Haslam

Friday 25th Feb;

Have been camped at Haslam since Tuesday, about 12 other camps in here at the moment including some couples we have met at several other camps coming across the Nullabor, good facilities, a flushing toilet after long drops & plenty of water to fetch in buckets, so able to shower every day. Very social & one of our neighbors’ has given us some beautiful big crabs already cooked & cleaned, yum! Bryon is out fishing as I write this & also planning on putting our marron nets out after we do some modifications to them to suit crabs.

Congratulations to Caitlyn for getting Head Girl at school, we are very proud!

Sunday 27th;

Went to Smokey Bay yesterday, has a normal caravan park but no free camping & a well stocked general store, prices not much different to Albany. All the coastal towns seem to have long jetty’s left over from the days of sea freight. Off to Streaky Bay tomorrow for groceries & washing & to visit some other camping places to pick out our next stop. Hoping they have a second hand book shop there as we are getting through the pile we have. Have been fighting mosquitos at night in the van until we found a vent behind the microwave that was not screened, much better since Bryon fixed that. Went to a oyster factory today & got shown the grading & sorting they do there, the oyster boats are out most days and we have had a lovely feed for $6 per dozen.

Thanks for the comments everyone, George I will get back to you soon with some details about life in the van. I am doing this update standing against a washing machine in a laundromat in Streaky Bay where I have the laptop plugged in to recharge. Just had a feed of whiting & salt & pepper squid for lunch, was yummy! Have been to check out some other camping site but still not sure where we are going after Haslam.

Fowler the cat

Fowler the cat

Fowler and Lulu

he moved in with us for the three days we were in the park and freloaded on whatever food he could get! Very smoochy & loving.

Fowlers Bay

Saturday 19th Feb; Arrived at Fowlers Bay at about 6.30pm after losing 2.5 hours in the time change but with the daylight saving was still light till about 9pm. Very friendly park & the bay is just beautiful. The park has new owners, a young couple from Denmark just down the road from Albany. They have been here since October & the park is very well kept. Also met the resident park cat named Fowler who has made himself at home in our van( see photos), he slept the night on one of our chairs & seemed please with the polony he got for breakfast, I wonder how many breakfasts he went around and collected from various cat lovers! Have limited mobile phone reception here but still no internet, last connection was Norseman & until now we haven’t had the TV hooked up since we left Esperance.

Talked to Chelsea last night & their move into our house yesterday sounds like it went well (have to call it their house now )

Nullabor Plain

Border Village.

Friday 18th, Camped the next night at Moodini Bluffs on the west side of Mundrabilla & met up with two couple’s that we had met also at Fraser Range so had happy hour with them. After leaving there the next morning we discovered the wide variety of different trees nicely decorated in individual themes which kept us amused for ages, unfortunately I was not able to get photos of these as by the time we spotted each of them we were already past & Bryon wouldn’t stop. This is the list of the ones we spotted & we may have missed a few; underwear, stuffed toys (yes stuffed toys & they all looked in good nick), thongs, shoes, bottles, cups, Dolls including a cabbage patch, hats & last one was gloves. Very entertaining. These were all west of Mundrabilla.


Couldn’t have asked for better conditions for crossing the Nullabor, cool temperatures, mostly no wind and overcast, heading to Fowlers Bay for a couple of days.

Awesome cliffs in the bight, to the right.

and to the left.

Fraser Range Station

Thursday 18^th, Stayed one night at Fraser Range, lovely park, great facilities and a nice walk that takes you up the hill to the water tank and gives a great view over the station and surrounds, saw a couple of big red kangaroo’s while we were up there. The lovely park dog Lewis kept us company whenever we went for a walk. It also has a big fire pit for communal gatherings but is not in use this time of the year due to fire restrictions. Still raining on & off.

The communial fire pit

lovely gardens.

The rig.

