Out of the freezer and into the ice

Gareth:  Being British I will start this blog with a weather forecast…

It’s amazing how quick the temperature can change when you just drive a couple of 1000km in West Australia. The nights are cold here. Last night as we slept in our tent, it reached a shivering 2 deg C. Our cheap sleeping bags were only recommended for use to a low of 7 deg. I don’t want to insult the Steven Hawkings faction out there that have already done the math, but for you other folk, that’s a nipple twisting 5 deg lower than advised. We had to go to bed dressed with a hat hard on, I mean a hat hard on…. I said it again!

This I didn’t mind, as it meant I didn’t have to get undressed or dressed in the morning, saving me a large bowl of effort. To try and outwit Jack Frost we decided to head south. Wrong way apparently in OZ, we just drove further into his glacial nest. He now has us tight in his icy grip. Through the day he tricks us with mild temperatures that are tolerable, but at night, in the style of true gorilla warfare, he bites. Chicka chickahhh!

We have now decided to unveil our true identities and bought some mean super hero costumes that should protect us from this cool criminal. Check out the back to front dressing gowns that they do in Oz for £3. We should be toasty warm tonight with these fiery biscuits around our torso’s? Just not sure if it will cover my bum though?

Alice made me join the cult!

25^th September

Alice:  Today we have driven on the brand new freeway that they opened just last night from Perth to Bunbury, there’s only 1 dead ‘roo on it so far, it’s that new!!

It’s lovely south of Perth, very green and they have black and white cows here instead of brown one’s so it’s quite like being in England in spring but everything is stretched out. Although, Gareth’s thumbs are still pretty squatty. We stopped in Bunbury to eat our lunch and stock up on warm things including the ‘cuddlers’ in the picture above and a hoody for Gareth.  We also bought sunglasses as we haven’t had any so far and are starting to get crows feet!

We are now in a place called Collie and are preparing to do a big hike tomorrow to work off all the cheap Lamingtons we ate.

Gareth: Today is Wally’s birthday, and for those of you who don’t know him here is a picture.

I’m not sure if he’s reading the blog, actually I’m not even sure if he can read. But just in case, here is a little picture just for him.

Happee Birthday Willy

26^th September - DAM that was a long walk

Gareth: Left Collie and headed to Wellington National Park for a hike around the woods. This turned into a bit of a mammoth trek of14 miles, Alice got crabby, but perked up when she had another lamingtons (sorry Roz, Lamingtons eaten before we had a chance to take pics, will take pics next time we have them). Saw a big Dam.

People are out in force this weekend for the Queens birthday. They get the Monday off work so the campgrounds have become packed and a little more rowdy. After the long walk, we tried to bed down early in a quaint little place called big valley campground near Margaret River but were kept awake by youthful Oz’s and Pom’s listening to Rock n’ Roll and cavorting with the opposite sex. If I hadn’t have taken my falsies out I would have gone out there and given them the frowning of a lifetime!

Today is Taylor’s birthday. He is probably my most favourite nephew at the moment. If you’re reading this, sorry I missed your 1^st b-day. I’m sure you didn’t miss me too much. I’ll make it up at your 2^nd birthday. I sound like the worst Uncle ever already. I did send him a text.

27^th September

Packed up from Big Valley campsite and drove down the coast from Yalingup  to Augusta. Here is us hovering around a few of the places on the way.

Tried to sneak into a cave called Mammoth cause it cost $20 per person, which was a bit too heavy for our budget, but were stopped by a closed gate. We did take a good look in and it looked dark and cave like.

Camped in a town called Nannup and went for a drink in the pub with the money we had saved by not going into Mammoth cave.  Got smashed on one pint. Cause we hadn’t had a drink in ages, and the size of an Australian pint is 570ml instead of the regulation 568ml of an English pint. How they have the nerve to call themselves part of the commonwealth I’ll never know. Because of Queenies birthday (not sure which one) it was busy, but we squeezed our way in and again slept badly as there were lots of kids who should have been in bed, running around all high on all the bonfired marshmallows.

