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Published: July 14th 2010
Our trip on Paper
It looks so close on the map.How fast is 2010 going? Bloody hell, before we know it another Christmas will be on our doorstep…we just have to get through a cold, windy & wet Margaret River winter and we’re there!
Since our last blog, Jeff has “de-dreaded” (all parents applaud) in an attempt to cool down over summer. He’s looking rather clean-cut these days, oh except for the unreal creations he makes in his sleep. I don’t know how someones hair can triple in volume overnight and, dare I say it, he wakes up looking rather Albert Einstein - but on the positive side his motorbike helmet fits again!
We’ve had the pleasure of a couple of cute furry-friends come to stay for the weekend from Tab’s work at the Vets. We weren’t sure how our big boys would go mixing with kittens, but overall they just dealt with it (or had to get over it) and we enjoyed the craziness of having a little nutcase running around the house! It’s been 9 years since we had a small-brain fleeing around, so much fun was had indeed! We are also pleased to tell you both kittens have been re-homed and escaped the green dream unscathed.
Muddy feet
On John Holland track For Easter we headed off into the Boranup Forest (about 30 mins south of Margs) and bush camped for 5 days, taking plenty of food, drinks and the hammock with us. I think sloth is the only word to describe our Easter, although one day we did get off our bums and head off on the motorbike (“Daz”) only to end up having lunch at Hamelin Bay Winery which is about 20 mins away! Oh the joys…
Just following Easter Jeff finished the 2010 harvest with the last lot of grapes coming off the vines on the 21st April. Perfect conditions this year so keep your eyes peeled for Leeuwin Estate 2010 (particularly sem, sav & chardys) - due to be released sometime in the next five years!
Tab had a busy couple of months at work organising Margaret Rivers’ first ever Million Paws Walk for the RSPCA. Despite a rainy morning, 130 families came along with their dogs and $2000 was raised for the cause, she was stoked.
After our relaxing Easter we got stuck into a couple of months of work, work, work while counting down the weeks to 10 days of annual leave
Camp 1 Collie Pub
All Class on the first night! we had booked for late-May. So, on a Thursday afternoon we knocked off early and headed straight for the mining town of Collie where we checked into the Federal Hotel (known as the “Feddy), dumped bags and proceeded immediately to the bar to enjoy a few beers & a schnitzel for tea. What a start to a memorable journey! The only concern we had while staying at the Feddy was the black towels….a problem keeping them white? Ewww, don’t even think about it, we decided we wouldn’t go there.
After leaving Collie we headed east and stayed in a teeny weeny little town called Newdegate, arriving at about 6pm and promptly making use of the on-site van the lovely owners let us use to cook in that night (apparently the bbq on the park grounds was “not serviceable” at that time…whateva that means!). So we watched the footy (GO CATS), cooked up a storm and then stood around the bonfire the park caretaker had started that arvo til bedtime.
The next morning we hit the first of many hundreds of km’s of dirt tracks as we headed north to Hyden, the town famous for Wave Rock. Just as
Camp 2 Dinner at Newdegate
Camp kitchen caravan, home away from home. we got there the rain hit, so a couple of quick photos and back in the car for a muddy, torrential journey on the John Holland Way. It rained, and rained, and rained so we drove, and drove and drove! Along the track we saw a walking man, must have been sponsored by Commonwealth bank as he had one of their brollies! We contemplated dropping a beer on the side of the road each 10 km to keep him motivated, but decided against it - he had a LONG way to anywhere, we didn’t want to hamper his progress! Walking man, if you are reading this, good job buddy, we hope you made it!
Camp 3 was a fantastic spot called The Breakaways. Stunning rock formations right on your campsite, a few breaks in the weather and beautiful scenery around the place. That night we got absolutely hammered with rain & wind, but we were snug as a bug in our little tent, oblivious to it all until the poles holding up the tarp blew down at about 2am. So poor Jeff’s outside in the wind & rain putting up new poles & ropes…what a man! Thank fully we
Wave rock
First rock encounter weren’t alone in our plight, we could hear the people next to us doing exactly the same thing!
After a leisurely breakfast & pack up we stopped just up the road at McDermid Rock and headed off up to the summit, wind chill factor about 2 degrees! It’s a round rock just protruding out of a sea of gum trees, with a walk over the top and then around the base. Around 1850’s a mystery person put a small dam wall on the rock to catch the rain run-off, it still holds water today and allows a lot of greenery to grow on the rock itself, some of the plant species endemic only to McDermid Rock, to be seen no where else in the world. Pretty cool.
