WA Day 14 Starting the trip home

We've just left for our trip to SA

Trevor, Joc and Erica ready to go

I'm pretty impressed that we are on the road already at 9.30 am.

Trev and I left Mandurah at about 7.45,  winding our way through the peak hour traffic to pick up Joc. Then we had a bit of a repack, and now have two swags on top to give more space. Today should be good weather, so this should not be a problem (at least for today).

Today we hope to get a little past Wave Rock, (to a spot called Forrestania plots) but this is a loose plan  and anything might happen.
We may not have coverage when we find our spot tonight, so there may  not be a post for a while.

WA Day 13-History of Mandurah and packing up.

After another sleep in we stepped out into a sunny day and headed out to chase the local history.

We had located a heritage walk route at the tourist information centre and following it turned out to be more of a challenge than expected. We did out best, but still failed to locate some of the spots.  One was a pelican statue  (which we assume has been moved since the walk notes were created), but we are pretty sure that the old ballroom must have been there, and the notes not clear enough to explain the look and location after multiple readings. Oh well.

We spent some time imagining what the bay must have looked like back in the old days, when the caravan park and tent city filled what is now a park area, and a swing bridge went from one side to the other.

We tried to walk down under the bridge to see the old original, but today the boardwalk is closed because of some works they are doing, so that was not to be.

We did locate the very retro garage building (now shops) which used to have all the latest vehicles, and the old tea rooms building.

The original church has been used in a much larger church which is still used today.

The old

The new (attached to the old)

There is also an old piece of wall still standing right next to the post office. This is the last remnant of a migrant barracks. It was built in 1880 to house Japanese fishermen (indentured workers) who supplied fish for the cannery.

Old wall of the migrant barracks

Statue of Japanese fisherman.

That's pretty much all that remains of the historic buildings in the centre of town.

As we went past we took a quick snap of a "bike sculpture" that we thought Kay might enjoy.

 The tour ended up at the front of the local fish and chip shop, which we thought must be a sign,  so we bought our lunch there, and sat down to eat from the paper the old fashioned way in the lovely park area which spreads out along the foreshore.

Shopping had to be done to prepare for the trip home, so we hit the local Woolies before checking the tyres and heading home to repack the car and do our tidying up.

WA Day 12 Captain fawcett 4WD track and catching up with the cousins.

We had another idyllic day today and made pretty good use of it, taking our expected 4WD track drive.

The Captain Fawcett track commemorates one of the early pioneers of the district, Captain Theo Fawcett. He held large amounts of land at Pinjarra but realised that he would need heavier land as well. He also took up land near Marradong (on the other side of the Darling Range), and then displayed remarkable bush skills by making his journey directly home through the bush, blazing his way as he went to show the way for his workers.  His blazed track is now the present road between Marradong and Dwellingup that we drove on today.

The commemorative trail starts quite some distance South East of Dwellingup and runs through an area of the Lane Poole Conservation Reserve. Much of it runs along old rail embankments where the trains once hauled timber, but as we found today, the old trestle  rail bridges which we were looking forward to seeing no longer exist.  No doubt the last bushfire destroyed them.

As we entered the forest track at the start of the trail the signs of bushfire were very evident. New growth of palms and xanthorrea was very green among the dark burned wood. Small bright tufts of bright red and lime green shoots were shining translucent in the sunlight  as we navigated the excellent route directions on our brochure and the large mud holes along the way.

The Murray River ran alongside us for the first 15-20 km of the track, before we turned up into drier  country.

Somewhere in there Trev checked the tyres while I took photos of the impressive grass trees, and found the front left down quite a bit. So we took a brief break and used the compressor to pump it up again.  It went fine after that, so we are not sure about the cause.

 Approximately 40km (and 2 hours) later we turned out of the native bush onto a dirt road which soon became a bitumen road, and decided not to bother with the rest of the route, which appeared to follow the black top for the majority of the way. The track is published as 115km long, but it seems that only this 40km or so stretch (and possibly a little at the end) is actually 4WD. After 1 hr,  and only 20km we had been wondering how on earth the track was going to take us about 3 to 4 hours! The bitumen bit explained that.

