Our Australia trip

The Two People Bay location has no mobile reception, hence no blogging, emails or phone calls. Unless…..one stands exactly 50 steps down from the campsite and 22 steps West then suddenly the iPhone has some reception, enough to update the weather forecast on the web. Today I tells us: rain and no wind for the next 2 days. Time to go.

We pack up, say goodbye to the anniversaries and the Dutchies and make our way towards Esperance via Ongerup (somewhat inland route). This brings us past the Stirling ranges of which we have heard great things. The road reminds us of the outback.

With the promised ranges in the back.
And we drive on….

Until we see an orange lake which we haven’t encountered before (we have seen white, pink, green, black and various shades of blue, but never an orange one). We stop alongside the deserted road and take some shots.

The ranges are nice but not as spectacular as we have seen before. Are we spoilt?

As the forecast promised, the clouds are threatening. When we come to Ongerup it becomes evident that this is a place not worth visiting (we did it anyway) but also that the clouds are still upon us. We talk to a friendly diesel pump attendant who offers us the local groceries store (for us to buy) and when we friendly decline, tells us that Hyden is a merely 140 km away. Hyden is where the wave rock can be found. We decided earlier not to take the 500 km detour to visit the wave rock but now it suddenly looks more enticing. Wave rock it is.

One other advantage of traveling away from the coast is the higher temperature. We have looked at the map for this region and have decided to take the small regional bitumen road past many lakes instead of the highway.

The higher temperature though means that these blue lakes on the map have turned into salt plains which is a strange sight.

As you know, we have recently been to Denmark, so we only thought it would be fair to visit Holland too. First we see a windmill.

And then Marjo visits a house very similar to the one she grew up in.

We wanted to see if they served space cake or broodje kroket but it seemed they stopped opening daily since September 2007 and it was unclear when they would run their mill tours (for 4 people only at $25 pp). We lost interest.

Then we came past a cross road that spiked interest.

We had seen the movie “rabbit proof fence” and wondered if that happened near here. No fence looked of the right size and structure to deter any rabbits though.

Then we came to Lake Grace and thought that we had covered enough kilometers for a day. This little town has four (!) banks and when inquiring at the local pub, it seems that it is a hub for the agricultural activities around here. This area is called the wheat belt and everywhere we have seen road trains transporting Canola.
At the local camp ground we see a variety of agricultural machinery come past.

Then we decide it’s my turn to cook.

And we tuck in for another beautiful (rainfree) day.

Posted from Salmon Gums, Western Australia, Australia.

To all good things comes an end and we leave Cosy Corner only after sharing coffee with snijkoek and speculaas with two Dutch guys. One of them keeps playing Dutch songs on his iPod and drives the English speaking people mad.

We say goodbye and go towards Albany where our first stop is the Gap and Natural bridge.

This is an impressive play between rock and water.

We decide to both have a look here.

Then we drive to Salmon pools and have a nice view over the Albany bay.

It seems that in February and March large schools of Australian salmon frequent these waters. Once upon a time this was a thriving industry but it seems that there is a preference for the more pink Canadian salmon which was the end of the salmon industry on the Australian south coast. Still a nice view.

Then Marjo had enough of walking stairs (the Salmon pools was 5 flights of stairs after having walked the whole Gap and Natural Bridge area).

So we decided to find our next bush campsite around Albany and planned for Betty’s beach.

And when we saw the turquoise waters ahead, we got blinkers on and ended up at East Bay instead. That worked out brilliantly as this minuscule campsite with only 4 camp spots had just one spare spot and that prime position was ours for the week (ok, for the observant people, we actually stayed only 5 nights, but who is counting). Right on the edge of the beach.

With a bedroom view to kill for.

The location is stunning and we had the beach most of the time for ourselves.

Also at dusk we had some impressive displays.

Marjo and Nossi had the time of their lives, exploring the area on long walks.

And in the evening we played a game of Kubb (see for an explanation Amamoor and more) with our ‘neighbours’.

While we stay here we get a change of neighbours from the couple from Albany trialling their modified caravan, to the young couple with kids that left at around midnight after their 4 year old daughter had been crying all evening, the couple with a big 4WD truck that celebrated their anniversary in quiet and the older Dutch couple that didn’t know English very well. All friendly and nice to talk to. We, meanwhile, enjoyed ourselves with kiting (yay), mosaic (beautiful), reading, guitar, a daily ‘bath’ in the ocean and bush shower, collecting shells, reading and many walks.

