Margaret River

Pancakes for breakfast.  Grant's speciality.  On the free barbecue down by the Blackwood River.  Very nice.

We are the only ones camped here at Chapman's pool in the Forest Glen National Park and the ranger came at 8am to clean the toilets, just for us!  That's service for you.

Grant talked to him about the fires, and he said we were fine, but there are people very angry at them, and they've been told not to wear their work shirts and he tells people he's from the water board.

Just as we were heading off a storm passed over, with lots of rain.  The first real rain we've seen.  We dragged out the raincoats, but it soon eased off, although it stayed overcast and rained on and off all day.

We drove into Margaret River, a little tourist town that reminded me a bit of Montville or Maleny.  Little shops and lots of cars.  We found the laundromat and washed and dried some clothes.

Wandering through the main street we visited a Fudge Factory and sampled their Parisian Coffee fudge which was very nice.  they had several flavours for sale, including apple pie flavour, peanut butter flavour, strawberry or blueberry flavour, and lots more.   I asked Dominic if he remembered any other flavours....Meat Pie Flavour?   No, I don't think so.

The second hand book shop was a bit expensive, so we topped up at Coles and kept moving.

I spoke to a man in the laundromat who was very anti DEC and the burn off policy, and encouraged us to drive out to the coast to Prevally, where there were some big fires recently, to see just how bad the fires really were.  So we did.  It was like a surreal winter landscape, a lunar landscape gone wrong.  Black trees, grey sand covered in ash.  a few burnt houses.  But I was amazed at how close the fire got to a lot of houses that weren't burnt.  Someone worked very hard to save a lot of houses in the township.

We continued south to a maze that we thought might be fun to try.  It had a sign at the front, welcoming you to this family's 'exercise in passive Eco tourism' and passive was certainly the word.  We had fun running around in there, looking at each other through the 'walls', but I don't think it's about to win any tourism awards. 

As we were going to our car, a fancy silver van pulled in being towed by a silver landcruiser, and out jumped Don Drysdale.  The name sounded familiar, and later Grant and I worked out he had been the funeral director for my Nanna's funeral eight years ago in Tewantin.  I was even more certain when they came to Forest Glen National Park for the night and he pulled out his bagpipes and played for the kids.  Joseph said he'd rather play bagpipes than the saxophone.  Katie asked so many questions about how it's tuned and which key they are in that  he ended up pulling them apart (they were made in Scotland in 1890 or something) and showing us the drones and the reeds and how they are tuned, and very interestingly, the goretex like fabric they use for the bag now which contained the filter box full of kitty litter that someone in Victoria invented to stop all their spit going into the drones and the reed in the flute bit and drying them out and wrecking them in Australia's weird weather.

Bagpipes are incredibly loud.
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Vicki