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Published: August 10th 2007
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Hi to all friends and family. We have set up this blog to make it a little more effective for everyone to see where we have been and what we have been up to. We will just fill you in on the start of the trip and try not to bore you with all the details, but will keep up to date as we get better at this, so here goes...
We left Paraburdoo on the 5th of January, travelling the 275km stretch of road from Para to Nanutarra for the last time. Our first stop for us was to be Minilya Road House. Now I know some of you out there may say "WHAT THE", but for us it had grass, hot showers and running water. Oh yeah, and it was out of Paraburdoo. On the way down to Perth we stopped off at a few places including New Beach, south of Canarvon, Denham and Monkey Mia to see the dolphins. We also dropped into Port Denison for a week to see if we could relax a bit more, although this was difficult due to the wind. So moved on to Perth to catch up with friends and bid our
New Beach
Not a bad free campsite!! goodbyes. After one or two messy nights and very high temps (40+) we pushed our way south to Mandurah to get the van serviced and catch up with more friends (thanks heaps to Denise and Paul for the bed). Next stop was Busselton to stay at a very shady park called the Mandalay. This was a bit of an experience as the school holidays had finished it was quite empty when we arrived. Although this changed in the blink of an eye as the place filled up with not really retiree’s, more geriatrics… This evolved every afternoon into “Cocoon”(the movie) by the pool, and a bit of Mrs Mangles as you went about your daily activities. After seeing the Busso jetty swim we hit the road again and did the big trip down to Augusta. Stayed here for a week, which was great. Half way through our stay we had to go back to Perth for the Roger Waters concert. This was one very amazing show, sounding every bit like the original music with the live twist. Being seated just ten rows from the front, smack in the middle may have helped… Upon leaving Augusta we made our way down
to Walpole for a night. After arriving we not only did the tree top walk amongst the giant Tingle trees, visiting Thurlby farm for Devonshire tea, checking out circular pool, but also found ourselves in the middle of the forest bushwalking at 1830! Who says daylight savings doesn’t work… Heading towards Esperance, we stopped into Albany for a few nights and saw the sights, including some very cheap berry farms for delicious blueberries and raspberries. Once in Esperance I had to wait a few days until I could go on a charter to finally catch a big one. It ended up being a very wet, windy and productive day, final tally was 1 pink snapper at 71cm, 1 queen snapper at 60cm and quite a few swallow tail, very happy camper. We caught up with Jean and John Mack whilst there as they were down from Lorna Glen on a bit of a break from their CALM duties. On the trip to Kalgoorlie we finally made the decision to trade our vehicle on something bigger to make the trip a little more manageable, and with a lower stress level due to cross winds and hills… more on that later. Stopped
Augusta
Janie and some new friends in Kal for 3 nights to show Janie around, this was interesting, as even though I lived there for a while I never did the tourist thing. Leaving Kal, we made our way back to Perth via Northam to make our pre-arranged appointments prior to departing the big city. More friends, more messy nights, but most importantly we did the rounds of the car yards and have ended up trading the “Suby” for an ex demo diesel Prado with all the fruit. On the road again and we ended all the way north to Moore River (Guilderton), before being overrun by children??? Moved up to Kalbarri, and enjoyed the serenity (ah the serenity). We did torture ourselves at the gorges though, and the day we decided to do “The Loop” it started out a most comfortable 22C, but by the time we finished 3 hours later, it had climbed to 38C!!! Whilst at Kalbarri we decided to make the most of a week’s free accommodation that was offered to us by Rendezvous Cable Beach, Broome, so have hot footed it up here via Point Samson and Port Smith. Broome is fantastic at this time of year due to the distinct
lack of tourists and the huge rainfall (36mm yesterday). Well I hope this all finds you well and we hope to give you a more updated blog as we proceed. P.S. Torrential down pour has just started, again, and I feel it is going to be maybe 50-100mms just today.
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