Completing the practice loop

We left Kalgoorlie early, hoping to stop in Coolgardie for a refuel and some breakfast.  It was closed!

Yeah the whole town.  The information centre was open and I picked up one brochure on the area, it was all a bit Ghost Towny.  Quite interesting.  After following 'cafe open' signs for a while and not getting anywhere we headed out of town towards Meckering.


Meckering is known by most West Australians for the earthquake that happened back in 1968.  Shattering the small town and there are some interesting sights to see, showing you how much damage an earthquake can do.  

Railway tracks bent by the earthquake were mind blowing. The big camera is a camera museum.

Ettamogah Pub wasn't open unfortunately but with no-one in sight it was easier for a photo opportunity.  

This was our spot in Merredin for a night.  The Council have just organised an RV friendly overnight area and the girl at the Information Centre gave us a mud map where to go, advising us to ignore the no camping sign - we did but I'm pretty sure all of the people who parked nearby thought we were naughty peoples.  

The overnighter at Merredin is located at Merredin Peaks, we had a great time climbing the rock and seeing how the dam worked.  Although the boys aren't spending hours a day doing 'schoolwork', the general knowledge they are experiencing and picking up along the way is incredible.

We had a visitor to our camp spot in Merredin, Terry came and had dinner, a drink and a laugh with us that night.  It was wonderful to catch up with him and hear all about his new 'retired' life.  Retirement didn't last long.  Lucky for us Terry has a house in York and was happy for us to plonk ourselves on his block the next night so we headed for York, set ourselves up behind his amazing hand crafted wall and checked out the town.

The York Car museum is a must see for all car buffs and seeing there are four in our family we headed in for a peek.  What a great place.  its incredible how many cars are in what seemed to be quite a small space.  Mustangs, Beetles, Caddi's, A9X Torana, there were so many historic cars in there the boys were in awe.  They even had my old mustard Corolla (although mine wasn't in such good nick).

From York we headed back into Perth for the caravan checkup and a quick goodbye to all.

Wheat Belt

Leaving Cape Arid, saw us staying at an uninspiring caravan park in Esperance that allowed us to do the washing and get ready to move on.

Our next stop was Fraser Range Station.  Located an hour East from Norseman this Station seems to be used by Nullabor travellers, weary after so much nothing to stay somewhere pleasant and get ready to explore Western Australia.  We on the other hand made our way out there to show the boys a working sheep station.

Unlucky for us we were unable to do the station tour due to weather so for a couple of nights we made the most of the scenery, the station dogs (Zoe and Mac) and a brand new baby lamb to chat to.  It was a great spot to explore.  Number 6 hole on the Nullabor links Golf Course.

The boys are now in love with Red Heelers and have watched Red Dog a couple of more times since being at the station.

Animals have been quite an attraction as we've travelled around.  The boys faces light up when they see any animal they can interact with.

From Fraser Range Station we made our way to Kalgoorlie, had a look at the Super Pit - WOW - its huge - super in fact.;-)

Stayed at a great free camp just 9kms out of Kalgoorlie on the way to Coolgardie for the night, flies were bad (although we had no idea how bad they could actually get until later in our trip - more of that later) but spot had plenty of room to move and could have accomodated a thousand I'm sure.

What a beautiful surprise

Cape Arid

Although we probably shouldn't be telling everyone, Cape Arid is incredible. 

We really had our hearts set on staying at Lucky Bay, but after seeing everyone squished up in what was basically a car park in their vans we decided that wasn't really our thing.  A bit too close for comfort.

So we headed on out to Cape Arid, past Condingup and its quaint Tavern with excellent meals and friendly people. Meals were had, petrol pumped, essentials obtained.

aaaaah the serenity - the National Park campground was burnt out approx 7 years ago so all the vegetation is new, dense and pretty - the campground also comes with newish toilets and camp kitchen - all in great condition and there's even a view of the Bay from the kitchen. Leaves most caravan parks for dead.  Each site is secluded from each other and large, as you can see we had the van in with awning out and heaps of room for car and more if needed.  Surrounded by Banksia trees and heaps of undergrowth made you feel like you were camping on your own.  Awesome setup.

