It has taken a while to get to writing this next chapter. Excuse? Well I have been reading a travel diary of Bill Bryson. He writes is such an engaging manner that I thought I should emulate his style. He tells a story, writes history, gives a travel account and keeps you amused all at the same time. Sometimes he is a bit lax with accuracy, but aaah why let that get in the way of a good read? Well, I’ve decided that I can’t write like he does because that’s not me so I’ll do it my way. You may not get the history from my blog but you all have the internet so you can use that if you would like to find out more about the fascinating places we are visiting. If you choose to remain ignorant then I can’t help that! And if you don’t want to read anything at all then you can either close your browser or scroll to the bottom of this chapter to look at the pics.
Melbourne
Since my last blog when Mitchell was born I spent a delightful month in Melbourne learning how to be a Grandma and annoying my offspring by doing bits of housework for them. You can’t stay at someone’s place and not do stuff! What a delight it was to be there all that time, getting to know my daughter in an altogether different way and watching Mitchell grow up, reading stories, singing nursery rhymes, teaching him how to say “Grandma” and remembering how to change nappies, put a pram in the boot and take babies for a walk. I tell you prams just aren’t what they used to be. This one only has three wheels and goes every which way but in a straight line.
I loved the weekends when I could go and watch my boys play cricket. I did think later that probably not too many 30 yr olds have their Mum come and watch them play. I loved it especially when some poor fellow went out, bowled Paul, caught Matthew.
And then the wedding. Well we all know how gorgeous Hayley is in her track pants so you can imagine how absolutely fantastic she looked in her wedding dress. What a delightful couple. We had a very happy wedding in a beautiful setting with lovely sunny weather and lots of wonderful family and friends. There was much laughter, dancing, good food and excellent wine. Now Paul and Hayley are honeymooning in Thailand.
Bindoon
We flew back to Perth after an 18th, a 50th and a couple of hours spent trying to cram too much stuff into too few bags. One big bag is left in Melbourne and the rest took me another couple of hours to fit back into the caravan. I am glad we are on a caravanning holiday. The only redeeming feature of aeroplanes is that they get you a long way in a short time. I’m only a small person and even I felt cramped and squashed. We unfolded ourselves when we got to Perth and were collected by some wonderful friends who spirited us away to Bindoon, a lovely little hamlet about 70km north of the capital. Over the next couple of days we were treated to tourism visits to Toodyay and New Norcia. You can use your internet to find out about these places but I will let you know that New Norcia is a beautiful monastic town in WA which is still owned and run by Benedictine monks. You can check the place out yourself if you wish on: newnorcia.wa.edu.au. The introduction to their well maintained website reads: “New Norcia has been home to a community of Benedictine Monks since the first Spanish missionaries established the town in 1847.” Why would anyone want to come to the WA and start a mission in the middle of nowhere? We visited the monastery, the chapel, the old schools and the pub which still operates and serves an excellent lunch.
Perth
We spent a week in Perth after leaving Bindoon and thought to start our exploration of this western city on our pushbikes. Not a good idea as we found ourselves either freewheeling down steep hills or climbing up them. After just 4 km we found the beach and decided to ride along the bike path. Well we got lost and it took us another 16 km to find the caravan park again.
One thing Perth does have is a good public transport system. We found our way into town via bus and train and then got on and off lots of free buses which took us around the CBD. The weather was wet and windy for most of our stay here so we saw two films, visited the Bell Tower and went on a wet and windy walk through a small part of Kings Park. The whole park is over 400 hectares so you could spend ages here.
Mandurah
Mandurah is a holiday by the beach just south of Perth. We stayed for a few days to thaw out, walk along the beach and stroll with our mouths open along the canals lined with multi-million dollar houses, apartments and hotels, not to mention the boats that were parked at their private jetties. Of course some boats were too big and had to be stored at the ocean marina.
David discovered an excellent bakery so we indulged ourselves with locally made pies and cakes for lunch one day.
Another day we went on the Captain Fawcett Commemorative 4X4 track. This track supposedly goes through some of Australia’s best Jarrah forests but we didn’t have time to see much other than the excuse for a track we were driving along. As we scratched the side of our car on the foliage which squashed us onto the track I did wonder why we were doing this, so every now and then we stopped the car to marvel at the beautiful forests, the old trestle bridges and the massive conveyor belt which still carries bauxite from a mine to somewhere else.
Busselton
We are now in Busselton and so I am finally getting up to date with my blog. Most people enjoy this area of WA because of the wineries or the world class surf beaches so what do you do if you are not too fussed about wine and would rather surf little waves? Well we found a chocolate factory! Once inside the door we stopped dead, such was the sight of so much chocolate so beautifully presented. We wandered around for as long as we were allowed. It was just as well that we got there nearly at closing time or we might have spent even more too much.
We have been to visit two lighthouses, Cape Naturaliste in the north and Cape Leeuwin in the south-west corner of Australia where we marvelled at the engineering and hard work of the people who lived here over 100 years ago and were once again awed by the sight of majestic hump back whales.
This is a wonderful place to walk and ride. There are bike/walk paths everywhere and none too hilly. This is the site of the iron man competition next weekend so we will be here until then. As soon as I have appended the photos to this blog we are off to walk down the beach again.
God Bless you all and I’ll see you again much sooner than last time.
Near Cape Leeuwin lighthouse - the sign says it all.
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