Albany

19th lunch in Denmark - very hippy feel to it, loads of awesome cafes, bakeries, eco friendly shops, craft places. Picked up 2 wooden bowls - locally made. Walked around in the rain. Rolled onto Albany, played the usual find a place to stay, everything's pretty exxy. It's raining, so not keen to pitch tent with fixed rip in the fly.

End up at 6 degrees, a very cool pub, at the trivia night. Lou got up to do the "betty bought a bit of butter" tongue twister, as the hostess asked what was the problem with the butter, said who knows what that twister is. He received a Block Stacker game for the effort. Plus he supplied a tie breaker question - what's the melting point of Gold? The first contestant said 300C. Louis called out "Wrongggg!!" to general laughs.

20th - wandered down the local museum after school's out for the morning. Interesting info on the local Noongars, Kinjarling the original name for here, Boodja - country, a pearl diver section with remarkable anti Japanese racism etc.

I never get sick of hearing about fish traps - easy dinner, and other ingenious inventions of our first peoples.

The story behind 1080 poison - local animals tolerate it fine.

Old shot of Albany.

New shot of Albany.

The rest of the place is up on the hill, all very nie heritage homes, amazing for a walk or run.

Ollie does his impression of a cat (IMO).

As per usual, Australia has a dark history, not well enough exposed - our old slave traders, used in the pearl trade.

Museum of the.

Brig Amity - the first fleet for the area.

Brig Amity.

20th - Dined at Liberte.

The inside of the Liberte is an amazing place, leather armchairs, chandeliers, and delicious food. Their Liberge event for gay people needs a U for correct pronunciation. Thank you. (Libergue - missing the accent due to tech probs.)

We did a couple of sessions at the local games shop, played Zombicide, and World of Warcraft (or something with weird wizard things). Boys loved it.

This part of the world has lots in common with Antarctica eg the granite. Gneiss one.

Walpole, Coalmine Beach, Tree Top Walk

Now at caravan park at Coalmine Beach, pay for 3, stay for 4 nights deal, we are in a beautiful little cabin with sheets, towels, fridge, and watching a DVD Kubo. We don't know ourselves how luxurious this is... So the arvo, now it's 4, we're relaxing watching the show, with a capital R, and a glass of chilled white wine from Margaret River. Oh boy...

Lazy pancake breakfast, thanks Marie, off to the tree top walk. Firstly, the ancient walk - the guide tells us the granny tree is over 300 years old. There are Quokkas around which come out at dusk. They get around amoung the cane grass via Quokka tunnels called runnels, tunnels in the grass. 

The trees are about 70m tall, but their roots only go a metre down, and go about 3m from the tree, a narrow base for trees so high! Because of the dense canopy, wind does not get too strong, the rain would be well absorbed by the greenery as well.

This area is a remnant from when we were connected to Antarctica. Imagine that place full of trees, grass, etc.

The structure for the tree top walk was fabbed up in Freo, then trucked in. There were no cranes or other heavy equipment on site. It was all hoisted into place by hand, block and tackle. It looks quite strong but swings around a fair bit when you walk on it, making it a bit hard to get a  photo. Pretty amazing to be up around the tree tops. Looking down gives me the shivers though. We must be at least 60m up.

17th Nov, started with a jog along the peninsula here at the caravan park. The diversity of plant life is amazing - like someone has planted a random, yet very well coordinated, garden. We get rolling around 11am, and decide to walk into town, about 2k's direct pathway away. The path winds through swamplands.

All the shrubs and the few trees are quite short. Tonnes of different flowering plants. Too beautiful. Lunch restores everyone's spirits, and an ice cream fuels the walk back again. This afternoon is another serious chillax session, with a too rare DVD. My feet are sore enough now.

18th Nov lazy start to the day, more school work, then a low stress wander around the peninsula. If you do the full length its 5km, but we short cut it through some bush, still a couple of hours walking, the limit of the boys.

The shrubs are diverse yet repeating, very beautiful. It's interesting how the trees next to the water are very tall, while the adjacent swampland features only short shrubs, and short twisty trees.

So much diversity of plants in this little area!

And the locals were friendly: they didn't seem to like the carrot we offered. The magpies liked crackers amazingly enough.

More tall trees

15th Nov. Fri - wake up, Louis's in our bed at 6am, I try to sleep a bit more. The light from the octagon glass in the peak of the roof slowly sends the light in from about 4.30. We can sleep until 7am if you try. Kids do school work. We pack bags and clean up. The cleaner, Amy, is a friend from Quininup, grown up in Perth, partner is a carpenter from here. She's a teacher, with a young girl, 1, and one more on the way soon. It's nice to sit around and chat around here. The boys get in some more trampolining before we have to leave, and rope me in for a jump as well.

A stop at the tall trees on the way, then lunch at Walpole, submitting the weeks school work at the same time.

