(Ir)Regular Ramblings – 7

4/4 – ???/4

Albany – This is one town I was really keen to see, as I wanted to see how it compared with my memories from 27 years ago.   I loved it then, and I wasn’t too disappointed this time.   The view over the bay and the islands, from the war memorial, certainly hadn’t changed a lot! It was from this spot, the ANZAC's sailed to Galipoli - the last they saw of Australia was looking back past the islands to where this photo was taken.

an appropriate engineering business, but just on spec, called in at the local caravan dealership.

Their suggestion was to ring the hitch manufacturer (Heyman Reece) in Melbourne.   The ‘warranty’ lady ascertained that I was on a mobile phone and that I was parked outside the caravan dealers, then asked me to take my phone inside.   A bit perplexed, I did as she requested, handing it to the manager who spoke for a couple of minutes, hung up and pointed… “That one there.”  

“That one there what?” I asked.  

“You can take that one.”  

It was as simple as that.   A brand new complete hitch (about $550 worth!), replaced under warranty!   Needless to say, I was surprised, relieved AND pleased!

We’d had a few problems with either scraping the drawbar as it’s so long, or not being able to get the jockey wheel on/off on uneven sites so I decided to modify the axles to give us an extra few inches.   The process required the fabrication of some metal plates each with a hole in their center, welding the plates to the axle, rotating the axle 180 degrees, modifying the handbrake, and removing/replacing all the wheels and brake assemblies.   The caravan park owner at Albany opened his well fitted workshop to me, gave me the necessary steel, brought a welder down to the van in his 4WD and even supplied the concrete blocks to support the van on while it was without wheels!   Although it was a long day and not without a few hitches, I eventually had it all done by about 9:30pm.   I left it on the blocks overnight as it was getting a bit late to be making noise while I lowered the van back down.   Marg refused to be around when I returned it to earth as the angles required when I first raised it, as I jacked various corners and inserted the concrete blocks, had Marg turning almost white – and that’s saying something for one who tans as she does!

For those of you who have been fortunate(?) enough to read the earlier emails, AND remembered some of the content, you may recall mention of the Swiss couple in the huge Winnebago motor-home at Port Campbell.   After returning to Melbourne and flying back home to Switzerland for four weeks, they caught up with us in Albany.   We spent a couple of hours in their motor-home (and with ducted heating on board, leather seats etc., it STILL isn’t camping!) reviewing their route and ours.   Whilst we had been to many of the same places, they are traveling much faster than us.   

We didn’t get away from the caravan park until after lunch (again!) but this time it was the caravan park owners that delayed us.   I did some work for them on their computer system.   I only spent about three hours, but could easily have spent a couple of weeks.   They had no backup regime of their files and all their future bookings were only recorded on their computer – a recipe for disaster.   (I felt quite smug as I had backed up all of our files and photos onto CD the night before – see note under Walpole, below).   By the time I left they at least had a backup of their important files and a method of repeating it daily.   Pity I didn’t know sooner – we could have had free accommodation for a week or two.   We departed as a huge storm arrived.   A neighboring van’s awning ripped in the wind as it roared into town.   I had just got the awning away (after hearing it rip) when the owners arrived.   They had been on the nearby mountain at the war memorial when they saw the storm approaching.   Despite their best efforts to get back to the park, they got held up at virtually every intersection and arrived about 5 minutes too late.

When I am writing the emails, I often jot notes , as I think of relevant items.   The notation for Walpole was: {Walpole – No Camping, Bus Stop, Rain, Hail, WIND}

We arrived in Walpole after dark, once again, after the late departure from Albany and having spent too long at the Sandalwood Oil factory near Albany (nice coffee shop with GREAT cake!).   We decided not to bother cooking and instead ate at a small café with big meals.   Definitely good value for money, but not sophisticated.   The look on the poor lady’s face when I asked what went with the nacho’s….  I tried to help her by explaining “Guacamole?” “Sour Cream?”  - She had no clue….  