An image of the campground from above. Our van is the large white block towards the bottom of the photo, the toilets and kitchen are the blue roofed buildings and you can see other peoples sites - where no-one was ;-)

 A 3km walk saw Stephen, Oliver and Caleb taking a bit of a wrong turn and climbing up an inclined cliff face, rather than following the walk trail - they now know they can do it and should mum be along, they won't be. What a spoil sport!

 Oli got buried Again

And a Kangaroo decided they were too close for comfort

But what a view - Is there a word that describes this feeling?

The Condingup Tavern for dinner and a game of pool ended up being a longer drive away than we remembered but great food.

We were lucky enough to be sharing the Cape Arid campground with a lovely couple, Brett and Tess - they have been coming there for several years for a couple of weeks and were a wealth of information on the area, as well as tips and tricks on travelling, which we love to hear from people who've been there before us.

Brett and Tess took us off for a 25km drive along the bays to Mount Arid, along the beach and in and out of tracks we probably wouldn't have even noticed.  So we were very greatful to them for this insight into the area. 

To be honest everytime we would come over the rocks we would enter a new, beautiful bay, we thought the bays were never-ending. 

We even found a small 'shell bay' covered in large well formed shells.  Caleb dug down but couldn't find the bottom.

Being that we'd had such a full on day we even had a chance to use the car awning for the first time.  We didn't bring pegs to tie it down, which wasn't a bad thing as we got to see the poles levitating.

Thomas Fishery

The drive into Thomas Fishery was hard going on the corrugation and then the 4WD track came and this saw us climbing rocks and not knowing what was coming around the corner - we made it!

We're now back in Esperance and heading up to the Fraser Range Sheep Station tomorrow to have a Station tour so that'll be a great experience.

We will let you know how that goes.

Over and out (I used the CB.......)

Sight unseen for some time

Dear Blog

It s been some time since we updated you and we are sorry but this internet thingy has us beat.  My carrier is Telechoice and they tell you they are on the Telstra network and have 98% of the coverage of Telstra - Nope! not true.  Stephen signed up with Telstra and he's had a bit of service, I've had none for the last ten days. But thats about as hard as its got over the last week, as you'll see from the photos below:

 

Highlights - Oli lost his legs at Victoria Harbour                                 Stephen washed the shovel

We took a road, Tash thinking if was sealed, well aren't all roads? hmmm, the bitumen stopped and red dirt and corrugations set in.  It was our shakedown for the new van and I'm pretty sure we both cried silently when we imagined what was going on inside.  Well - it was all OK. The Corelle stood up well, the fridge stayed close but we did lose the fire extinguisher - it popped out of the wall (???) and a couple of things we didn't put away fell over - we were very impressed to be honest.

We made our way to the Duke of Orleans caravan park for a couple of nights, not a lot to say about that - unless you need to fill up or require power don't worry about missing out on that one at the princely sum of $57 per night.

But what a great base it was to go and see Victoria Harbour - what a stunner, we spent many hours here digging Oliver into the sand, Caleb experiencing proper bush toilet 101 and Stephen washing the shovel (from Caleb's toilet 101 lesson).

Stephen and Oliver have become expert climbers, whenever they see rocks they must be climbed.

A bit of fun holding onto the side of the car, driving at slower than walking pace down the beach (I'm sure they wished mum wasn't there to keep the speed down)

Little Wharton Beach

Victoria Harbour

And to top off an amazing day, we all went sandboarding on some really pristine, steep dunes.  The sand was so fine we're still getting it out of creases a week later.  We may never get it out of the car carpet.

After three nights at the Duke we decided to head off and see Cape Arid for a couple of nights.

We're on the Road

We took off on our trip on Thursday 5th March.  Tash was still sick with the flu and Stephen was coming down with it so after a quick side trip to Wagin to see the Big Ram we stopped at the caravan park in Katanning.  It was pretty rough I must say, it'll be interesting to see whether we come across much worse, so quite an exciting stop for our first night.

After a nights rest we headed off to Hyden. Well that was a surprise, what a gorgeous caravan park at Wave Rock, beautifully laid out, quiet, pretty and a great campers kitchen area.  It also came with a good playground and a very neatly kept pool area.  The boys loved it.

The location of this park is awesome, we were only step away from Wave Rock and we made the most of it by climbing the rock a couple of times and going for a trek to see Hippos Yawn.  Caleb even overcame his fear of heights (his words not mine ;-)) by climbing Wave Rock. So cute!

