Albany

We packed up as fast as we could this morning and towed the van into Denmark.  We were aiming for the 9.30am service at the Family Church, but realised we were too late when we got there, so went to the 10am Baptist service across the road.

Everyone was very friendly and shook hands and introduced themselves.  The organist played very well and we sang all the old blue and brown book choruses.  They had a guest speaker, Andrew, from the challenge magazine, and Grant and the older three heard his message from Exodus 14:10-14 on keeping our eyes fixed on God, not our situation or our past. Nadine, Oskar, Cooper and I helped the Sunday school paint animals for their Christmas nativity.  It was lots of fun.

After the service, we headed off to Albany, where we had lunch, and walked around the historic buildings of this first WA British settlement. We looked over the exact replica boat of the Brig Amity, for which Amity Point at Stradbroke Island was named, but it's also the boat that brought the first convicts  and Captain Lockyer to Albany in 1826 to develop a settlement here.  It wasn't successful as a convict settlement, they moved everyone to Perth on the swan river, but it did remain a town and was opened to free settlers.  The oldest house in Western Australia is here, built in 1832.

We really enjoyed wandering all over the Amity, getting a feel for the size of the sleeping quarters and steering the ship.  It was not very big!  The replica was made by a third generation ship builder from Albany, who travelled to Europe to research shipbuilding techniques so that he could  accurately reproduce this old ship.  They even used the old tools  (which they made first) and you can see all the marks the axes etc made in shaping the huge timbers inside the hull.

After our walking tour, past the old churches and houses in Albany, smelling the roses that are all over the place, we drove up the hill that overlooks the three bays, King George Sound, Princess Royal Bay and Oyster Bay, to the Anzac memorial.  The first ships of Anzacs to Egypt left from this harbor on 1 November 1914.  There was a great view.  

We drove around Oyster bay to Emu Point, then on out of Albany and to nearby Mt Manypeaks to a little beach called Norman's beach in two person bay.  There is one other caravan here, and at first we thought it was just a melaleuca mangrove swamp, but Grant and the boys walked up and over a big sand dune to a beautiful beach, I will look at it in the morning. 

Clouds have come over this evening, but apart from that, the weather today was perfect. There are all these very noisy frogs here - I didn't know you got frogs in the beach.

Katie went to the drop toilet earlier, and came out declaring, 'that's the most disgusting toilet I've ever been to. When you sit down it wobbles all over the place, but I think it's a new hole, because it goes splat and not splosh.'

And I think that's quite enough for now...
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Vicki

Denmark

  We pulled ourselves together this morning, and drove into Denmark to be good tourists.  It certainly helped that the sun had come out and the sky was mostly blue.

We drove along more roads bordered by green fields of cows, and horses, and a few turn offs to wineries and berry farms, even one honey sign.  We didn't stop.  We're not that good as tourists!

Denmark is a lovely town on the south coast of Western Australia.  The guide book lists it as hippy central, but it had a lovely feel.  We discovered it was market day, one of four Saturdays a year when they hold a market down on the banks of the Denmark River.  There was good music, and lots of food stalls, and heaps of knitting stalls.  In fact, driving through the town later I noticed there were three shops selling wool and knitting supplies, quite a big percentage of the shops in the town!  Must be a big knitting population.

We spent a fun morning wandering through the stalls and chatting to stall holders.  It had a lovely feel, with very few iridology or fortune telling type stalls, just hand craft stalls, and they were very interesting.

Grant found a massage stall, and for the first time ever he sat down on the chair and asked for the cheapest massage he could get, a head and neck massage.  the little Chinese man got stuck into it, whacking away on Grant's neck.  After a bit, the little man oohed and aahed and told Grant it was all very tight, and should he continue to the shoulder and back massage.  Grant thought, 'oh well, it shouldn't be too much more, and it does feel very good' so said to go ahead. The little Chinese man got right onto digging his elbow into Grant's shoulders.  Same question again for the buttocks massage, but there Grant drew the line...the little Chinese man promptly pulled out these little pieces of sticky paper, wave them under Grant's nose, and said he'd put one on a pressure point for Grant, 'only $2 each', and Grant thought '$2 isn't much, I'll let him put one on,', but then mr massage started  sticking them everywhere, and Grant, when he realized what was happening, asked in a state of shock, 'how many are you going to use?' 'Fifteen...'

