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DAY 178
Andy got up at 5.30 this morning as he heard Sue beetling around early, it was Sue’s first day back at work after her 10 week break and as we were leaving today he wanted to make sure he saw her before she left for work at 6.00, Andy needed to agree with Sue where to leave the key for the house when we leave later.
I was blissfully unaware. Despite our early night last night I slept through until the usual time of 7.00 when Andy brought me a cup of tea in bed. I was disappointed not to see Sue before she left, but then goodbyes are hard.
After a quick breakfast of tea and toast we got ourselves showered finished packing and were ready to leave the house by 9.58. Andy and I have both thoroughly enjoyed staying with Cliff and Sue they are both great company and we fully appreciate how kind and generous they have been to us both.
Staying in a house, has given us both a bit of respite and we both now feel refreshed, despite the late nights, and ready to move on to the next
part of our journey.
Today starts a new chapter for us as we leave Sue and Cliff behind in Perth (well Cliff on the rig anyway), their journey for now is over as they have returned to work, but the great thing is that these short adventures can be continued at any time. We know that we will see them both again, even if we have to fly back to Perth or another part of Australia, who knows? Sue has a date with a Wombat on Tasmania where we saw plenty (it could be Big Wal).
Our journey starts at 9.58 when we pull off the driveway, we make sure that everything is closed and locked up. Double-checking that we have everything (apart from the family silver) before shutting the front door as once it was shut we would be locked out.
First stop would be Woolworths as we need to replenish some groceries and we also need to top up on fuel. So we drive up to Hillary’s, which is a suburb of Perth there is a fairly large shopping centre and it seems to be exceptionally busy for a Monday morning.
Collecting all the
The Old Patrol
She looked better since she had a washusual basics such as bread, milk eggs etc. we grab a coffee in the shopping centre and just chat about our trip so far. We then pop into Medicare to get reimbursed for our recent Doctors visit; you get roughly 35% of the fee back. We ask about the Pharmacy subsidy, the cashier gives us a leaflet, if your drugs cost over $1000 per year then you are entitled to some subsistence towards those costs.
We drive round to Caltex and fill up with Diesel, contemplating the spend an extra $5 and save an extra 4cents per litre, however we whipped the calculator out and work out that you would need a minimum of 125 litres to break even so considering we did not actually need anything as we had just shopped and even though we topped up both tanks we only managed to squeeze in just over 100 litres (there was some fuel left in one of the tanks).
We are now on the road, we head North and find ourselves driving across country briefly to pick up highway 1.
It is a hot day today, 28 degrees is being reported and the rest of the
week is going to be 29 degrees until Sunday.
Our journey today is relatively short, we are driving to Cervantes so that we can see the Pinnacles. Once we are off the main highway it is several kilometres to get back to the coast where the Pinnacles are. We have lunch on the run, Andy peels me a banana, when I had eaten down to the skin that was peeled so far, I had to ask Andy to peel the banana a bit further (I was driving) and Andy commented that it felt like he was taking the banana's clothes off.
When we get into Cervantes we ask about camping areas, she categorically told us that there is no camping allowed in the National Park and there is categorically no free camping in Cervantes. Bah humbug, I am sure if we were desperate we would find somewhere to stay out of the way. However we want to see the Pinnacles at Sunset so just to make life easier we check into the only caravan park in Cervantes so that we can set up, drive to the Pinnacles and then we are not under pressure, we can take our
time and then drive back for our evening meal.
We check in at 4.00 and by 4.30 we are on our way out. It seems that our luxury retreat for the past few days has not upset our routine we remember how to put the trailer up, it has been nearly a week since we last packed it away and were curious to see what it was like inside, fortunately everything was nice and dry and tidy, we packed it away well, including my glasses that I could not find the other night and just knew where they were and blowed if I was going to unpack the tent just to get my glasses!!
The Pinnacles are another 17 kilometres down from Cervantes, on the way down we see the signs saying that the Pinnacles are unsuitable for caravans and camper trailers, thankfully we have not got the Wendy House with us, unfortunately for the Travelin Trueys, they were not so lucky they had the caravan so were unable to go down there.
We paid our $10 (per car) to gain entry, it is effectively a day pass and the attendant tells us that it is a
3 kilometre drive around the Pinnacles, we can get out where we want providing we use the lay-bys provided, take as many photos as you like and wander around as much as you like but don’t touch or climb the stones.
For those of you who may remember the TV programme Billy Connolly’s tour of Australia, The Pinnacles is in fact where he danced around naked. Rather him than me, there were a few too many people around.
The Pinnacles are pretty amazing and we can see why you could not get a caravan or trailer around, you would be in danger of bashing into the Pinnacles in a couple of places and the Patrol actually only just manages to squeeze through in places.
We stay for the sunset, just like many others, we were standing around with our cameras, an American man came up to me and said “what are you all waiting for? Is something amazing going to happen when the sun goes down”. I explain that we are simply waiting for the sunset, as mostly the sunsets here are fantastic, however tonight there is very little cloud so we are not going to have
the beautiful red sky that we have seen previously in other places.
He wanders away and tells his companions this small piece of information but he also tells them that we have another half hour to wait where in fact it was only about 4 minutes.
That spectacle over we head back to camp, we pull in to Kangaroo Point about 1km off the highway, it is a picnic area and it does say no camping, however we do find that there is campervan nestled in the trees looking set for the night. They were probably thinking that we were the Park Ranger, I would love to have seen their faces.
Further along the main road, we see a couple of vehicles pulled over and we thought there had been a bit of an accident, hoping that no one had knocked a kangaroo over. However a little further along we find they are all looking at a large Echidna sat in the middle of the road, once again we get our Wildlife Warrior heads on and along with the other couple we try to get this Echidna safely to the other side of the road, however he
is not playing ball and just curled up in the middle of the road.
I took a torch and wandered back down the road slightly to warn and slow any other traffic down, fortunately the vehicles along this stretch would be mainly tourists and what do tourists want? Wildlife, so naturally and thankfully they either slow down to pass or stop and take pictures.
In the meantime this Echidna decides that he should move and along with Andy’s help, Andy put gardening gloves on, however he was going to try and pick it up and move it but the quills are so sharp they pierce the gloves, then we tried to shoo him along with a dustpan onto the lid of a box so he could easily be picked up but he did not like that either.
I think after a while he could not stand all these people fussing so just wandered off, and there was Andy making sure he got to the other side of the road safely.
Back at camp it was dinner time, we took our dinner, that Sue had kindly given us, into the camp kitchen, but it was heaving there
was nowhere to sit and it seemed that some travellers had almost taken up residence in one corner, which is a bit cheeky when the kitchen facilities need sharing and with so little room it was not very helpful.
Anyway we did our tea and ate it, then we sat in the trailer to type the blog, Andy’s eyes are slowly wilting it is not even 9.00.
It won’t be long before we go to bed, we are tired we have not done too badly for our first day back on the road, we just need to get back into the swing of it. I wonder how long it will be before I am yearning for a lovely bed with white crisp sheets.
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Kaz
non-member comment
What interesting rock formations - must have been wonderful watching the sun set over them. Have a look at my Cappadocia pics from Turkey - those formations are really interesting and have been hollowed out to make houses & storage facilities. I can't believe it is 6 months u have been away - the time has flown by. Been a bit busy of late to read your blog so loads of catching up to do on it. Love Kx