Pemberton

Wednesday 24th
As I said in Tuesdays entry I went for a run through the King Karri walking trail and I really had to watch the signs as it was so overgrown that I felt like I could of lost the track many times. At one point I came to a place where there were 2 arrows on one tree telling me to go one way and 1 arrow on another to go the opposite way. I thought about it for quite a while and thought I would just take a chance and choose the 2 arrows. As I walked a little way I turned around and looked back, and those arrows made sense from my new position. It was so clear, yet from the other angle it was not clear. What I got out of all this was that God sees our situation from quite a different perspective than we do most of the time and if we just let Him show us His perspective then things become a lot clearer and He helps us see our way through. This was again confirmed when we climbed the Glousceter tree. What we could see from the ground was totally different from the top of the tree. Let Him take you higher and get His perspective on life is what kept coming up this day.

This is the view from the top of the Glousceter tree, 61m up , at Pemberton.

Tim is taking a photo looking down as they climb down. You can see Kimberly's head. Everyone except Zane and Manning made it to the top. Baylee , Kimberly and Ethan went twice!

The circus performers!

We then headed to Beedleup Falls. There was a swinging bridge across the slow small waterfall, which we got swinging. 

Quinninup

Tuesday 23rd
Drying clothes, high priority. I filled 1 out of 2 clothes lines and all the driers! We just hung out at the caravan park with all the 30 kangaroos and 1 friendly emu.

We headed off for a walk in the afternoon. We walked under this tree and heard this strange sound that we found out to be a kookaburra. It was like he growled at us for coming near his tree.

The walking trail to find the King Karri tree which we didn't find. This trail is just out of Quinninup and not well used so it was only the next day that I found it on my run. I had to fight my way through a jungle of overgrown plants at times and fallen huge Karri trees. A fun adventure.

The towns name Quinninup with the p fallen over and the plants taking over.

Manning's birthday

Monday 22nd
A big day was planned for Manning's birthday with the long awaited tree top walk to take place. Manning was very happy with his few little presents that were suitable for our current life style.

Here is the tree top walk. You get up to a hight of 40m! The whole walk way moves from side to side and up and down. The kids loved it as did Tim!

This is looking down through the grating that you walk on. It is hard to really show how high up you are but those are trees down underneath.

Another attempt at capturing the enormity of these trees.

A family photo on the path near where we just saw a nocturnal Quokoka run to his hole. We saw quite a few of these at Albany where we were staying and the kids thought they were rabbits until we got a closer look.

Our new house! Inside one of these huge tingle(red) trees.

When a tree falls it makes a huge log to get over, and long.

There was a tree that you could fit a car in but it fell over so they have made a replica of one so you can get a feel of how big it was. Baylee hit the breaks a bit quick by the looks of Kimberly!

We stayed at a caravan park in Quinninup, $30 so cheep. A great place to stay. Heaps of space, heaps of animals, huge trees.
These are photos of our birthday tea for Manning. A bit later in the evening as I chewed on some chewy lollies I spat out a tooth! It was one that had already had a root canal so there was no pain but it changed our plans a little bit as it was a priority to get to a dentist before I did any more damage. No more lollies!

Denamrk

Sunday 21st
We had visited the christian book shop in Albany on Friday and asked about what, when and where the churches were in Albany and the lady handed me a directory which had 3 pages full of churches to choose from! That blew our minds, so we looked for a smaller church in near by Denmark and found one. So we packed up and headed there Sunday morning. There were 4 people and we felt right at home. It was great to triple the size of the congregation! We were able to encourage them that God really cares about the small places, the individual people. The YWAM group that had been doing some work in Denmark turned up after the service as they had been at another church and after talking for a while Tim asked them if they knew Clinton Heberman and Margaret. Turns out they were very good friends with them. Amazing hey!

We had lunch at the platground next to the river with ducks in it that would come over to check out if you had some bread for them.
It was raining a bit but the kids were keen to check out Greens Pool and Elephant Rocks up the road that were meant to be good for snorkling.