Grant got us out of that market quick smart!

We had lunch and washed our laundry at the laundromat, then headed home to Parry Beach.

Grant had read bout the total lunar eclipse in the newspaper, so this evening we re preparing to stay up to 11pm to catch sight of the this event that won't happen again for another four years.  We did our Internet searches, and worked out the difference between a lunar eclipse, and the monthly phases of the moon (very interesting), and were pleased to see the sky was clear.

what we had forgotten is that WA is two hours behind the east coast, so when Nadine woke for the loo at 9.45pm, It was very fortunate, because it meant we noticed the moon was almost completely covered by the earth's shadow.

Joseph came and looked and decided it was more interesting in bed, I didn't bother to wake up Oskar and Cooper, but I thought Dominic would be interested so I persevered in dragging him out of bed and outside to look at the red moon.  I shouldn't have bothered.  He didn't remember anything in the morning.

Katie woke up, came outside, had a look, and agreed with Joseph.  So that left Grant, who thought it was just as fascinating as when he last saw it thirty years ago.  Same moon, I guess.

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Vicki

Parry Beach

It started off rainy and overcast today here at Parry Beach.  The sea was rough and grey.  Outside there were swarms of flies and mosquitoes.  I crawled back into bed.  We didn't really feel like staying here, but I couldn't summon up the energy to move!

In the end, at  $11 dollars a night, we decided to stop for another day, and we cleaned up (well, Grant cleaned up), read and posted the blog (that was me), and generally rested.

During the day the clouds shifted and the sun and the blue sky came out.  The bay suddenly looked blue and the world was a lovely place!  Isn't that amazing.  Now we think we'll stay a third night.

There are solar showers here, which are great when it is sunny, but it had been raining for a few days and they had run out of hot water.  After the sunny outburst this afternoon, though, I thought I would give it a go.  A march fly followed me in.  They have strange ones here, with a needle-like proboscis sticking out of their mouth.  They sting you on the leg and you whack them, only to find them hanging from your leg by their proboscis. Gross.

Anyway, my shower was being disturbed by one of these monsters, and I was very nervous, so I swung at him, knocked him into the ground, and he buzzed angrily and flew off.  'good,' I thought, 'that taught him a lesson'.  Very soon after, back he came, buzzing around, with two of his friends!  He brought reinforcements....

For dinner we made Tuna casserole.  This is normally the favourite meal for the family, but tonight they seemed to think it didn't taste right.  I put it down to the powdered milk we used, until Katie asked, 'is there any tuna in here?'. We'd left out the main ingredient!

Grant found a Radiosonde on the beach which he was very excited about.  They are attached to Weather balloons.  He has found launch sites for Australia and has emailed someone from the Bureau of Meteorology to ask them how far it has travelled.

Summary of the last eight days!

Sorry about posting everything from the last week together!  The summary for those who want the quick version is;
-we left Perth on Thursday 1 December,
-stayed a few nights at Wellington National Park, fixing van and visiting Gnomesville,
-drove through Busselton to see the ironman events and the jetty,
-south to Forest Grove National park for a few nights,
-visited Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, Margaret River,
-drove east through Pemberton, climbed a few tall trees,
-stayed in Shannon National Park with the rain,
-Drove through Walpole, did the tree top walk,
-Camped at Parry's beach for the night of 8 December.

You are now up to date....

Walpole

Packing up again.  We headed off to Walpole, another little town near to the coast, where we visited the info centre, bought hot chips (it was freezing cold and raining) and filled up the car with fuel and the van with water.

It is a lovely area, with lots of trees and rolling hills, cows and sheep, and we enjoyed driving through the countryside.

We stopped for a walk at the Giant Tingle Tingle tree, another type of tree that grows very big around here.  Wasn't very impressed with the 'ancient forest 500million year old' signs, but the trees themselves were very cool.  They tend to get  hollowed out bases, through fire and fungi and insects, and these then widen out to support the weight above, so they can become quite wide around the bottom.  That's why they named one 'The Hollow Butt' tree.  Dom loved that one.