28^th September

We woke a few times in the night because Western Australia decided to have massive downpours. Luckily we stayed dry and weren’t swamped like some people in the campsite. Lots of adults looked rather hung-over and their kids looked rather stroppy cause of the lack of sleep. God bless the Queen.

As most of them left, we decided to do a clothes wash. 

Alice's laundry day clothes

Unfortunately, the driers were broken so we tried to dry the clothes in-between bouts of rain. We must have hung up and brought in the washing about 4 times

Alice: for ‘we’ here read ‘Alice’ Gareth sat in the laundry and read Bill Bryson’s mother tongue and seemed surprised when Alice got a little shirty and told him to make a cup of tea.

Gareth: To get us out of this rut, I decided to make a cup of tea. The tea making was fine, and could be made under shelter, but the tea delivery to the laundry room was during a shower, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided to perch the tea’s on the parcel shelf and drive them over to Alice. This didn’t go as well as I had imagined. In my rear view mirror, I could see full tea cups slowly sloshing around and being replaced by half full tea cups. On the arrival of the half tea’s Alice’s mood went from scale 5 ‘Bad’ to scale 8 ‘Ghastly’. She then pointed out in a rather squeaky voice through a handful of damp washing that the cups we had bought had lids, and they were right next to the half tea’s on the parcel shelf.  Another screech went something like this ‘You could have at least put a tea towel or a plastic bag underneath them’. Apart from this she didn’t mention that the car being used as a tea tray was not a bad idea. At this I nicknamed the Car ‘Tea Tray’ and after a lovely half-cup of tea, off we went on our journey to Pemberton on a ‘tea tray’.

The tourist information woman (?) recommended we visit the Gloucester Tree. She was very tall and had a pretty deep voice. We thought it was just another large tree (the Gloucester tree not the woman in tourist information) little did we know that we could climb it, and climb it we did! Initially this wasn’t to Alice’s fancy. I kind of forced her up by climbing behind her and telling her she’d be fine and patting my forehead against her bum. She wasn’t happy when she realised people coming down from the top of the tree had to go by you. It was a steady 15 min journey to the top, which towered about 60m from the ground. Alice was happy here, although she shuffled around like a crab and screeched every time I went near the trapdoor. We stayed here for a while to recuperate, the tree swayed and birds came and went. After a while when Alice was ready, we made the journey back down, this Alice seemed to take in her stride and hastened down. She was buzzing with the adrenalin, but had bruised all her shins by welding herself to the steps in terror. 

We pitched our tent in a quieter campsite called windy habour. This campsite was water logged so we had to find high ground to camp. Here we tried to make our first campfire, which was tricky as the wood was wet. We encouraged it with half a bottle of kerosene that was left over from the last incident this made the fire burn quite well, as did my eyebrows. We spent the evening cuddling next to the fire under the stars. Awwww. And in a way Alice forgave Gareth for the tea spilling incident. Apology accepted

29^th September

Alice: Rained a lot again, woke to find the weather God had built a moat around our tent.  Spent the next half an hour trying to find a dry route to the toilet block for a nice cold shower, hmmphg.

Windy harbour is in the beautiful D’Entrecasteaux National Park, in the morning we walked along the coast to a place called Tookalup, which had spectacular views, saw a snake which made Gareth talk in parcel shelf for 10min. I spotted a big roo, and got giddy with my camera again. 

(there is a snake in there somewhere)

(Where's Alice?)

(sneaking up on the 'roo)

(peak - a - roo!)

The weather stayed fine, so we ventured onto near by Mount Chudalup which was a massive 188m above sea level, as soon as we got to the top the heavens opened!

Made another campfire under shelter to try and stay warm, smashed through a bag of marshmallows which cheered us up no end. Ventured out to the ablution block to wash up and on our return we discovered that some one had stolen our raging embers to make their own fire!! A bit later on there was another massive down poor which would have ruined the flaming burglars camp fire, talk about Karma.

Battery running out... Blog out for now. xxxxx