Kimberly checking out Greens Pool

Everyone walking back from looking at Elephant Rocks.
Even though they were all in jumpers it was 100% vote that we should go snorkling at Elephant Rocks. Didn't catch anything but it was an adventure.
That night we camped in a parking bay somewhere between Denmark and Walpole and it rained all night and I still had bags full of wet clothes!

Whale world museum

Saturday 20th
We had some very excited campers as we announced that we were going to whale world. We have had some very generous friends that have given us money to enjoy our holiday even more, so a huge thank you to you all as we enjoy these places with your help.

Wow, what a whale , and they said it was just a small one. This really impressed the kids!

The whaling boat that the kids once again pretended they were pirates, whalers, captains. Check the harpoon out on the front of the boat. Massive things that shot into those poor whales.

Here are the kids with their whale world gifts.
We then moved onto Salmon beach to see kids walking up with these huge fish on their arms and a heap of people down on the beach trying to catch some!
We drove around to The Gap.

This is the natural bridge at The Gap. Very windy.

Albany - Cosy Corner

Thursday 18th.
We got into Albany late morning and I had chosen a free camping spot 30km out of Albany to stay. We put the road name into the GPS and I tried to trust it. I (Heidi) have always been the navigator and most of the time got us where we need to go so it is hard for me to completely trust this machine. It let us down and it tried so hard to make us go down the wrong road and convince us that we could do it. "Make a u turn when possible" it kept saying when we decided to obey the road signs that were telling us NO CARAVANS! AHHHH crazy thing! Finally by my map reading and an information place we got there and found a fantastic camp spot , trees and the roar of waves in the back ground. There was a long drop toilet and the kids were very funny, going in holding their breath as long as they can so they didn't have to smell the stink, then exhaling when done!
I promptly put up clothes lines in the trees and a man staying next to us came and observed laughing, "big wash day" to which I replied " this is only half!" We make people laugh, or swear.

The kids up the top of the walk way in Albany while I get a map from information.

Friday 19th. The kids on the boat Brig Amity. They loved this boat as they could wonder all around it and on top of parts. Very kid friendly. They got an electronic device which told them the story of the Brig Amity as they walked around the boat. The nice man let us on for a family price rather then adding on extra kids. I had to explain to Manning that the dummies in the boat weren't the dead men, they were like dolls that someone made, but very life like!
Tim missed this little excursion as he was off buying a generator as the days and trees weren't helping our solar keep up to our tank of a freezer.

The kids spotted this great climbing tree in Albany. All 6 are there, some with just their faces showing. Where's Colemans.
We found the christain book shop to try and find a church to go to on Sunday. They have a church directory! We got talking to a guy there who was from Margaret River. Said we should visit there.

Normans beach

Wednesday 17th. Drove to Hopetoun. Magpies were very tame, helping us eat our lunch in the playground. Quite windy, the first time we have had wind on our holiday. Had rain for most of the trip from Ravensthorpe through to our camping spot at Normans beach. Amazing stories of how the beaches got their names, mainly from local farmers that would pack up their trucks and drive their families miles across hills and scrub to holiday there.
The quiet animals at this camp site were magpies. They nearly ate bread out of our hands!
The water came right up under the trees as it was an inlet so was probably mainly fresh water. ( We didn't test it) They were excellant trees for climbing and the challenge of climbing from one branch to another without getting wet was too much for our boys to ignore. So the next morning 4 of them were in trees that I have no idea of how they got there or how they were going to get back! 3 made it back dry but 1 was wet up to his knees. This was the start of a week of wet clothes that I could not get dry.

Munglinup beach

Tuesday 16th we hit the road and spent the night at Munglinup beach caravan park, very cheep,  and charged our new battery up, hit the beach again. Kids went spear fishing but the Rass fish they tried to get was too clever and kept hiding in the rocks. Fun anyway.