“You get nachos with some sauce and then cheese on top, with more nachos, sauce and cheese on top of that!”….    I went for the Chicken Snitzel!

Anyway, the wind was howling and rain was pelting down, so we drove across the road to the car park at the visitor’s info board and ‘parked’ for the night.   There was one hell of a storm during the night, complete with hail and very strong wind.   Now, I admit to seeing the “No Camping” sign, but in weather like that I really didn’t notice the “Bus Stop” sign.   Our breakfast was rudely interrupted at about ¼ to 10 next morning by a bus driver thumping on the door, all red in the face, huffing and puffing about us not being allowed to camp there etc.   Well, I informed him we weren’t camped, only parked; but I think the fact the stabilizing jacks were down, rubber door mat in front of the door and the van on some planks on one side to level us up, sort of gave the ‘wrong’ impression.   After a quiet word or two from me he disappeared back into his bus, even redder in the face than before – Ahh well…   you can’t please everyone!   Apparently we got out of Albany in the nick of time as the storm there was even worse than we experienced.   Terrible winds and a huge amount of hail.

A walkway has been constructed through the top of some Karri trees, part of which is 40 metres above the ground!   It was quite a different view looking DOWN a tall tree instead of UP it! The girls discovered it was possible to get quite a 'sway-up' by standing half way along a girder and throwing their weight from side to side.... Bless their little hearts!!!

Coalmine beach Caravan Park near Walpole has campfire facilities near most caravan sites.   Although it was still blowing a gale and only 14 degrees, we went for a walk, gathering firewood as we went.   As dusk approached, we lit our fire and within 5 minutes of lighting it, we had four others sharing it.   There seems to be something almost primal in people when it comes to fires and the desire people have to stand and stare at the flames.   (Wonder if the primal stuff also explains the grunts from the caravan next door???  Hmmm…)   The rain held off long enough for us to cook and eat our dinner and as I type this (10:15pm) I’m sitting beside the glowing embers (I’m warm on one side – cold on the other!).   The wind has stopped and I can hear the waves on the beach… AHhhhhh….

I mentioned above about backing up our files.  This included not only all our photos to date (about 1300!!!), but also all the fuel, caravan and expenditure figures since we started.   That evening in Walpole, I fired up the laptop to enter the latest fuel receipt, only to find the file corrupted and everything gone.   After the initial sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I recalled the backup in Albany a couple of nights before and there it all was – didn’t loose a thing!

From Walpole, to Pemberton and another mail pickup.   Pemberton is so small that the Post Office is a general store. The Post Office was, therefore, open on a Sunday afternoon!   We camped the night at Big Brook Dam, a reservoir used to supplement the town’s drinking water.   It was a mild, pitch black night so we gathered some wood and cooked over a camp fire. The bottom pic shows the view from our van, the top right shows the picnic area, complete with white sand for swimmers.

Jess, Maddy and I went 4WD’ing through the Karri forest along some of the best dirt roads imaginable.   Along the way we found a bush camp site surrounded by birds, a small creek and even a possum or two.

Whilst in Kalgoorlie we had met a retired couple from Pemberton who had insisted we come to visit.   We initially had trouble getting a message to them, but left another local phoning them regularly while we went to climb the Gloucester Tree.   This tall Karri has a platform near its top, 62 metres above the ground!   Access is via a series of metal spikes, circling the trunk as we climbed.   Even as I type this, my hands are clammy at the thought.   62 metres is a long way when you’re on the ground looking up, but I can assure you, it's an even longer way looking down!   I had climbed the tree when I was 15, twice.    I timed the second climb, but copped it when Dad found out – the risk of falling while climbing at speed was no doubt much greater.   This time, I was very careful, but I was scared the kids might slip.   I guess the role has changed.  