We crossed over  the rather interesting conveyor belt carrying produce between the large Huntley Bauxite Mine to the Pinjarra refinery and then crossed back under it a few more km along the road after we had headed back towards home. It is pretty noisy.

On the way towards home we pulled in on a lovely old bush track to have our lunch and then took a short look at the tourist railway station (and sculpture) at Dwellingup.

The late afternoon and evening were passed very happily up in Perth catching up with cousin Tim, cousin John and his good wife Lou, and Aunty Joc, who fussed over us and fed us too much good food. We never have long enough with these rellies, so it was a pity to say goodnight and head back towards Mandurah.

We forgot to get a photo of the relatives,  sorry.

WA Day 11-exploring the local area. Thrombolites, but no dolphins.

Since it looked like we had perfect weather we decided that we really should see a bit of local colour before we leave Mandurah again, so we headed out this morning for a "Dolphin cruise"on the canals and estuary. The Dolphins had other ideas and stayed away.

We reminisced over an orienteering sprint event that we competed in here a few years ago as we waited for our cruise to start at about the same spot as the spectator controls were placed at that event, in front of the arts centre, looking over the water at the Sebel hotel.

We must have been virtually the only English speakers on the boat  (except for the crew) and we had some added entertainment when some of our fellow passengers decided to have a bit of a spat over seating arrangements. Eventually this was sorted, and we were on our way.

The marina is an interesting mix of fancy yachts, houseboats and working fishing boats, surrounded by expensive housing. It was interesting to see it from the water, instead of running over the walkways and not noticing much. They call it "Little Venice" and we could see why. In some spots the the bridges over the water are very reminiscent of that city.

The yachts pull in by the eateries here (3 hr limit) for lunch and then head off on their way again!

We had a lovely view of some very expensive real estate as we cruised the canals... blocks of land are at least 1 million and the house has the be of at least the same value.  So many different styles of building.  So many interesting boats parked out the front. So many beautiful swimming pools. Apparently at Christmas time there is a bit of internal competition for the best light display which makes for crowded waters as everyone that can comes along to admire the spectacle.  (Sounds a bit like Lobethal lights in the Adelaide Hills, but on water) . Book now if you want to do a cruise then.

After a yummy lunch on the waterfront we made a little detour to the Toyota dealer to have them take a look at our air conditioner.   It's all fine now and we might be glad of that on the way home.

Then on to see some throwbacks in the form of thrombolites.  Only about half an hour south of Mandurah is Lake Clifton where you can see this rare spectacle from a board walk.  These look like rocks but are like living fossils in that they are using photosynthesis to form calcium carbonate from the water itself as a living creature! It was a bit like stepping back into history.

We also took this opportunity to find a couple of caches and to read the sign and decide that one of our furry friends the other night at Shelley Beach was probably a Quenda,  as he looked very like the picture shown here.

To finish up the day we took up the offer of a bus ride to see the greyhounds race.  This is not something we have done before and probably not something that we will do again. The sunset on the way there was pretty impressive, but being a Tuesday night possibly the event was lacking in atmosphere a little. After a good feed at the buffet, and learning the basics of how to place a bet, watch your dog race and collect your winnings (if you were lucky) we decided that 6 of the 12 races was enough and called it a night.

Sun going down behind the greyhound track

Since we have most of a day tomorrow we are now planning to head down south and have a look at the 4WD track that we had been planning to try today. Since we don't have a buddy vehicle to drive with I'm hoping that it is not too tricky for us.

WA Day 10-down time in Mandurah

It's been a lazy down time day today.

We slept in and  did the laundry. I finished a very short, trashy book that I borrowed from the resort book exchange. Trevor went to visit an auto electrician and obtained a new smart solenoid for the car so that the fridge will work independently of the second  battery (it was playing up a bit on the way over)

$270 worth of smart solenoid

We met some of the other guests who are staying here and drank some free wine at the same time. One of them owns a 1/4 of a motor home (they use it for 3 months each year) which is a good concept if you enjoy a motor home kind of life.

We walked on the Mandurah beach and enjoyed the local area a bit, watching the little kids playing on the beach doing the simple things that little kids do while their mum watched from further up on the sand.

