Day 101 – 17/3/14 – Fremantle WA

The boys were super keen to get over to Nana’s cabin and they couldn’t wait for the curtain to be pulled back before they jumped into bed with her. With the washing and some schooling done we headed into Freo to have a look around. They have a great free bus system so we had a quick look around town before I was dropped off at the maritime museum while the other looked at the round house and a few shops.

I had read about Batavia, the Dutch ship, that was wrecked on the Abrolhos Islands in the 1600s and was keen to see it as well at Australia II. The museum was great and I enjoyed the America’s Cup display as well as the pearling lugger, as I have just finished reading a book on them, but the Batavia was nowhere to be found. On leaving I found that it was at a different museum!

 I caught up with the rest of the crew who, being St Patrick’s Day, were having a beer at Rosie O’Something’s where I joined in the spirit with a very tasty pint of Guinness!

I then grabbed the boys and headed for the shipwreck centre where we were all, I was spell bound, by the Batavia display. It was incredible to be standing there looking at the amazingly well preserved hull of this amazing ship while the boys hung of the original canons that had been underwater for 400 years. There is too much to write about here other than to say if you are ever in this neck of the woods it is a MUST DO. The story of the Batavia is intriguing but the work that has gone into preserving it is phenomenal!

A day in Frwo

We headed back and hung at the park before heading back into town to have a few brews at the Little Creatures brewery. It was a pretty interesting place and while not quite as historically significant as the Batavia it is also a must do!

 We grabbed some fish and chips as the sun set over the Indian Ocean and headed back for a very yummy dinner, a few more brews,cards and it was ni nis for all of us.

Day 100 – 16/3/14 – Miami Beach – Fremantle WA

If we are late risers on the trip so far I think this one was extreme sleeping in, for us at least! In the end we had to really get moving so we were out in time for the 10 o’clock check out! 

We headed into Mandurah where we were meeting Nana, Shelby and the boys at the Crabfest a local festival which in the end had very little to do with crabs, but they had to call it something I suppose!

About the only thing that had anything to do with crabs!

 The crabfest is run side by side with the extreme sports show, so the boys sat there wide eyed as they watched a combinations of long distance water ski jumping, scooters, bmx and skateboards in the bowl and the finale was the freestyle motorcross. Those blokes have to be absolutely insane!

We wondered through the pulsing crowd with stand after stand of food and other goof for sale. Mandurah is a pretty town with a southbank style entertainment area built around the lake that comes of the river mouth. There must have been 50 – 70,000 people squashed in so it was hard going after we probably haven’t seen that many people in the last two months! We grabbed some prawn and crab rolls, had a quick look around and watched a cooking demo, where they did a crab pasta dish and then headed north to Fremantle.

On our trip along the highway I had to merge and a nice person let me in, I flashed my indicators to thanks them. A while later they came up alongside us and they had a hand written sign as in the picture below. We have our blog address written on the back of the van and these nice people must have looked it up as they were travelling along. It made us feel very welcome!

The boys were straight on their bikes dreaming up new tricks and jumps scaring the heck out of their nana as we relaxed with a few ales and wines. Inspired by the cooking demo I pulled out 4 crabs that we had caught in Streaky Bay and cooked them up. I think the receipe they gave out was wrong as it asked for 3 tbs of kaffir lime leaves. It wasn’t too bad but I think it would have been better with 3 tsp.....

Day 99 – 15/3/14- Conto Campground – Miami Beach WA

We were up at the crack of dawn and I jumped out of bed like there was no tomorrow. Nana and Shelby were having the boys for the night and my figuring was the sooner I dropped them off and grabbed De the sooner our day of serenity began! By 9 the switchero was completed and we were heading somewhere, we didn’t know where, but that didn’t bother us in the slightest!

Being long time Sunrise watchers we skipped the Bunbury bypass and drove through down town to see what it looked like. Even though it looked like a nice place to stay the boys were heading there, and whilst we love them dearly the thought of them accidently meeting us was enough to make us head further north. The selections were pretty slim pickings but after 5 calls we eventually found a van park in Miami Beach (a lot of the beaches on this stretch of the coast are named after Florida beaches) where they said there was a tavern nearby, at the front gate....even better.

It was 1pm by the time we had parked up and had a beer in hand, but this place was heaven. I must have had some good karma up my sleeve as this place was perfect, a couple of MASSIVE screens to watch the footy and a wall full of screens for the TAB, the like I have never seen before. We settled into beers and wine and had a nice lunch while having a few punts. The Swans v GWS game was on and while it made good background noise for the first 3/4s the last ¼ was great, even better that the underdog got up! We headed back for an afternoon nana nap .