Next stop was the tree top walk.  A metal ramp through the trees, 40 metres above the forest floor, was more my style, and Cooper, Nadine and Oskar could come too.

We went around twice, and I was less scared by the swaying the second time!  Grant spoke to a man doing maintenance on the structure, and he said it was first constructed with the big posts, then two bolts attaching each bridge to the post.  They added a few more bolts when they took over the maintenance....

 

We have stopped for the night at Parry's beach, but it is very windy and rainy.  The solar showers are cold because it hasn't been sunny for a few days...We are very squished in the rain because most things have to stay inside.  Our house at home is going to feel huge when we get back.  Who needs an extension.

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Vicki

Giant Trees

After chatting a bit more to Don and Claire, and looking at Claire's photos of birds, we packed up again (we have definitely got too much stuff) while it threatened to rain, and headed off east towards Pemberton.

Pemberton and the surrounding towns grew out of the logging industry.  This part of Western Australia is full of huge tree forests.  70 metre tall Karri trees that they used to cut down by hand and drag to the railway lines with bullock teams, carry to the coast, and ship over seas.  there were photos in the little historical museum at the Pemberton Visitor Information centre, showing men in singlet, boots and trousers, climbing up these giant trees using just a rope around their middle and metal spikes in the side of the trees, then swinging an axe while standing on spikes at the top, so they could 'top' the tree (chop off the upper part with all the branches).  Once that fell, they had to quickly duck and hang on for dear life, as the trunk of the tree would sway from side to side for a few minutes.  Boy it looked scary.

They are enormous, these trees, and the thing with forests as we saw yesterday, is the risk of fire.  Either from human error, or lightning strike.  In order to stop any fires quickly they set up a system of lookouts who could quickly pinpoint the location of a fire and send people to the right spot to put it out.  The thing is, these lookouts had to be pretty tall to see over the tall trees, so they built them on top of the trees themselves.  60metres up.  For a while they went out of 'fashion' and planes took over the fire spotting role, but then people realized that planes could not be in the air all the time and in all weathers, so the trees were used again.

  There are still a few you can climb today.  the Gloucester tree, just outside of Pemberton, was named for the then Governor General of Australia, who was visiting at the time in the 1930s when it was being constructed.  It is 65m above the ground and is reached by very steep spikes in the side of the tree.  At least 200,000 people climb this tree each year.  They check the spikes regularly, but climbing things is really not my thing.  Grant, Katie, Joseph and Dominic did it though.  We had to hold Cooper down, or he would have been up it too.  Nadine and Oskar wanted to climb as well, but mummy wasn't up to it!

A lady used to have the job of fire spotter, and would climb up every day to keep a look out of fires.  She wrote it was a bit boring, but she enjoyed the peace and quiet. 

This was actually the second tree we'd climbed today.  The first was the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree.  This one was only constructed in 1988 as part of the Bicentennial of Australia celebrations, but is the taller of the two.  At 75m high, it was incredibly scary to watch Grant, Katie and Joseph go to the top.  They said it was scary to climb, too.  Dominic got to the first platform, 25 m, and decided it was a bit too scary.  The smaller three wanted to do this one too, but I wouldn't let them! 

In big winds you shouldn't climb, or in wet weather.  It was a bit wet today, which added to the thrill of the whole event.  But it did stop raining for each climb.

By the end I was exhausted.  The stress from watching the ones who climbed up, and the stress from the whining and crying of the ones that didn't.  But it was a lovely day. 

We stopped at Shannon National Park, which was a lovely place, full of trees and lots of orange leaves on the ground.  They had a wood fired shower that some of us used, and we were allowed to light a fire to cook our dinner.  The lighting part actually turned out to be quite difficult, we seemed to have fire retardant wood, and it was only the kindness of our neighbor who gave us some fire starters that meant we got any dinner!  Fire starters on the shopping list.

More rain tonight.  Very wet.

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Vicki

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