More dirt road, although a bit drier today, and we take a left turn off John Holland Way onto Victoria Rock Road, heading north. Oh boy, they must have got some serious rain here as we slip & slide our way towards camp 4 - Victoria Rock. Along the way we take a detour onto the John Holland Track (a track that runs north & inland of the John Holland Way)
and have lunch at Thursday Rock. Again, it’s a big bloody rock sticking up out of nowhere, and once again wind chill factor of 2 means we eat peanut butter cruskits in the front seat! From there, head back out to Victoria Rock Road and find our spot for the night.
The next morning we head off on a morning walk up and around Victoria Rock itself. Yep, you guessed it, its another big bloody rock. Once on the summit you can see for absolutely miles, even as far as Coolgardie, which is only about 60km from Kalgoorlie! Coolgardie is our morning destination for water, fuel & the tingling potential of a shower! You guessed it, we haven’t had a shower for 3 days!
Eureka! We arrive at the servo, fill up our water tanks, fuel up “Terry” (the Triton) & our jerry cans, eat fried dim sims, put on a load of washing at the laundro and HAVE A HOT SHOWER! Best $3 we’ve ever spent! When Tab went back inside to hand in the key the lady thought she was a different person…yep the stinky feral who walked in there definitely got washed down the drain.
Camp 3 Breakaways
First camp night at the breakaways. While waiting for the laundry to finish Jeff went into the fossiking shop and got some maps & a Miners Right - meaning he has permission to go onto public (or not yet privately registered) land and fossik for gold. We took the metal detector along with us so he was stoked to be made official, and all for only 20 bucks!
Then off to Kalgoorlie for a restock of the esky & minibar and we were off to camp 5, Niagara Dam campground. The dam was built as a test-run for the massive Mundaring Weir near Perth. I guess they figured if it failed they were better off drowning a few outback ferals than half of north-east Perth! We are pleased to say the wall is still in place, however looking at all the leaks, we decided not to camp in the gorgeous little spot that was directly at the base of the wall! Next morning Jeff went on his first fossiking journey, only to come home empty handed but full of enthusiasm for his next detecting adventure!
Once the flies drove us to a quick pack up we headed back to Menzies to re-fuel and buy
some fly nets for the next leg of our journey. Menzies servo is awesome, it’s totally covered in old number plates! Alas, they had sold out of fly nets but Jeff got sucked in to buying a stick of this “home made” fly repellant. Those of you going to Menzies servo, don’t buy the repellant…it doesn’t work! Looking back, we now think the flies liked us MORE once we had slathered this crap on!
So once again, we let the tyres down for another several hundred km’s of dirt track, albeit not nearly as muddy & slippery as the first batch a few days earlier. One of our main destinations on the trip was to get to Lake Ballard where an artist has made about 50 iron sculptures and anchored them into the lake bed itself. We decided only to walk to about 5 of them as the mud was horrendously slippery and the flies nearly carried us away when we were standing still. Our feet have only just returned to a normal colour after that walk - they were stained bright orange for weeks! Great place to go for a bit of an orange Paris-Hiltonesque fake tan!
McDermid Rock
Granite outcrop on the way to Victoria rock Our journey on the track continued north-east to a small town called Sandstone, really truly in the middle of nowhere! And, like an oasis in the desert, we drove straight into the town and parked outside the pub for a cold beer…just while we discussed our next moves of course. Around Sandstone itself there are lots of old mine workings, the town used to have a brewery, cordial factory, schools, churches etc, but now has one caravan park (camp 6), a pub, post office/shop and populates about 100 people. While at the pub we discovered the men & women of Sandstone put together nude calendars this year and of course we were lucky enough to have a beer with some of the blokes who posed in them! In fact, the chef & kitchen hand who cooked our meals were both in the calendar too - we just had a buy a few and support their great work!