You have to love WA - they serve their beers in pints!

Ready to go again we headed to the Italian restaurant on the otherside of the driveway (could this place be any better) where we had a delicious meal. I think we could have easily fed the whole family with just De’s! We had a great night and really enjoyed having a bit of us time, which is pretty hard to find when you are so far from home. It made us appreciate all the more the support that we have from family and friends that we have at home.

 Exhausted we headed back and slept the sleep of a 1000 dead

Day 98 – 14/3/14 – Conto Campground WA

De was away on her ladies ‘weekend’ with Nana and Shelby so I was the chief cook and bottle washer for the weekend so, the boys had to pick up the slack and were soon doing De’s share of the work. School had been let slide so we got into it and the boys did a couple of solid hours of English and maths to catch up.

We packed the truck and headed out for a day of adventure. First stop was another kari forest but this one was a little unusual as there was almost NO undergrowth other than low ferns. The creamy trunks of the kari standing like soliders at attention was quite mysterious.

 

 

We drove into Hamelin Bay to have a look around and did the short walk to the headland. I had read about the local rays, that were supposed to be really friendly, but we didn’t spot any on the way out. As we got back there was a bloke in the water swishing his hand around and all of a sudden there was this huge ray swimming near him. I quickly headed back and got a handful of old pillies and we hit the beach. It wasn’t long before this monster was joined by a couple of his equally as big mates and I was feeling a tad anxious as I tried to get the pillie under his wings so it wasn’t pilfered by the learned sea gulls. I managed to get a few pats but boys weren’t too keen to close!

We headed to Cape Leuwin, which is famous for its lighthouse and the fact that it is where the Southern Ocean and Indian Ocean meet.

We wondered throughout the keepers cottages and listened to the audio tour, which surprisingly the boys were very interested in. I had a bit of fun with a couple of pictures using perspective. Nothing new but something a bit different!

We had caught a few herring the day before so Jacko was keen to try and get a few more. We found a jetty not far from the cape and a super nice old guy Ed instructed us on how to catch fish using a blob,  breakfast cereal and a straw........Ok...a blob is a very heavy float that has a large hole through the centre of it. It works as a float but also as a weight so that you can cast it. The hole is stuffed with bran, that you would sprinkle on your breakfast, that has been soaked in an oily concoction, that works as a berley to attract the fish. At the end of a 2m leader you put a decent sized hook and then get a piece of ‘straw’ and thread it over the hook. Ed used white but the tackle shop said green was the best. We did our best but the fact that Ed was leaving indicated to me that they were off the chew and unfortunately I was right. We fished for about an hour with no success but it was an interesting experience all the same.

It was getting late so we headed back and after a game of cricket with some other kids who were from Melbourne we had a late dinner of sushi (De doesn’t like it) and we headed to bed after a great day.

Day 97 – 13/3/14 – Margaret River – Conto Campground WA

We were up early again, bloody hell that’s 3 days in a row, but this time for a different reason. The boys are heading off for a couple of days of bonding while the ladies are doing a tour of the wineries and shopping.

We (for the next two days ‘we’ shall mean Jack, Sam and I while ‘they’ shall mean De, Nana and Shelby) packed up and headed 30 minutes to the south to a Conto’s Campground in the Leuwin-Naturalist National Park. 

The boys have both recently installed a SAS survival app on their IPods and Sam had learnt how to make a compass using the sun and after just ½ an hour we had successfully found east and west, which I was pretty impressed by.

 In the afternoon we drove down to check out the beach in the hope of me having my first dip in the Indian Ocean. The swell was way to yucky so we decided to do a spot of fishing in the hope of getting another salmon. The beach wasn’t even suited to fishing so we found ourselves a nice safe spot where I could fish and the boys explored the rock pools.

I was using my big surf rod with a slug (metal lure) and I kept of feeling heaviness on the end that I thought might be a fish but everytime I bought it in it was empty. Maybe weed I thought as there was plenty around. After about 20 minutes I managed to land a Herring that the boys were overjoyed about. I had the same heavy feeling a number of times but now I was getting the fish (more herring) right to the edge of the rocks and where they would spit the lure out! This happened about 15 times, I was trying everything I could from really setting the hook to trying smaller hooks but they just kept spitting it out just as they came out of the water. One even made it to the rock I was standing on but managed to escape and bounce down to the ledge below before being saved by the next wave. I was a perplexed, but not to stressed as it was only herring I was losing, so we decided on 5 more casts. Of course with the next one I managed to not only hook a herring but get it all the way to the top of the rocks before it spat its hook! Ahh got ya! On closer inspection I realised that they weren’t spitting the hook it was just that their mouth is so tender that the hook was tearing straight through it once their body weight was on it! Poor buggers there must have been 20 or 30 fish out there who would feel like they just did 10 rounds with Mike Tyson!