We tried out the local kebab shop-pretty impressive. They make their own delicious Turkish bread.

We found out about a 4WD track (Captain Fawcett track) which goes from Marradong to near Dwellingup. It commemorates an early pioneer Captain Theo Fawcett, who blazed some of the early roads in the area, and follows a historic route. We think it sounds interesting and might tackle the 90km or so of that tomorrow morning if we feel so inclined. Apparently it is largely through Jarrah forest-which sounds rather pleasant.

Now I'm sitting watching the sunset tint the sky pink, and deciding whether to make a cup of tea or just read my book some more before I go and cook a barbecue for tea.

WA day 9- orienteering at Malmalling and catching up with the Castelijns

For the first time in the entire holiday we set the alarm to make sure we were up in time. We had planned to orienteering at Malmalling,  which meant and hour and a half to drive, skirting Perth city and heading to the east (towards Kalgoorlie).
Our trusty navigator came to the fore once more, and we arrived at the orienteering in good time. It was good to see the familiar direction signs as we neared the event. Surprisingly, we followed a ute with SA number plates to the event. It turned out to be Gary Ettridge from Pt. Lincoln!!

The WA orienteers made us very welcome as we registered our SI sticks into their system and they already had our names on file!!!

The area is a mix of native bush and pine, but we were all in the native bush for our courses (running across one open area of felled pine early on). The native bush was largely made up of grass trees, which hid boulders beautifully, and gave us some excellent experience with low visibility orienteering.

It's hard to pick out a rock between the close growing grass trees. In many places they were much thicker than this example.

Trevor and I both opted to do the H3 (third hardest) course which was 4.9 km long according to the notices. It is always a good experience to orienteer somewhere new, and this area certainly taught us some more. It was difficult to move fast amongst the rocky ground and thick grass trees, and easy to lose contact with exactly where we were on the map,  as we couldn't get a clear view of the terrain. This caused us some difficulties, but the locals appeared to have as much trouble as we did.
We both took a good long time to complete our courses (Trevor took 1 hr 35 in and Erica 1 hr 43, but Trevor covered almost 2 km more ground at a much better run rate!). Erica was surprised by a mispunch result, having not checked the control  number at 2, and punched 6 instead. (Trap for new players still catching out an old player). Control 5 (low visibility, and hard to tell where on the hill you were), 6 (a long leg with some vague areas, where you really needed to stay in touch with the map) and 9 (we both had to relocate at least once to find the small boulder which  was hidden nicely between the grass trees) were controls where we both wasted time.

Trev's  course download. 

Orienteering WA have a volunteer run shop with basic O supplies. All profits go to the juniors transport fund so that they can make it to the national events each year. They also have a caravan/trailer which is the registration and download point, with info and results on one side and the people with the computer on the other side.

We liked their easy registration procedure where each person comes to the window, pays their money and "dibs" their SI stick to register, and personally tells the person doing the computing which course they are running .

Results were printed out from the splits printer and placed on the info side of the van (small to read, but available if people wanted them)

Results in course order from the splits printer

The event was a schools selection race, so the kids were out in full and the juniors were selling soup and cakes to fund raise for their travel.

Having taken much longer than we had anticipated at the event with our time out on the course and our chatting with the WA crowd, we made a  quick lunch stop at Mandaring on the way in to Perth to catch up with our good friends Maggie and Nick and their lovely daughters  Sarah and Rebekah.

We spent a lovely few hours chatting, eating and helping them to complete the jigsaw puzzle they were working on before reluctantly saying goodbye and leaving them to their preparations or school and work today.

Another excellent day in WA.

WA day 8 Mandurah

We've had a very quiet day at Mandurah today.
Auntie Joc caught the train down from Perth and we picked her up from the station and brought her to our little home for a few hours.
We renewed the great tradition and did a cryptic crossword together (she taught us how some years back)
We have a loose plan of activity  for the next few days (starting with orienteering east of Perth tomorrow )

Here are a few pictures of our resort so that you don't feel completely deprived. Thom,  I put in the one of the BBQ area just for you even though it is not quite a camp kitchen.

Trev with Joc outside of our unit (upstairs)