Upper Warren / Pemberton

Lunch at Karidale, drove to Pemberton, got accom on Langley Rd, Upper Warren, near Quininnup. We got this place off AirB&B thinking it's right near Pemberton to avoid setting up camp and save time. Turns out it's 20ks away, and we needed to pull out the sleeping bags, pillows and towels anyway.

 We turned down a narrow dirt road, lined with trees, dark at dusk. It's fun, then as it winds on 3km later, it seems like a good place to hide bodies. The driveway is a further 500m further of tree lined dirt opening onto a clearing with a dark wooden home. A man in work clothes and a wide brimmed hat on a ride on mower ignores us, as Marie tries to wave to him to find out how to get in, a bit like The Shining as he rolls around. Is it the land time forgot? Is he still with it? He looks like the deep country kind from a horror movie.

To be fair, once we get his attention, he does strike me as a bright friendly fellow, the father of the owner. Back to the horror. Once inside, the house is in the form of a circle, eerily quiet, creaky, spooky.

The bathroom is outside. Marie and Ollie shower, hopefully not Bates hotel style.

Walking into the bedroom, Louis is rocking silently in the rocking chair, hair over his face, looking down blankly, exactly like the little girl from the horror movie The Ring. My heart stopped for a second. It was a genuine relief when he spoke back. I told him about The Ring. He said I wish you didn't tell me that. I got out the emergency cat book to get his mind off it. 

We all slept very well. In the morning, the place has a whole new character, beautiful, rural, warm, inviting, birds chirping, dense forest on the edge of a large lawn, a river running beside, no neighbours nearby. When it's really quiet you can hear the water. There's a PS4, so we night be staying another night.

Ah yes, we stayed another night, and at 6.30pm so not too bad, we're on the shoot em ups of PS4, similar to PubG. Today we school worked until about 11, went to Manjimup for lunch, got a haircut. Louis looks great. He got a style cut.

Went to Gloucester Tree, 53m high. There's a rickety old ladder going nearly straight up, spiralling around the tree.

We're not going up too fast. Stopping frequently winds up my tension. I didn't enjoy stopping on the way up for rest breaks. At the top, the wind is streaming past, but well worth the climb for the great view.

Phone call to Tony about the renos - what a stress. Dinner is vego cous cous - Ollie's gone vego since we visited Anne Sophie's son George, who is vego. That makes it easier to keep food, not much harder to come up with meals.

Margaret River - Prevelly

Morning of schoolwork. Mammoth cave is full of fossil bones of megafauna that washed into it. A jaw bone from a giant wombat was fossilised into the wall. There was an audio tour (sounnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

Had 4 course lunch at Voyager estate, boys had 3 courses kids deal. Pretty damn nice(& fancy).

Tasted some wine, bought two boxes of wine, way too expensive(but it was 2 boxes). Kids got a 6 pack of fancy grape juice. It was fancy/extra fancy/way too fancy (fancyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...). o and it ain't Bunsbury it Bumsbury.

Back at Prevelly, we walked to the nearby beach and caught the sunset.

Pretty Prevelly.

Prevelly sunset.

12th Nov - pretty slow on the schoolwork boys, dammit! I was trying to blog, and Marie was getting pretty annoyed at the slow progress. We gave up at around 11.30, then headed to Cowaramup via Ellensbrook at Mokidup. Ellensbrook was where a water stream got to the sea. There is a historic homestead. It was owned by the Bussell family, I guess of Busselton fame. Their daughter looked after local Aboriginal people there, now it is just a museum run by National Parks. There is a waterfall there normally, but I guess things are currently dry.

Lunch at Cowaramup. The whole town has gone Cow mad (Cowaramup, get it??), with cow statues everywhere, and toy fluffy cows etc for sale. The local Black Sheep cafe is really good.

Finished with wine tasting at Stella Bella wines. The lady helping us was from Ireland, and lovely. She's moved here, married an Aussie, and having a baby in April. We bought 2 boxes.

Back at the camp, at Louis's insistance, we had to make friends to get people to play Ultimate Werewolf. I found two Frenchies, Simon and Claire, who were good enough sports to put their dinner on hold for three rounds of it. Louis and Ollie both had a good laugh, seems like a hit. Louis was the werewolf two times! Claire once. The werewolves won twice.

On the way out, we stopped at the Greek Orthodox church. The view from up there is over the beach.

The guy who owned the whole estate was a ww2 combatant in Crete, who then was  then protected and looked after by the monks at Prevelly. So when he came back he built this as a thank you. He got an award for his services to the Greek community.

13th went to Lakes cakes with the slowly shrinking water body and the suspended table. It used to be the floor, for centuries clearly, as the rock formation is extensive. The combined weight of the two columns is estimated at 5.5t. The roof is thick with straws. 

The rain patterns are changing. It used to fall heavily, which would penetrate into the cave. Now it rains lightly, so it is absorbed by the land above. There are 12 species of endangered micro krill down here, which are endangered by the caves drying up around here.