Bolarks

I decided it was time to put together some words and photographs of my Christmas Cruise. For those of you who do not know, Graham died after a battle with cancer on the 1st September and I decided to cruise with my friend Mieke for Christmas. We both love to travel and neither of us had been on a cruise before. The first part of my journey was for my friend Sheryl to drive me to Adelaide and get me to the airport. We went a little early and I treated her to a Dim Sum lunch at "Star House" restuarant before heading to the airport. As usual the food was fantastic. Sheryl is so good to me, not only does she get me too and from the airport she feds the cat Fray (aka Princess ... read more

We went into the town of Dallwallinu to check out the sights and discovered there were none. The attraction is all about the wildflowers in the area. It is a tidy pretty town with lovely landscaping. Chris was amazed that there are some of the most spectacular native wildflowers in the region and the main plantings down the middle of the street were petunias! We really liked the tractor on display in the main street park. There is an excellent craft shop with nothing but quality offerings, we purchased some homemade lemon lime cordial, some 4 fruit and ginger marmalade and another in the series of WA wildflower books. Talking of wildflowers it has taken the combined power of Chris and Alan Graham, multiple books and online databases to finally isolate the name of white line ... read more

In response to requests for a photo / information regarding my walking stick I don't need any gifts of hiker's sticks because I have already asked my friend Chris who does wood carving to make me one with a pussy cat on the top. I want one the height of our rough hewn one illustrated because when climbing up steep rocks paths they offer the best stability. This works very well for me it increases my confidence and means that we can continue to explore at this stage and hopefully for a long time. We discovered that the development of the tourist facilities at Gascoyne Junction cost $10.5 million. All from the Royalties for the Regions program. There are many aspects to this program including the $550 fuel card rural pensioners get each year. We read ... read more

First of all I must tell you about the Sherlock River. On our way into Karratha and Dampier we crossed over the Sherlock River bridge. There was water on both sides as far as the eye could see and masses of black swans swimming about. Of course we were moving too fast, there was nowhere to pull over and we had a prime mover with three trailers up our rear. Missed that photo opportunity. Also our friend Sheryl wanted us to steal the Red Dog statue for her partner Shane so he could have it in his lounge room. We decided it was a bit risky and would increase fuel consumption too much. First thing on Sunday morning in Karratha we headed off to Harvey Norman’s looking for a digital SLR camera, they were having a ... read more

We're back! Travelled from Mt Magnet on Monday morning and got to Cue in a couple of hours. At first glance Cue looked like a prosperous little town but once we got out and walked around we discovered that the shops were empty and very neglected. Some buildings have been painted with murals by the school kids. The old government buildings are impressive and they look like they have been made from local rough stone rather than the quarried stone used in Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. There is a small park dedicated to a veteran from WW1 who was from nearby Day Dawn and was posthumously awarded the VC. One store caught our eye, named by a handwritten poster “Hardly Normal” but it was closed with a post it sticker saying back soon. When we read through ... read more