Bromus Dam

Stayed at the camping area at Bromus dam for one night, met Mathew “the mathematical genius” (so he told us) who puttered into our camp on his motorized pushbike, he was camped somewhere in the bush with his wife and tribe of kids ranging in age from 5 to 15 years old, never did find their camp. Think he was in his early thirties but if you added up all he said he had done he should have been 50! After talking to him for a while we discounted a big part of what he said including his gold vein & diamond discoveries and the three house they own but never live in etc. Met  4 of his kids(just a little feral) when they were trying to catch yabbies in the dam. Had lots of trouble with ants every time we tried to sit outside the van and it also rained during the night, I think we are taking the clouds & rain with us every time we move!

Esperance

Bryon phoning home!

lots of interesting Skylab stuff.

Beautiful Esperance

So much stuff to look at.

Spent three days in Esperance staying at the Pine Grove Park quite a way out of town. Don’t know if we would stay there again, was a bit run down and just about empty when all the other parks in town were full.


Visited the museum which was great and very easy to spend a few hours wandering around it, so much interesting stuff to look at including lots of Skylab stuff. Walked into town ( took 50 minutes) to the Pier Hotel for tea on Valentine’s day and had a yummy leisurely meal and a taxi home afterwards.

Of course had to drop in to the Quilt shop and buy a fat quarter & catch up with the girls working there.

Mason Bay



Looking out to the bay from our van

Arrived at Masons Bay near Hopetoun on Monday, was blowing a gale & we were pushing into a head wind most of the way here. The road was exceedingly rough & had a bit of fixing up to do in the van after were got here, a couple of locks on the drawers didn’t like the shake up & the plug for the kitchen sink unscrewed itself & of course the bottom of it had disappeared down the drain. Lucky for Bryon’s tin of nuts & bolts for a replacement. Put up the awning & shadecloth wall which was all tied down then didn’t get out of the van again for two days as the rain set in & we heard that aprox 40mm had fallen in that time. We now know the van doesn’t leak. Did lots of reading, sewing (me) and watched a few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy as we haven’t got the satellite dish up yet for any other tv.


Wednesday; what a difference a day makes, the sun is shining, the sea is a mirror & the solar panels are working overtime to get the batteries back up after no sun for two days.

Have a lovely view from our van down to the water & lots of birds dropping in for a visit. Quite a few other camps here & the camp manager called in to get camp fees. Satellite dish & washing line are now up so get to see the news tonight. Been for a big walk around the beach & saw another pod of dolphins, Bryon scouted out a couple of likely fishing spots for tomorrow.
Ok, forget the fishing & sun, it lasted part of the day and then that was the last we saw. Cloudy all the rest of our stay and had to leave when the low battery light went on and acording to the weather forcast no sun in sight.
Still will try again here next year as is a lovely place and we might get lucky then with more sun.
Spent the next two day in Munglinup Caravan Park, still blowing a gale and raining so caught up with washing,etc and did a walk from the park down to the river between showers but didnt take the camera, would be a lovely spot to fish or take a kayake, worth having a look at.
Off to Esperance tomorrow.



These tractors pulled in just as we were leaving. They are also travelling around Australia pulling their camper trailers, bet their fuel bills are a lot higher than ours.

More Drages

Royal Hakea

Road to the Fitzgerald.

some rather large whale bones.

hmm, been a while between graders.

Drages Beach

We had a day out at this fabulous beach yesterday with Kevin, Karen, Steve, Sue , Jasmine & us of course.

A few fish were unlucky enough to get caught & we had visits from a large pod of about 30 dolphins and one very interested seal, also had a big stingray hanging around for a while too. Some of the roads in & out very a little sticky.

Leaving Bremer Bay tomorrow (Monday) after a very relaxing 3 weeks with Steve & Sue.



The girls hard at work. Jasmine, Sue, Sue and Karen



The boys hard at work too.



a couple of the visiting dolphins.



very inquisitive seal



The Porteous Bros, intrepid explorers





More Hunter River





Another day in paradise! Went for a picnic at Hunter River with the girls from the park and played with the kayaks.Hunter River is a fresh water river just in from Bremer beach and is a favorite spot for water sports in the holiday periods.

Bryon trying out the kayak.

Us.

Tilly



Just got to love girl power!