A fabulous stay at a magnificent spot where even fish smile in the afterlife.

When we have stocked up, cleaned up, shaved and laundered we move on. Around Albany there are several free beach camp sites that we want to check out. Our first destination is Cosy Corner and while driving there we see a wood carving gallery. We stop and admire all the things one can carve and turn out of wood. Impressive.

We select a new companion, a happy bird that wasn’t angry enough, to travel on our dashboard for the remainder of the trip and move on.

note: the reference is to Angry Birds, a well known game which has clearly formed the inspiration for the wooden birds.

The cosy corner camping is just that. Relatively small with many bushes and shade and quite busy. We are lucky to find a spot amongst the younger corner of the camp site close to the beach.

In the early evening we have visitors that excite Nossi very much.

A lot of turn over (daily leavers and arrivals) and people sleeping in their cars. Some Dutch, some German, some French. And of course the roaming Australians who seem to have fallen off the radar and live out of their cars. Generally angry with life. Tom seems to be a bit different. He is a traveling poet and we decide to buy one of his publications. Nice to read.

Marjo thanks him by giving him a personal message and a mandala.

The day travelers corner is quite social and we have a nice time with talk, dinner, guitar and of course a drink or two.

The nature and the beach here are also magnificent and Marjo and Nossi explore the rocky side.

Unfortunately the wind is not strong enough for kiting. That doesn’t stop me from trying though but I don’t get much further than dressing up.

And when the wind still doesn’t pick up, Nossi finds a way to keep me busy.

And together we dig a deep hole. After this hard work it’s time for rest.

And Nossi is clearly upset…

When Marjo claims that it’s her turn.

Later we all go an expedition to the other side of the beach which has an estuary with yucky brown water.

We need a cleanup and go back into the ocean. Nossi and I venture across shallow kind of water, ok not that shallow, onto a rocky island. And when Marjo calls him, Nossi makes the swim back.

And then of course nothing is nicer than to roll yourself dry in the sand.

Dotti is tired and Marjo decides to keep her company while Nossi and I check out the view.

Then we return and find a very nice message.

We enjoyed ourselves here very much and decided to stay for 3 nights. A great stay!

Posted from Manypeaks, Western Australia, Australia.

Time to leave Parry Beach, visit the sites to see and stock up on water and groceries in Denmark.

We first turn off at Green Pools where, considering this is all in a National Park, Marjo takes a tour of the sights while I babysit the dogs. With the clouds threatening, the pools look less green than expected so she decides to not wait till we come to the Elephant rock car park and takes the beach instead. Good exercise! And especially for her brother Léon she shoots some (pictures of) elephants.

Alright, you need a bit of imagination but with some prompting one can clearly see the resemblance.

Otherwise the rocks are impressive too.

Then we come to waterfall beach where a small waterfall ends on the beach. Again Marjo takes the honours to look around.

When we arrive at Denmark we first do some shopping and take on water. After we go to the Ocean Beach and the Big4 caravan park there because it seems to be an ideal kiting spot. Nossi and I check out the spot in the light rain and come away disappointed. The estuary is very low and the wind is from the wrong direction, making it impossible (for me) to kite in.

So we pull into the caravan park which has the most perfect grass and do the laundry and an extensive shower. The best grass manure seems to be duck poo as the grass is littered with it. A bit later we find out that ducks love the grass indeed as much as we do.

That night a lot of rain comes down and we watch some Homeland tv shows on our iPad.

Posted from Manypeaks, Western Australia, Australia.

We have seen for a while that bad weather is upon us. We have uhm’d and ah’d and considered even to detour to Hyden (1,000 km return trip) but it seems there is no escaping the bad weather that is engulfing the South-West.

So we leave the uninspiring camping of Peaceful Bay and pass some nice trees and lots of deer.

Then we’re at Parry Beach, the next bay along the south coast heading east. This is a very bush oriented council owned camping close to the beach, run by a couple in their 80’s who are descendants of the early settlers in this area.

Even while she’s walking with a severe bent back, the caretaker is still active on the quadbike though.

At first the weather is not too bad, with intermezzo’s of sun and warm weather, and Marjo and Nos went for a walk.

Soon clouds take over and Marjo and Nossi need to shelter from the rain.

And it comes down with buckets, even with hail.

So we have down time. Lots of reading, calling family, guitar play, art and watching TV series on the iPad.

And hoping for that break in the clouds.