Waking to a sunny morning we tempered our hangovers with a cooked breaky on the bbq, refueled (again) and hit the road to Mt Magnet (where is “rough as dogs balls”?), then once again let down the tyres for some more dirt
tracking. We saw some amazing wildlife (had a race with some big reds along side us in the car), cool rock formations, creek crossings & found camp 7 in the bush, still about 70kms north east of Paynes Find. Ok, we actually found camp 7A, then moved to camp 7B when we awoke at 4am to torrential rain and the desperate need to move to higher ground! We literally picked up the whole tent, bed and all, placed it on the back of the ute and drove out - instant motorhome! Camp 7B was on the side of the road, on a small stretch of land we called our island, that escaped the flood waters! Rather tired & cold the next day we headed on to Paynes Find, had a hot coffee and a snag roll and got bent over the bowser with the price of fuel! Oh, gotta love hitting the open road!
From Paynes Find we traveled south-west and found camp 8 at Billyburning Rock - yep…another big bloody rock! Wet & windy, we managed to pinch a bit of time in between showers to set up camp (more like a tarp bunker with the wind that
Victoria rock
View from ontop of Vic rock day) and scrounged around for fire wood. We still had to dry off all our bedding from camp 7A’s natural disaster status, so danced our sheets in and out of the showers as the afternoon progressed. In fact we were pleased it was windy otherwise we looked forward to a sleep in a wet bed for the night!
Next morning, before a beaut cooked breaky we walked up and over Billyburning Rock and spotted what we thought were gold flecks! Jeff got out the ol’ detector and went for a fossik, alas, no luck this time. After leaving the rock we hit our first bitumen road in some days and made our way to camp 9 in Avon River NP, not too far from Perth itself. Funnily enough, our campsite was called Bald Hill Rock…..shit NOT ANOTHER ROCK!!! We enjoyed watching the freight trains travel through the valley below that afternoon and all the Friday night planes flying in from the north just an arms stretch above our heads, definitely nearly back to the rat-race! At this stunning camp we awoke way above the valley of the Swan River to a serene view of thick mist settled between the
Menzies service station
Bit of prison labour on that wall! hills. Getting up before sunrise on the last morning of our camping adventure was a bit of a stretch, but the view was like nothing you’ve ever seen before - magical. Oh and just to make you even more jealous, we dined that morning on hotdogs for breaky - all in the name of using up all the last bits of cold food we had on board! Later that morning we came across a few wineries on our way to Perth, and naturally stopped in for a taste!
We had secretly been holding a candle for camp 10 Arundels Boutique Accommodation in Fremantle. We arrived at 3pm, stopping on the way for chilled bottle of Grant Burge bubbly, filled up that damn big spa bath and sat in our own filth for about 4 hours! Now I don’t know if you’ve ever made a soup that you had to skim off before, but we made a human version in that tub! Days and days of dust, mud, and a bit of Lake Ballard soaked from us and ended up making chocolate milk coloured bubbles - don’t even THINK about the bath tub ring once we got out. Our apologies
to the cleaners! Later on we headed up to the Norfolk Hotel for a feed and a drink, found the crowds way too much to bear after 9 days of tranquility, and headed back to our gorgeous room. Felt weird sleeping in a king sized bed after a cozy 9 nights on an airbed in a 2-man tent. At one point we woke up both on the same side and sharing a pillow, I guess tent habits are hard to break!
After a bit of shopping at the Freo markets, we were finally south-bound to pick up our much-missed moggies and arrived back home on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a trip neither of us will ever forget and certainly got the travel bug well and truly circulating in our blood again.
A few days after we arrived home Tab’s olds Maria & Scott (and Molly-dog) arrived in their caravan after exploring the south east of the state. Then a couple of days after that their travel companions Rob & Cecelia arrived, also with their van & dog Buddy and we opened up a temporary caravan park on our street! With not a spare blade of grass to be
Niagara Dam
water in a hole! seen on our busy lawn we had a great time catching up with them all, especially as the weekend following our return was a long weekend in WA!
Maria & Scott departed the next week and invited us up to a dairy & sheep farm they were staying at with friends Marilyn & Dennis. We had a fabulous day watching them feed the calves (some only a few days old!) and had a snag sizzle for tea. Thanks for having us up for the day, it was fantastic!
That’s about all we’ll bombard you with for now, we had such a great holiday we wanted to share our journey & photos with you all. Love & winter wines to all!
P.S Don't forget to scroll down after you finish reading to view more pics (or click to enlarge one of them & view that way)!
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littlewing
Cindy
Werent you bloody cold??? Your blog made me smile, lots of memories of the old inland roads - my dad used to drag me up there every year - any marron in Niagara dam these days?