After our climb, we stopped off at a winery to sample their best red, and have cappuccino and cake in the restaurant.   All this time, the Lady we’d attempted to contact in Pemberton was driving around looking for us after getting the message.   She’d tried the caravan park while we were at the tree; the tree while we were at the winery and phoned us heaps of times on the phone we’d left in the car.   Eventually we caught up, just long enough to use their hose to fill the water tanks on the van, before heading out to the bush camp before dark – with the promise to return the next day for a cuppa.   The cuppa and chat was great and included an explanation of the reason for the flying fox from the top of the Gloucester Tree – to be able to lower back to earth the people who climb the tree and then have a heart attack!   Apparently it’s happened numerous times.   We enjoyed looking at their art-work, one piece of which the lady had bought when out one day for only $18,000.   It was by an aboriginal artist who has recently died and is now estimated to be worth $440,000!!!

Half way landing..............................The Top..................................Looking Up

......................................Looking DOWN...........................................................

A drive around some of Pemberton's other attractions brought us to the Bi-Centennial Tree.   A monster of a tree with its platform over 80 metres above ground.   The girls and I set off for the top, but half way up a sign on a small landing warned of the risks of continuing the climb, some of which was vertical.   Jess went all the way, but Maddy and I decided discretion was the better part of valor, and descended to ‘Terror Firmer’.

We spent the next couple of nights at the bush camp mentioned above.   A couple of back-packers who were earning money fruit-picking at an orchard near by, shared our gas light to cook by and the following evening brought us a huge bag of apples. We introduced them to the pleasure of baked apple, cored with the apple centre filled with sugar and cinamon and cooked in foil beside the camp fire. Impressed as they were with our culinary delights, I think they might have been even more enthralled had it not been for the 5000 or so apples they had picked over the previous few weeks! The ranger delivered the firewood and there was no charge for the camping or the firewood!

From Pemberton we headed to Augusta, a town at the South Western tip of Australia and much different from Port Augusta in S.A.   On the way we stopped at a parking spot off the road to eat lunch.   As we finished, we heard a loud, long screech and Marg and I were already running by the time the time the crash occurred.   Grabbing the 1^st Aid kit as we ran past the car, we headed for the accident about 200 metres up the road.   A car traveling east had ‘lost it’ in the gravel, over-corrected and then speared across the road only just missing oncoming traffic, before rolling onto its roof, sliding along the top of a sandy bank and rolling back onto its wheels, broadside across the highway. 

The driver (a pommy guy who’d got permanent citizenship here only 5 weeks before) walked away without a scratch, while his brother had a gash to the head and numerous glass cuts from the windscreen.   After tending the wounded, we returned to our car, un-hitched and drove back to the crashed car.   I used the ‘snatch-strap’ to jerk the wreck parallel but off the highway.   (The pics above were taken after I'd 'snatched' it off the highway.) We re-hitched the van and then took the passenger to look for a phone, as we didn’t have any mobile phone coverage and their car was a write-off.  

Some 35 km’s later we found a small town whose proudest boast must surely have been its General Store/roadhouse. Guess we should be happy it had a phone!   The fuel tanker that was being used to fill the garage’s tanks was, I think, the same one Noah used to top up his outboard motor on the Ark.

We continued on to Augusta and all was fine 'till one of the girls yelled "Dad, the lights have gone out...". Unfortunately, they were correct. All the lights and the fridge/freezer run from the 12 volt batteries and somewhere over the previous few days our battery charger had failed. Of course, it only became apparent on Easter Eve - nothing available until Tuesday. We were booked into a park in Busselton. The manager kindly (he could afford to, at $45 a night for a caravan site - minimum 5 nights booking!) lent us a standard car charger, but it was too small for our needs. While it helped, we still needed to run the car for an hour every morning and night over Easter. Our neighbors were very understanding, turning a deaf ear and a blocked nose to our diesel and its fumes.

Busselton has the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere - at almost 2 Km's long, its a fair hike out and back While it costs to walk it, it's one of those things you just have to do.