It really was a safe spot. They were starting to get a bit sick of waiting for a wave to make a big enough splash!

The boys cleaned the fish and we had them ‘in a bag’, Sam’s favourite, and pizza for dinner before turning in.

‘They’ had been on a tour of a few of the wineries around Margie as well as doing chocky and cheese tasting finishing at a brewery. Don’t know any other details as what goes on tour stays on tour!

Day 96 – 12/3/14 – Margaret River WA

The boys could see the front door to Nana and Shelby’s cabin through their windows in the back of the van. I can’t say for sure but I am guessing Hussain Bolt may have had trouble beating the boys down to the cabin once they saw that the door was open and Nana was awake!

After breakfast it was decided that the girls were going to take it easy around the town this morning while we headed up to Busselton to get a new SIM card for the phone Warnie (aka Ian Daley) has very kindly loant me for the remainder of the trip, to replace the piece of useless wiring that Telstra sold me.

We had a quick look around Busselton walking to the beginning of the jetty and then after finding out it was @ $8 to walk on the jetty and another two arms and three legs to go to some underwater observatory we about faced. I think jetty’s look nicer from the shore anyway!

We then drove along the highway towards Cape Nautualist past some of the biggest beach houses I have ever seen. I am pretty sure we could fit our house and caravan into some of these McMansions garages. It wasn’t long before we had to do another about face as they were also charging @ $8 to look at the lighthouse!! If it was a grand old light house or was perched on the edge of a cliff with a magnificent view I might have considered it. But this thing was short and pudgy and sat in the middle of a brush paddock. I know I am tight but this was a complete rip off!

We instead did the walk down to the lookout where we viewed the Indian Ocean for the first time, a much better one than we would have got from the lighthouse anyway! We headed back to camp and all of the girls to the boys down to the beach at Prevelly for a swim while I headed to the tavern for a bit of me time. Two hours and 4 pints later I was feeling pretty happy with myself as I had picked 3 winners from 5 bets all at decent odds!

 I was pretty tired and the girls were still pretty jet lagged, and they’ve got a big day lined up tomorrow, so it wasn’t long before we were all headed off to bed.

Day 95 – 11/3/14 - Big Brooke Arboretum – Margaret River WA

We were up and going before the sun had thought about getting up, errr...well not quite but by our standards we were up and going early, hitting the road before 8. Nana and Shelby, De’s sister, are flying in today and meeting us in Margaret River so we need to get there early and get everything organised.

On the way to Margie, we got to our second left turn. Our first one was way back in Queenscliff Victoria where our patch changed from heading south to west, well now we are changing from heading west to north! We are not quite as far away from home as we can be but we are pretty bloody close to it!

Yesterday we tried to book into one of the van parks in Margie but my ‘silly’ mobile phone was on the blink again so I decided to do it the old way and used the telephone in the glass box on the side of the road. I took a handful of coins with me, about $4, thinking it is only a couple of hundred ks so it might even be a local call. The last time I used a pay phone it was 20c a call, now the minimum amount you can put in to make a call is 50c and once I got through, I was so bloody busy feeding this machine coins I could hardly concentrate on what I was saying. After what felt like 60 seconds I was out of coins, had confirmed the van booking and was most of the way through the cabin for the girls when it cut out. Oh well I thought, shouldn’t be a problem they knew what I was looking for! Sorry, we don’t have any 2 room cabins left as there is an event on this weekend and we are all booked out.....oh shiiivers....this is not going to be good.....luckily enough the other van park had exactly what we were looking for!

We set up and did all the usuals but I went on a cleaning rampage wiping down every flat surface of the van with a wet rag and doing the floor three times – it needed it after three months! We chilled for the rest of the afternoon while we waited for the ladies. Jack and Sam were just about jumping out of their skin and every time a car drove into the park they were up out of their chairs. It was great to see their excitement and love for the Nana, and Shelby! When they finally arrived they were mugged with lots of kisses and cuddles!

The remainder of the day and into the night was spent sitting around the van telling stories of where we have been and what Nana and Shelby have been up to. De cooked up a big lamb roast and a few beers and wines were had. With WA being 3 hours behind NSW the night was drawn to a close pretty early and it wasn’t long before the freight train was passing through the Margaret River station!