CATCHING UP

Sorry guys been very slack - as usual I could bore you with excuses but I wont.  But thank you to our friend Randy who reminded me that I was being slack!

Now that we are in the South West Corner there are several ways of getting to places and plenty to see along the way.  We have been doing some circling - so it might be a bit hard to follow our journey.

And as a bit of a catch up I am going to post some potos with captions and then hopefully I will be a good girl and get some posts up more regularly from here on.  Better phone coverage down here also so that might get rid of one of my excuses.

We often play board games at night - this night we were playing Squatter it is like monopoly only you play for sheep stations - well this night I even got the shirt off his back

This is the Pinnacles National Park - there are thousands of these scatter over kilometres - Jim thinks they are petrified anthills and it seems the scientists are baffled so he may be right.  The rangers here are pretty clever they have pens at the headquarters that you can put your dog in and use your own lock great idea.  But what we did was just leave the bus in the compound and Sammie in the bus he is very happy in the bus and we new he was safe in the compound.  

Some very creative person - has designed this bus shelter in the shape of an upside down boat -  in a fishing town called Dongarra - 

The wildflowers are really starting to show there colours.

No we are not in the Snowy Mountains this is the white sand around - the beaches 100k or so north of Perth.

We are now heading into the south-west and the big trees are beginning to show in the forrest.  These are Jarrah -the larger ones 300-400 years old.

Great fire already to go for the evening - Iornstone Gully Falls free camp.

Yes these are gnomes - thousands of them - on a corner near a place called Lowden.  People power at its finest - people just leave gnomes that represent them or they trip or all sorts of other things - someone has made a Gnomesville Police Station. 

Jim suggested that I just sit down and let the moss grow over me and join the gathering.

We camped in this area to the North of Perth - Called Beekeepers Reserve there are several of these - state owned land usually heathland that is open to beekeepers.  We had to watch Sammie as some bees have decided not to live in hives and made there homes in trees around the campsites.  In the photo below if you look up in the left hand top area you will see a hive on the rock face.  These are not native bees they are honey bees. 

Getting colder as we head down the coast and inland

As much as we both were enjoying being sun bunnies - the trip must go on.  We sort of followed the coast and did some drop-ins to see the sea - we have left the Coral Cast and moved into what is called the Batavia Coast.  Named after one of the more famous ship wrecks along this coastline in 1629.  Yes! the Dutch had been hitting the West Australian coast long before the Brits.

A big change happened along this road - farmland!! Miles and miles of what looks like wheat, but there is an even bigger shock ahead for us - Geraldton is the biggest town//city we have been to since Toowoomba on day one.   Not sure whether we liked being in the city or not - I did enjoy going to Spotlight and buying some wool for a new project.  And Jim could get gear for some minor repairs that needed doing.  But it probably says something when I tell you we headed east (very strange saying headed east and not west) from Geraldton and on our third night out we were the only people in the camp spot.

We spent some days and nights investigating the northern goldfields and then headed into Kalgoorlie - Kalgoorlie is pretty big but it was not so much of a shock as Geraldton so we think we are nearly ready for Perth.  Kalgoorlie was fun - I don't know how many pubs there are but every corner in town seems to have one.  We only visited a couple.  We tried our hand at prospecting but no luck!

By the way we have passed a kind of half way mark - Brisbane sits a bit north of the 28th parallel and Geraldton sits a bit south of it.


The Batavia Coast - lots of early shipwrecks along this coast.  I found this groovy setting on my phone where I can be in all the photos - maybe not.

Farmland - bit different to what we have been travelling through.

Geraldton -  a beautiful memorial to the lives lost when the HMAS Sydney II was sunk during the Second World War

We are starting to see some wildflowers - can't wait till August when they really shine.

Great camp site - we were the only ones here.  Jim built a fantastic fire and the we had a spectacular night of stars. 

This is the superpit in Kalgoorlie - expand the photo to get an idea of how far down it goes. 

Sam could see the trucks and loaders down in the pit and was growlling at them if only he knew how big they really were. 

4 of this buckets fit on the back of one loader - they fill them with earth and only 1 in 7 truckloads gets gold 

We tried to find our own gold but when you look at the maths above you are pretty dam lucky to find some. 

Another thing for Jim to fix - bearing on the trialer wheel.  He is pretty good at this stuff but it must be a pain for him.