Well its 2019, Christmas and New Year are behind us and its time to head off on our next trip away. The plan at this stage is to head down to the south west of WA for the summer, then across to the Eyre Peninsular and then onto Queensland with no real time frame. Hopefully all goes well. We seemed to survive our last update with the changed format for the blog. The photos seem to download differently, slightly bigger and the caption also slightly different.
The caravan has been sitting idle for a few months so hopefully everything will still work when we head off. Our first stop when leaving Perth was down to Australind for a week. We were planning to catch up with Robyn Garwood, but when we got here Robyn was away on a cruise, lucky her, and wasn’t coming back until after we had left. We booked into the Australind Tourist Park which is on the Old Coast Road into Bunbury. We were very surprised how busy the road was all day and night. Its a nice park though we wouldn’t stay there again because of the noise. It is very constant. A big surprise to us as well was that after we had been there for a couple of days our new neighbour pulled in next to us and it was my Aunty Judy. Judy and Ray had come down for their annual golf get together and always stay at this park. It is a small world at times.
We had some excellent weather while in Australind and even managed to go to the beach a couple of times for a swim. That was interesting learning how to body surf again. We did a couple of drives and walks that included Crooked Brook Forest, Leschenault Peninsular Conservation Park, Wellington Dam and the Collie River. Kaye has slowly got me back into walking lots and keeps telling how good it is for me. Unfortunately for me she doesn’t have the same aches and pains that I do.
Our week seemed to go quite quickly in Australind and before we realised we were on the road again heading a bit further south. We stayed at a small camp site called Karri Gully Picnic Site. This is not far off the road but road noise was virtually zero after about 6pm. You can walk a small section of the Bibbulmun Track, which we did of course. This was a very neat little camp site that you can very easily miss if your not aware of where it is.
Our next stop was a camp site called Sid’s Campground. What a gem of a place. No power or water to hook up to, but there are hot showers and flushing toilets. The sites are huge and clean. While camped here we were very lucky to see a Splendid Blue Wren that was as blue as blue. Absolutely magnificent and we both felt very lucky to have seen it. We did one of the small walks around the property that showed some of the diversity of the place. Would definitely recommend a stay here if ever passing by. At only $10 a night very good value.
Walpole was our next stop and this was for a week. We had been to Walpole with our previous van so this time we decided to stay in the other caravan park, the Walpole Rest Point Caravan Park. We arrived a couple of days before Australia Day and it was probably a good thing we had booked. Generally we don’t book ahead but for some reason we did. Lucky because over the Australia day weekend it was jammed packed.
There are quite a few things to do and see around Walpole with probably the most well known is the Tree Top Walk in the Valley of The Giants. There are some nice drives that include Mandalay Beach, Conspicuous Cliff, Peaceful Bay plus a few walks that included Mt Clare and Mt Burnett. Mt Clare also gave us another opportunity to walk a small section of the Bibbulmun Track. This was also where we saw our first people walking sections of the track, a couple and a girl on her own. By now I was starting to get my walking feet back in the groove and Kaye was having trouble keeping pace with me.
After a week at Walpole we seemed to pack quite a bit into it. It was great to be able to do some short sections of the Bibbulmun Track, who knows maybe one day we might get inspired to do a longer section of it one day.