This week we have spent some time in Albany looking around the beaches and the green rolling hills. Albany reminds us of the Gippsland area with lovely green grass paddocks, dairy farms and the ocean nearby. The kids were very happy to see cows again!
We travelled only 50 km’s down the road to the GORGEOUS little town of Denmark, sitting on a river and inlet with picturesque beaches nearby. This little town has been one of our favourites!

Then to Walpole which was also pretty, surrounded by large Tingle tree forests, Karri tree and Eucalypts. We visited the Valley of the Giants tree top walk, where we walked 40 metres off the ground (I guess my kids aren’t afraid of heights!) and visited the giant Tingle tree.

On the morning we left Walpole the rain started, we travelled through the forests to Fernhook falls only to discover that the back door latch wasn’t working. This meant that we couldn’t get into our food or fridge!! We had to drive straight to Manjimup (the nearest town) to buy lunch (my poor possums didn’t eat lunch until 4pm!!)! – I thought they were going to eat my arm off!

We found a beautiful little caravan park at Fonty’s Pool, a natural spring feed pool area with landscaped gardens. Here we have stayed for 4 nights. Firstly so that Rob could work on the Landie and secondly because the rain set in and has just kept coming and coming! Apparently there has been over 60mm fall in the area!

For the boys: The back door latch on the Landie wouldn’t open no matter how many times Rob pulled the lever, punched the lever, kicked the lever, swore at the lever!! He couldn’t reach the latch from the inside of the car because of the barrier cage and the fridge/ drawer unit!! Soooo....... the poor boy had to rip out the barrier cage, the fridge unit, the drawer unit and all the contents of the car (Note: the tools he needed happened to also be locked in the back of the car!!), (Additional Note: they are no longer located there!!).
After discovering that the problem was a rubber stop that had dislodged and fallen on the latch, he proceeded to rebuild the units and adjust (cut down) the barrier cage so that in future he would have better access to the back of the car. (Needless to say he had a few beers after completing this mammoth task!!! – and I kept the kids well away from the swearing crazy man!!! (and Yes, Rob’s foot was used in the absence of tools to dislodge the bench from the back door!)

Jack and Alyssa are going a bit barmy at the moment as they have been confined to the car for short day trips or the camp kitchen, due to the rain. Both of them know the entire words to ‘Rain, rain, go away’ and ‘It’s raining, it’s pouring’. Though we still had lots of fun in the camp kitchen, the other day we had ‘mummies’ watercolour paints out and we all had a great time painting for most of the morning. Jack really enjoyed mixing colours to make other colours and Alyssa just loved it because it involved water (no shortage with the rain!).

The other benefit of the rain has been that the forests nearby have been really stunning to drive through while wet. Everything is fresh, clean and green!

It’s a strange thing in WA, but many of the towns in the bottom half of WA end in ‘up’ and the top end of the state has many towns which end in ‘downs’!!!! If you have a close look at the maps of the bottom south west of WA you can easily count 50 towns that end in ‘up’. (Great game for the kids!!)
Some of the funny town names we have seen are: Munglinup (when you’ve really stuffed up), Porongerup (when it’s really smelly!), Corackerup (when it’s really funny!), Nannup (where Nanna’s grow up! – No literally! Nanna Sue DID grow up in the Nannup district!!!)
We are a little rained out at the moment and looking forward to the sunshine again (Thank god we packed the raincoats!!). We hope you are all well.

From
Therese, Rob, Jack and Alyssa