WE HAVE DONE 20,000KMS!

We certainly travelled the kilometers this week. We left Margaret River and began to drive through the old forests of South West WA. They are magnificent trees and very tall! We went to Pemberton and took a ride on an old tram that they operate through the forests. All along the way we had commentary about the history of the logging and the town as well as the forests. We also went to the Gloucester Tree, this tree is a fire lookout 67m high and after a few false starts the kids stayed with me while Dion went up. Just after he got down the first time, Britney decided she wanted to go up, so Dion went back up a second time! I wasn’t sure how she would go and after passing the half way mark she kept going. Considering there was no way I was going up I was proud that she made it the whole way. 

We then continued towards the coast and stayed at a place called Parry Beach, a very nice spot and at $7/night, was great value. On our way towards Albany we stopped at The Toffee Factory just before Denmark and bought several of their toffees  the couple have walked away from the restaurant industry and begun making toffees and ciders so that they saw their children more often. They told us that they can have over 1000 visitors a day during summer and may need to look at expanding again, they have already expanded twice since they began. We thought after being there for over an hour (they were in no rush for us to leave) we should continue on, so our next stop was the information centre at Denmark where they had a barometer that had the kids intrigued.

We then drove on to Albany for a couple of nights. While we stayed at there we visited the Princess Royal Fort, Albany was one of the places they shipped the Light horsemen to the wars and has quite a big war history. It is also known as the last Whaling station to close in Australia and they have set up Whale World to show the history of whaling in the area. The kids found this interesting from walking on the rebuilt whaling ship to how they processed the whole of the whale except the jaw bone (it was too hard). From Albany we headed to Esperance where we were able to see the beautiful beaches of Cape Le Grande. We did a day trip visiting all the spots and have agreed that this is definitely a place to come back to with its blue water and white beaches. There are some great camping spots within the National Park. We had a really hot day while we were in Esperance and utilized the air-conditioning at Maccas for a reprieve! We have not had really hot temperatures since we were up in the North-West.

Next week we are off to Kalgoorlie-Boulder and then onto the Nullabor!

Till Next Time

The Ross’