The weather turns slowly with still some clouds but also sun. With kiting on my mind I start checking out where in this bay I could kitesurf and walk along the beach. With the wind mainly from the West and South-west and the beach facing East and South-east I need to walk a long time to the next bay before the beach turns parallel to the wind. When I stay away for a while Nossi and Marjo start looking where I went.

When Nossi recognizes me, he makes a spurt.

With this wind though, there is no chance on kitesurfing. For safe kitesurfing the wind is preferably cross shore or parallel to the shore and not, as it is here, from shore to open sea. Don’t want to get blown to the Antarctic.

Back at the campsite Marjo saves a bug from a bird.

First afraid that the bug had become legless after the bird toyed with it, it slowly started revealing legs and antennae.

Then she put it safely off the ground on a tree stump.

Only to be eaten by the next kookaburra that happened to be passing by. Poor buggy.

To overcome our loss, we take the dogs for a walk, this time to the more rocky south part of the bay.

Although mainly sunny, there is quite a strong wind.

It makes for some nice pictures.

Then we see some sharks circling where the waves break. This seems to be a popular hangout for sharks.

So time to move on.

Then I witness something disturbing. And I can think of the captions:

We talked it out and as usual I had it totally wrong.

Dotti is not so mobile over the rocky terrain; Nossi doesn’t have any problems.

Then we come to a beautiful little secluded beach with purple! sand.

And a nice rock face.

While I sit and enjoy the view, Marjo strolls around and takes some shells that go quickly in her pocket.

When I ask, what’s that in your hand?

She says, what hand?

Then when she realizes there are not many places to hide, she shares the pretty shells with me.

There are also nice wild flowers here.

That evening Marjo takes Nossi for a run along the beach.

The next day it is nice and sunny, perfect for some rust treatment on the bus.

Marjo takes the dogs for their exercise and they have a great time.

She finds some pretty spots.

That provides plenty of inspiration for when Marjo’s back at the campsite.

The next day it’s more paintwork, to turn the rusty bits with filler to shiny grey bits with self coloured twopack paint. Hey we are towing this trailer filled with half my shed for a reason.
Marjo meanwhile goes for a walk and spots her feathery friends.

When she’s back from her walk, Marjo gets more creative and turns ordinary shells in pieces of art. From this:

To this (don’t you love the old dremel):

That day and the day after we went for a couple more walks and took again some shots of this wonderful place.

And in the evening we would get the pre-dinner stare.

When it got colder in the evening, Nossi made his own hideyhole.

A wonderful week at Parry Beach!

Ok, sometimes we have a little time to do nothing but navel gaze. For instance when it rains and we don’t want to run outside for a free shower or when Marjo makes dinner. Then it’s time to reflect, to let the mind wander, not hindered by work stress demanding brain time and other trivial matters.

So what comes to mind then, I hear you ask. Well for one: after feeding the dogs dinner at around 5 pm (you should know they start ganging up from around 4 pm and make innocent tracks close to our chairs or sit and look smug) Nossi is lost love and wants to go inside the bus and sleep, preferably on our bed and if possible under the doona but Dotti, Dotti is a mystery. She does her own thing for a while and then comes and sits really close. Pretty similar as she does before they get dinner and has that intense stare.

After this intro, I will enlighten you now with one of my thoughts when I navel gaze: “what does Dotti wants when she stares like that?”

Oh, here I should say that the after-dinner stare is not unique. She also does it quite often when we drive along and she lies in the passenger footwell; somewhere Marjo’s feet are too. She can lie content looking out the little footwell window, or she can lie as if being very uncomfortable against the window washer liquid container, or…..she can do the stare. And again the question is: “what does she want when she stares like that?”

Because this has been going on for quite a while now, I’ve tried several things with mixed results:
– asking “what do you want”, is answered by silence unless asked several times and with some intensity is answered with “Woef” which doesn’t bring us any closer
– saying “go ahead, do whatever you want” only makes her shuffle closer and when said several times and with some intensity is answered with “Woef” again
– giving a treat such as dried roo meat (from a package for Pete sake, I suggested to Marjo that we have seen enough roo karkasses to fill our trailer and more) always works; that is, until she finished it and the staring starts again.

I have thought that perhaps she is getting old and she has conveniently forgotten about dinner and I mistake her stare to be a post-dinner stare where it’s actually a pre-dinner stare. But that would be at odds with her footwell stare. Or does it? She is always hungry.

