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Published: December 17th 2009
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Day 231 - Karrinyup, Perth to Hopetoun (603 kms away!)
When it’s already hot enough to fry an egg on the bonnet of your car and its only 6am you know you’re in for a scorcher! After a great Christmas get together with the travelling gang yesterday we’re ready to leave Perth this morning and get stuck into the next section of our travelling adventure. We’ve enjoyed our short stay at Karrinyup Waters Resort, it’s a terrific caravan park with great facilities and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
By 7.30am we’d joined what seemed like the rest of the neighbourhood on the closest highway! It’s Monday morning but we’d completely forgotten what early morning rush hour is like, gosh it’s a waste of time just sitting in the car along with a million others trying to get to work. It really reminds us of the journey we used to do each morning along the short section of the M42 back home in the Midlands and it’s making me think that there has to be a better way!
We wave goodbye to our favourite Australian city, our favourite Intercontinental in the world - the Burswood casino - and then
I text Belinda & Nige to let them know that we will be late for coffee this morning .. by about 3 years!!!
Our route from Perth has been chosen mainly so that we can visit Bridget & Neil Gannaway whom we met at the drag racing last weekend. They live in Corrigin which turns out to be a three hour drive from Perth. We’re pleased that the journey out there takes us through the Perth hills district and through beautiful countryside. Just outside Corrigin we spot a painted Ute in one of the fields which must have been harvested only recently, it seems to have been put there deliberately and we joke that harvesting around it must be a pest. As we pull into town we spot another Ute on the roof of the roadhouse and it’s got a model dog in it! Perhaps there’s a story behind it all and Neil tells us that indeed there is. Corrigin holds the world record for the number of dogs in a Ute!! On the 13th April 2002, the Corrigin massive came together and rustled up 1527 Dogs in Utes and raised $60’000 in the process. This beautiful rural town
found a way to rule supreme.
We pull up outside Neil’s work and as soon as he spots our caravan he clocks off for a while and we follow him back to his gorgeous home where we find Bridget who welcomes us with open arms. It was a great opportunity to catch up with the family and two of the four kids were there - Danielle and youngster Adam.
We spent a very relaxed couple of hours in their company and of course had a look at their fabulous drag car ‘The Duck’. It’s a front engine slingshot which they’ve owned for a number of years but when Neil first brought her home Bridget was a bit dismayed, it was a cock pot. A what?! Apparently that’s the Australian term for ‘a crock of shite’! Well it's certainly not that anymore! Bridget said the car looked like an ugly duckling but Neil insisted he’d work hard and turn her into a beautiful swan. It was too late though, the car had found a name and The Duck was born. With a small block 350ci Chevrolet engine Neil has a quickest ET of 9.06 so he’s on the hunt
for the 8 second run, same as us with Chemical Reaction!
We’ll definitely be keeping in touch with this lovely family and we’ll be watching via the internet to see how they go at the Boxing Day meeting down at Perth Motorplex, how gorgeous is that to be able to race on Boxing Day! Perfect!
Back on the road we headed out towards Wave Rock. Bridget had warned us to be careful if we were intending to do one of the many walks but when we got there it was almost to hot to get out of the car, let alone walk very far. Phewee! The rock itself is stunning and has lost none of its grandeur over it’s millions of years in existence. There’s more to this place than just ‘the rock’, you can climb it to get a terrific view or walk around to see other rock formations but we just struck to doing the only pose we could think of for a photo and then got back in the car with the air con! It was hot, hot, hot! We popped into the General Store in the tiny hamlet of Hyden for some bread and
ice lollies, the bread was frozen but on a day like today it wasn’t going to take too long to defrost.
It was a very long drive for us today, 603 kms and over 8 hours in the car. Despite spending a nice break with the Gannaways it was still tough going and when we eventually reached our destination of Hopetoun on the Southern Ocean we were ready for a rest. Our travelling bible of Camps 5 details a couple of free camps out along the ocean road but with the time just coming up to 6pm if they were full or didn’t exist then we’d be too late to get back into the caravan park in town so we decided to spend it like we’d won the lottery and book into the caravan park for the night.
The lady behind the new looking reception desk was on the phone when I walked in, it sounded like the person on the other end wasn’t really sure when or what they wanted to book or for how many people! We made her life real easy because we knew exactly what we wanted, a pitch for the night please and
we don’t mind where! It’s a great campsite and with over 100 powered pitches available we suspect this will be the last of their quiet spell with Christmas holidays just around the corner.
We parked up and immediately set about cooking up the leftover sausage casserole from Saturday night. Then it was just a case of a bit of blogging and getting thrashed at Rummikub by Mr Howells, yes I know, how the tables have turned!
Dar and Sar
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