Honey and the Bee

Busselton - distant memories of skinny, fit, sweaty days. Next thought...

We had been looking for a metal thingy that we could use to hold a pen on the sun visor in the car. You know the things. We had looked in newsagencies across Southern Australian in search of this illusive device. To our delight we found one in the local newsagency in Busselton. To our disgust we discovered the purchase price $18.55. So our search ended here and we decided getting a pen out of the glove box was not that hard after all.
We met up with our friends Simon and Sarah. They kindly offered for us to stay at their farm in Nannup. We had a quick ale in the local pub, purchased the obligatory stubby holder (11 colours to choose from) and headed for the farm.
We had a lovely dinner, catching up on the last 6 years and relaxing by the fire.
We spent the morning pottering around the farm. The highlight was inspecting the bee hives. Simon and Sarah sell their honey at the local markets. We helped label some honey, checking the labels were straight and facing the correct direction.
Lunchtime saw us on the highway to Mandurah and we arrived at Crocks just in time for happy hour.
We have just had a lovely dinner of roast duck and are quietly sipping on some red wines.

Feed the Trees

The bigger campsites in National Parks in WA have campsite "hosts". These are volunteers who stay at the campsites for 4 week periods to collect fees, do some basic maintenance and keep their eye on things. Our hosts at Stokes NP were Helen and Charlie. Helen was very friendly and enthusiastic about her job and provided us with reams of information.
We continued west heading into Fitzgerald National Park. The dirt roads were excellent (much better than some sealed roads in Tassie) and Bryce wished he was on his bike. We hit the coast at Bremer Bay where we had planned to camp for the night. The weather had different ideas with fairly constant heavy rain. The idea of setting up the tent in the rain and siting relaxing on the beach in the rain was not very appealing. So we pressed on to Albany. Albany was a place we had fond memories of, and despite the rain it was still an awesome place.
We popped into Albany 4x4 and purchased some new headlight covers, a magnetic stubby holder and the lads were very helpful with ideas about local campsites and 4WD tracks. Awesome service!
The rain continued during the night, although we awoke to blue sunny skies. After drying the tent and collecting provisions we headed further west through Denmark, Walpole and Pemberton. This road is surrounded by the Karri forest and is beautiful, lush and green.
We had planned to travel down Scott's Road, a 4WD track into D'Entecasteaux NP to Lake Jasper. This road was closed due to the bridge collapsing so we had to enter the NP from the north via the strangely named Pneumonia Road. The initial part of this road is shared with forestry, although we didn't see any log trucks. The track then narrows and on entering the park becomes sandy.
There are only 3 campsites at Lake Jasper and they a currently redeveloping the day use area. The lake is quite big and previously used for water skiing, which is now banned. Would be an awesome place to bring the super yacht for some high speed skiing.
We spent the afternoon walking around and in the lake, taking some snaps at "golden hour" and chatting to Mark the contractor who was doing all the redevelopment work. Mark gave us some great tips on others campsites and some words of wisdom about life.
We had planned to have a nice swim this morning, but once again the weather had different ideas.
Today we are heading north towards Mandurah where we will meet up with Crock tomorrow night.

Thunderstruck

Despite my best intentions, when we awoke a bit after midnight it was not me that had roused Jaks from her slumber. There were huge peals of thunder and white hot lightning flashes that had awoken us both. As with storms at home we thought that it would be over in a matter of minutes. Three hours later, after many flashes and repeated bangs (the weather that is) the thunder subsided marginally and we were able to get a touch more sleep.
The morning left no clue to the nights activities with blue skies and warm temperatures. We had a wander along the cliffs of the bay before heading into Cape Le Grande on our way to Esperance. Cape Le Grande is truly beautiful. Incredibly clear water merging with granite cliffs. Much like the Coles Bay region of home.
Esperance seems to have grown since we were last here. The CALM office was just as helpful, giving us info on Stokes' Inlet which was our next nights home.
Jaks won a great game of Amazing Race as we checked in at the National Park. We left the Winnebagos in our dust.
Tonight we have had a great dinner after an enthusiastic but fruitless fish chasing black brim.

Go West

Ceduna comes alive in the early hours of the morning with vans packing up ready for the big journey west.
Our journey began with some relative excitement. Overtaking two extra wide loads (haulpaks on the back of trucks). That was the excitement.
The road west is long, boring and straight. We decided to try and do as many kilometers as the daylight would allow. Driving at dusk and dawn is not recommended due to interactions between local wildlife and the bullbar.
We stopped for lunch just before the border in an effort to use up the remainder of our fruit and veggies. Quarantine got the rest of the lettuce and a tomato and were interested in the Hoegarden. He said something about a wheat product! He declined a cold one claiming that he was not allowed to drink on the job.
Welcome to WA.
Our game of spot keeps us entertained. Highly technical with the aim to spot the green kilometers remaining signs before the other person.
We proceeded to Cocklebiddy and with Hillary having travelled 767km we decided to call it a day with the sun beginning to set.
The traffic on the road consists mainly of trucks, big trucks, 4x4 towing caravans and a group of 8 NZ motorcyclists on Honda Goldwings. One has an Esky (or chilli bin as he would call it) strapped to the back.
The wildlife has consisted mainly of flat kangaroos, crows eating said flat kangaroos and 3 German backpackers in a Combi van.
At Balladonia we turned south on a 4wd track that we had come up 6 years ago. 178km later we arrived at Cape Arid National Park. The road was variable with rocky, sandy and muddy sections thrown into entertain us. The last 30km we thought would be the best and turned out to be the worst.
We were rewarded with a great campsite (brand new), amazing views and the smell of salty air.

Why does it always rain on me?

Just before the end of an episode of the Dollhouse, I felt a drip of water on my face. "Wow the condensation is pretty bad tonight" I thought. Jaks was asleep so I was reluctant to wake her. 10 seconds later the drop turned into full on rain!
We had thought about putting the fly on, but all afternoon and up until we went to bed 45 minutes ago it had been clear as a bell. I had spent a while stargazing just before bed and there was not a cloud to be seen.
Still it was pissing down now and we were lying in our sleeping bags getting wet! This being the bush we were somewhat scantily clad and running around in the rain in the altogether was enough to make us laugh and cry at the same time.
After getting the fly on in record time we assessed the damage. Not too bad considering.
It remained fine for the rest of night and it must have been a rogue cloud that dumped on us.
We left after a short walk up the hill to a lookout to search for a geocache. We found the remains of the magnet that used to secure it to one of the seats. Since that was all that remained of the cache we jumped in Hillary and took off. A short drive took us out to the coast and some speccy scenery. One brave soul was even surfing by himself.
Long straights and very few corners brought us to Elliston. A very nice coffee stop and back on the road. We considered stopping at Streaky Bay but there was a large lawn bowls competition going on so the park was very full. On the way out of town we came across a charity ride of Honda postie bikes riding from Perth to the east coast. Very keen.
On to Ceduna.
We came across the Colston Bakery roadside stall in the middle of nowhere. An honesty stall with some very nice rolls and different sorts of breads.
After several hours we rolled into Ceduna, the gateway to the Nullabor. It's actually quite a nice place and a lot bigger than we had thought.
There are lots of people here preparing to head off across to the west. We are definitely the youngest and the only ones in a tent!