Esperance

We left Kalgoorlie Monday morning, 8/4, to head down to Esperance. Tim and I have swapped jobs. He is head cook and I am the teacher. Tim gets the tea ready before we leave in the morning and pops it in our fantastic thermo pot ( every house, shed, barn, garden needs one of these) which sits in the back of the car all day then when we pull up for tea out comes the thermo pot, the food is all cooked and at the right temperature for the whole family! I say it again it is fantastic.
I sit in the back and commence the day in the class room ( car).
We stopped at Norseman for lunch at the playground next to the Olympic size swimming pool which I, Heidi, nearly jumped in clothes and all, but realised they were pumping out all the water. It didn't take long for our kids to see this and being a warm day they promised they would just put their feet in!

Does that look like "just feet"?

Here we are with the horse Norseman and Ethan got the smelly end! The town was named after this horse as it poured at the ground until it dug up a huge gold nugget.
As we kept  driving the country changed with more water and there was paddocks full of Black Angus cows, in green paddocks! After summer! We were a bit late to get to our camping site at Lucky Bay so we spent 2 nights in Esperance caravan park near Pink Lake, which was cheaper than Kalgoorlie! Tuesday we went out to Twilight Cove which was meant to be the best beach in Australia in 2006.

The sand is white and squeaks under you feet. Tim swam out to the rocks you can see. The kids went walking in the sand hills next to the beach with Tim and they found a reasonably large lizard which Tim encouraged Ethan to pick up, pulling out from under a rock. Ethan looks up to his Dad and did as he said and the lizard promptly turned around and bit his finger , drawing blood and needing a band aid. Now this was the beach that made Tim and I a bit puzzled. Nobody was wearing rash tops. Nobody was applying sunburn cream. Most were in skimpy swimwear and white. Even older people in the sun for hours. We all had long rash tops and layered with cream.
We then went into the beach at Esperance which had a pontoon that you could swim to from the jetty like Venus Bay, but the pontoon had a slippery dip on it! Brilliant idea. While we were there enjoying that Sammy the local seal came and had a look at us.
Wednesday we moved out to Lucky Bay camp grounds in the National Park. With these places they don't save you a spot you just have to get there early enough and hope someone has left. This has been our cheapest place to stay at $26 a night apart from the free places. By this time we are getting use to the silences after we say 2 adults and 6 kids. I think they are waiting for us to say "only joking" but instead there is silence and we wait for them to add up the price. These last 2 places have felt sorry for us having to pay for all the kids so have given us a discount. As we got all set up a goanna strolled calmly past Baylee's open swag so he remembered from then on to keep his swag done up unless he wanted to sleep with these warm blooded animals.

There was a lot of different animals there and this on Manning's arm was a beetle that Manning called Fredy. Whenever Fredy was lost another Fredy would appear.

This is the incredibly quiet kangaroos that would come and clean our mat. One even ate a chicken bone! They pulled my fruit off the table, 4 of them, and got an apple each!
The beach at Lucky Bay was also white and squeaky and the first morning I went for a run around the bay, bare foot, but nearly got blisters as it was very rough on my feet.

The view as we hiked from Lucky Bay to Thistle Cove

Lucky Bay. Our caravan is one of those white dots in the distance.Ethan, Tim, Zane and Manning with Kimberly behind Tim.

This is what we saw after 1 hour of climbing up Frenchman's Peak! Very specky. Quite a bit of it was on hands and knees and even Manning made it! It was 260m up with a naturally hollowed out bridge/cave at the top.
Kids snorkeled, body boarded,and spearfished a lot at Lucky Bay .Again everyone in skimpy swimwear so we decided to join them and leave the rash tops off and no sunburn cream! Amazing! The kangaroos would casually hop along the beach, check out peoples bags.  One day 5 dolphins came in to feed in the bay and we saw them. We grabbed the camera and headed toward them hoping they would be inquisitive and come and check us out.They did and the kids got to see them under water within 2m. We quickly took a photo forgetting to turn the flash off and promptly scared them away! We know for next time!
Our solar panels started to struggle to keep up when the weekend came and some overcast whether hit the bay. Then Saturday night the blackout hit. No lights, nothing in the caravan. The battery had finally died. So Monday we went and bought a new one which is doing a great job.
Sunday we went to church at Esperance AOG. Enjoyed the music and they had a great big shed for the older kids group which is a great idea. You can do anything in a shed. We are really getting an idea for how we need to make it easy for travellers to find a church if they want to.
We packed up and left Lucky Bay Tuesday, saying goodbye to our retired friends! One couple there we had met on the Nullabor! They have accepted us as one of them!