Staying here three nights gave us time to recover from our sicknesses and get some energy back.  We left Hyden on our way to Hopetoun, via Ravensthorpe.  Hopetoun is a beautiful town, they're set up really well for the community with sports ovals, parks, etc and all on the beach.

We pitched camp at Fitzgerald River National Park at the Four Mile Beach campground, really well set out, clean as can be and a short walk to the most beautiful beaches.  The boys loved the rocks here and played 'lava run' with the water coming through the rocks for ages.  It was beautiful.

After two nights at the foot of Mount Barren (something out of Jurassic Park I'm sure) we made our way to Esperance.  We weren't sure where we were going to go but ended up stopping at Esperance Seafront Caravan Park,  it has terrible write ups on trip advisor so we weren't very sure but its been a good stay.  Its very tired and the ablutions are really ready for an update - the playground even has equipment I played on when I was a kid (I know, that old!!!) Luckily for us we use our own shower and although the boys would love some more kiddy infrastructure they'd rather go to the stunning beaches around about.

We had a big day Saturday checking out Cape Le Grande National Park, first looked at Cape Le Grande beach which was huge and hard, no need for a 4wd on the beach here, but a bit of a windy location so off we went to Hellfire Bay.  This is the bay Stephen always says is his favourite and although its been years since he's seen it, we all soon agreed - number one on the list for all of us.  Rocks to play on, squeaky fine sand, crystal clear sheltered water and there was even surf around the corner if you felt so inclined.  The boys didn't want to leave but by 3pm we decided we'd go and have a little look at Lucky Bay, as thats the one every one raves about.

When you come over that hill and see Lucky Bay before you it takes your breathe away, the turquoise water is the most amazing colour you could ever hope to see. And what a huge bay.  It was hard enough to go for a drive on, which a lot of people had done.  The Lucky Bean Cafe was all set up and offering coffees, fun drinks and ice creams - very exciting!

We must have come at a bad time as the seaweed took over most of the beach so it wasn't pleasant on the sand but the view around the bay was beautiful.

So how is the new lifestyle going? We're finding places for everything in the van and how they work best, we're learning of the little quirks of this new home and what to do each time we need to use 12v power, 240v power, water pressure, cold water, hot water, toilet.... the list goes on.  Its just different and we're very spoilt with this van having so many options.  Its interesting.

I'm quite amazed at how much we can fit in the fridge and cupboards, its just remembering where we put things that's killing us.  lol

OK enough of the waffle, here's some photos

We're on the road

 Wave Rock (from above)

 Hippos Yawn rocks

 Hippos Yawn

 Mt Barren

 Hellfire Bay

 Writing our Blogs - oliverjett.blogspot.com and calebjay.blogspot.com

Thanks for having a read, I might even keep up-to-date from now on and keep them a bit more compact.

Home Schooling

Hi all

So the homeschooling is going much better now that I've had my breakdown and decided to take a deep breath.

Its quite interesting that when the schooling rested on my shoulders for the first time (without the help of teachers of course, we know its always been our responsibility as parents) I went back to the traditional methods I was taught with and that I tried so hard to get away from, going into the Montessori world.  Crazy!

Now that the boys and I have had a sit down, had a nice chat about what they enjoyed at school, and what I could replicate to a degree, we're actually doing pretty well.  We had a visit from the Home Schooling Moderator today and she was pleased that we were organised and ready for this new adventure.  So that's reassuring - always good to know you're on track.  I have to back off apparently, "me? overthinking it all? Expecting too much? Never!"

The boys are much happier and when we're on the road it will be much more exciting for them.

On the packing side of things, I've started putting things in the caravan so that I don't have too many piles around the house (it isn't big enough for piles).  There's a bit of juggling going on, as I seem to need the item as soon as I've decided it can go to the caravan, I suppose I'll have to look at it as another room to the house.

I really shouldn't have put the extra champagne glass in the caravan though, its a bit strange offering someone a glass of wine then putting your shoes on, grabbing the keys and disappearing out the front door.

"hmm, maybe I should have said No?" Annette said to herself

On a positive note, I did come back before she felt the need to leave. She really does put up with a lot from me ;-)