Perhaps I’m just over thinking this and she’s looking at me filled with love. That must be it. It’s nice to be loved.

Waking up in Quinninup we find that one of the back tyres is flat again, there is something strange going on. We pack up, fill it with air and call around to see where we can get a tyre repaired on short notice. It seems that Walpole, about 90 km from here, is the answer.

We drive over more hills and past nice National Parks (we assume they are nice but are not allowed to go in with Dotti and Nossi) until we get closer to the ocean.

Then we come to the small car mechanic annex tyre shop annex parcel depot. A nice guy who lives here for 9 years and will only leave in a box (his words). It seems he enjoys Walpole.
We have about 2 hours to look around the place but it feels too small. It is loved by people to have a lunch time stop and the council has smartly stepped in by creating a big parking lot for caravans, a nice Tourist Information centre and lunch tables under the trees. But otherwise it is kind of run down, with shops closed.

The estuary is conspicuously brown, Marjo suspects tee trea, I wasn’t game to taste.

It is already quite late when we finish up with the tyre and taking petrol (there’s no concept of queues here, so at some point Marjo just stood in front of the pumps so I could turn around our rig and we were able to fill ‘m up).

Then we drove to the caravan park near Peaceful Bay, a road with pretty wild flowers.

We walked to the beach which is somewhat strangely organized with a large commercial boat loading area and a rocky area where non commercial activities are allowed. We didn’t explore further but sat on the roomy camping and ordered fish and chips. I could say that I cooked, but then Marjo would look with that look that says “that joke is getting old”.

After the sun set we left the mosquitos alone and read a book.

Posted from Peaceful Bay, Western Australia, Australia.

After a couple of nights in the bush, we are eager for some laundry and a shower. So we pick a nice camping in Quinninup. Not because Quinninup is a world spectacular place, but because it’s on the way and the camping has good reviews.

But, first things first. You cannot visit this region without benefiting from the ample supply of wineries. So we stock up on some booze.

Then do some sight seeing at local waterfalls. I must say, the hanging bridge was more spectacular than the waterfall. With the swing of the bridge it took a few times before I could get a steady shot of the waterfall. I assure you that it had nothing to do with the earlier wine tasting.

Then we get a warm welcome to Quinninup (we didn’t know there lived indians here but there you go).

The camping has wild emus and kangaroos that are actually pretty tame.

While we have mobile reception here, we arrange the trip back to Sydney in January to meet up with the kids and also the ferry for Tasmania in February. All set.

A very nice day.

Posted from Peaceful Bay, Western Australia, Australia.

On the second day at Alexandra Bridge a fellow camper notices our soft tyre. Indeed there doesn’t seem much air left in one of our back tyres and it seems that the inner tube has sprung a leak. We decide to go back to Margaret River, which is only 40 km away to get it fixed.

We are pleased to see that the council has thought about almost everyone visiting the region, even lion handlers from The Netherlands. Suppose you’re traveling with your animals through this region and you are in dire need of boarding your lioness. Well, Margaret River has a solution:

Note: Leeuwin is Dutch for Lioness.

After spending most of our morning getting the tyre fixed and meanwhile doing some shopping, we head for another bush camping. Apart from facilities for Dutch lion handlers, this area also caters very well for bush campers.

We keep the dogs on a lead as Western Australia is very fond of the 1080 poison to kill wild dogs and feral cats. We would not like our dogs to eat the bates.

The dogs and we like this region, pity the weather is quite fresh (around 20 degrees Celsius).

Leaving Augusta without kiting seems such a waste. The wind has not been good for kiting on the river and the beach is too full with rocks or too wild with waves. Also the weather has turned colder and overcast.

We pump up the kite and I gear up and wait along the shore of the river to see if the wind is strong enough. Because the winds from east and has to go over land before reaching the river, it just won’t work. We all get a bit frustrated, so decide to go to the doggie beach. Here the wind blows straight onshore and is powerful. So are the waves but we are too determined to let that bother us.

The wind is so hard that even Dotti tries to hide from the sand blasting.

Satisfied that I actually could ride the waves in this wind, be it that most of it was down wind, we pack up.

Cold but satisfied we feel in a kind of Christmas spirit and our wishes get fulfilled.

We then arrive at a nice bush camping where we stay for two days. A bit because the weather is not great but also to do some chores in and around the bus.

We also go for walks to enjoy the scenery, play guitar and just enjoy.

Posted from Alexandra Bridge, Western Australia, Australia.