noise and left, leaving me absolutely disgusted at their complete and total rudeness and disrespect, feeling cheated tat I couldn't get my revenge.
That was it, we finished reading Charlotte's Web to Zali who was absolutely devastated by Charlotte's death and could only be consoled with the promise of Milo after breakfast. This led to one of our funniest moments of the camp, as Zali drank her Milo (slowly getting over the death of Charlotte) we suddenly heard her exclaim “Ooooh yuk! That was disgusting.” This as she was wiping her mouth, when we asked her what it was she explained how she thought a nice blob of white bird poo was spilt milk and she had wiped it with her hand and licked it off. Lachlan nearly vomited at the thought of it and I quickly gave Zali a spoonful of honey to kill the taste, she handled very well and had a good old laugh at herself. She didn't appreciate it when I suggested that she might poo like a bird from now on though. Can't help bad jokes.
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Geoff Westlake
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Memmmmorieeeeees
Like the corners of our mind..." Nice to read and see the same events we saw, but thru your eyes. (Yep that's how it was, folks!)