 

Off to Kalgoorlie

Still operating in SA time the kids woke at 4:30am WA so we  set off early, getting to Kalgoorlie as the shops were opening.
Amazing buildings. A mixture of old and new. We stayed in Prospectors caravan park, bit expensive but had a pool, for Friday till Monday. We stocked up on fruit & veg and made the most of the cheep groceries. The museum was great making us amazed at how the people lived in years gone by to try and earn a living , hoping for a gold strike.The kids loved seeing real volt doors like in the movies and realise that they really would be hard to bust through. The amount off gold that they lock up every night is impressive.

The visit to the Super Pit was specky. Huge. This is the family relaxing in a huge loader bucket. We didn't get to see a blast but was highly recomended.

Church on Sunday was the AOG at Kalgoorlie. It was incredable the cultural diversity within a 50 people congregation. South African, Asian, Indian, Papa New Guinea, NZ , Russian.....amazing. They were really interesting to talk to. Everyone has a story and some have given up a lot to try a better life. God keeps guiding us in where we go and when we go and we are meeting up with people that we can encourage and we are also being encouraged by others.
We are happy with all we brought and the solar is working great in this hot whether.

 

4th - 8th April

The picture of us at the border was the beginning of a very big day, and when I think back on it I keep thinking I missed a stop somewhere, but I didn't. As Tim would say, "we hoofed it!"
For a start we were 2 1/2 hours ahead of all WA, and that made us feel like we had jet lag for the next week!
After going through the border check point with our cooked vege stew for tea, our potato salad and stewed apples, everyone with a  pinkie complexion from eating a whole watermelon the night before we were struck by the Eucla hills. Just expecting more of the same landscape it took us by surprise, the mountains, but didn't last long. The kids set about to doing as much school work while they were in the car as possible and thankfully no one gets car sick so this works a treat. A lot of Wedge-Tailed Eagles were devouring carcasses and unusual signs to watch out for camels. We saw 8 camels 20m from the road casually grazing on what I don't know.
The previous day we stopped on the side of the road to have lunch on the Nullarbor and most of our clan needed to go to the toilet, and some with the need of a shovel. We handed them the shovel and toilet paper and said "find a tree to go behind". They stood, looked around. There was no tree for as far as you can see, just salt bush. So off they headed, some in red shirts (not the best camouflage) and they walked and walked. Us back at the caravan kept yelling out to them that we could still see them and laughing at their attempt to hide! Finally they returned , one wearing some old shorts they had found. Clowns.
This day though, Thursday, we stopped at Cocklebiddy for lunch. We don't feel remote at Minnipa any more coming out to these places. Nothing for ages either side of these road houses.
I had some almonds and cashews in the car for a bit of a snack and at one point Manning was enjoying his cashew snack and said "Are these peanuts?" I said " No they are cashews". He asked me another 2 times and I replied the same each time. Finally he said "I'm going to call them peanuts!" At another snack time we were having pretzels and Manning said " Are these schnitzels?" Many times of roaring laughter!
Balladonia was the real start of seeing big trees.
We camped near Cave Hill in between Norseman and Kalgoorlie on the edge of the gold fields.   

We've set off

Finally after years of planning we have set off on our trip around Australia.  We have begun this blog as way of keeping friends and family uptodate on out travels.

We set off  on the 2nd of April to traverse the great Australian Bight and

Nullabor Plain.  This is us with our car in SA and our Van in WA, and 2 and a half hours later!
Here are a few pics from this leg of the journey.