Onward & upward... again

We’re heading to Coral Bay this week, but for the last two nights we’ve been in Carnarvon.

According to it’s tourism website, Carnarvon is the “…the best kept secret”.

Of course I wouldn’t want to make any assumptions based on barb wire & security roller shuttered appearances. After all, I was the one at Woolworths with the 2 year old shouting “I WANT MY BEER!” while the other shoppers looked on.

All we’ve seen is the caravan park & the supermarket, but we were told, by several people, it’s a good place to stock up but you don’t stay in Carnarvon.

I took the amount of Police Officers I saw out on a Sunday afternoon as possible supporting evidence of this.

It is indeed though a good place to stock up.

We spent a shit load to get us through the next few weeks.

There has been a real lack of anything resembling a vegetable of late & Georgie was worried scurvy might be a threat.

I heard her playing with Emerson the other week, setting up a picnic for him.

“Here mate. Here’s an orange, so you don’t get scurvy, & here’s your rum.”

Hmmmm…

So to put her spongy, bleeding gums & her malaised & lethargic mind to rest we had a whopping great salad last night & tonight it’s a roast. WITH VEGIES.




We’re staying at the Wintersun Caravan & Tourist Park.
It’s nice enough. Away from the town centre.
There’s grass AND shade which is not always part of the $40+ per night package.

The ablution blocks are thoroughly cleaned & earn a well deserved 2 Pubes rating.

Best of all, they have local radio live fed into the blocks which means I can sing in the shower & dance my way down the isle to the toilets.

Georgie was mortified.

I did a fabulous poo yesterday to Cyndi Lauper &, let’s face it, who doesn’t love a good poo to Cyndi?
I let my true colours shine right through to ‘The rhythm of the Gascoyne- Classic Hits Triple 6’.


Today we set out to get the kids some new swimwear.

Pickings are slim in down town Carnarvon but Targèt Country came through with the goods.



I even managed to buy my first cossie in over FIVE YEARS.  


In case you were wondering, I look exactly like this in it…


Just heading out for a snorkel at Ningaloo…

Only, with the state of the unmanicured lawns around here at the moment, I’ll be wearing ankle knee length boardies as well.


We’ll be stopping soon for a few weeks.

Laithe has a job lined up & he’s terribly depressed about it, but this fuel tank doesn’t fill itself & so one of us needs to work.

While he’s slogging his guts out in the heat I’ll be slogging an equal amount of guts out trying to catch up on Georgie’s school work & keeping Emerson from doing himself a serious injury.
I’ve stock piled 15 litres of wine. That ought to see me through sanely.

There really is nothing like pouring from a box. It’s the only way to travel.

I also plan to sort some work out for myself further up the track & catch you all up on the ridiculous amount of places we’ve already been. There is SO much I’ve left out. I can’t charge the laptop off the solar panel at the moment so the opportunities to write are limited.

There’s also been over 7,000 photos in 5 months to go through! I have to straighten most of them because, for some reason, I can’t take a level photo to save myself. I’ll blame it on my sort left leg.
If you haven’t seen it (& ‘liked’ it) already, you can see photos of our trip thus far here on Facebook.

Most of the people we’ve met have already headed much further north & in a bigger hurry than us. They’re all melting in Broome & beyond when they could have been back here, warming their giblets by the fires that we’re finally allowed to have again. Needless to say, as I sit here with my cardi on, we are in no such hurry to get too far ahead of the dry season.

Back on the road tomorrow. Not sure where to.

Onward & upward again, I spose. Really fucking slowly…

Subterranean Homesick Blues

We’ve been traveling about 5 months now.
Done around 11,000km’s OR over 2 litres of sun cream.
It’s been good.
Seen p-lenty of beautiful places.
Met loads of great people.
Had no major incidents, accidents or injuries.
And everyone is currently alive & well (at the time this was published).

None the less, I’ve been feeling a bit homesick.

I’m not sure who’s home I’m sick for.
Mine? The parentals? The in-laws? My friend’s? Queensland? New South Wales?

At this point I don’t think it matters who’s home it is. I’m not one to make a fuss.
Obviously.
It’s more to do with the, almost uncontrollable, desire I have to shower without thongs on.
Or have a bath, not a bucket.
Turn a tap on & have water come out of it at a greater rate than half a litre per minute.
Water that doesn’t taste like shit or have wrigglers or bits in it.
I’d like to have normal… oh what’s it called again?… electricity. That doesn’t cost me $50 or more a night. And spend just one day NOT having to discuss the merits of having a new 12volt AC Delco.

(I do realise how disgusting that all sounds considering half the world’s population, or more, live like this or worse everyday. Only without the comfy caravan roof over their heads. But whatever. I’m an asshole.)

We moved on from Sandy Cape & spent last week at Coronation Beach, 30km north of Geraldton.


I felt refreshed, & somewhat optimistic, when we pulled in there.
We’d stocked up in Geraldton with little luxuries. Like food.
We still had chocolate from the Easter Bunny & I’d even splashed out & bought a magazine.
But best of all we had COLD BEER.
The temperature had been getting up to around 34 degrees & we pulled into the best spot in the place.
The only one with a shade tree.

We also managed to park as close to our new neighbours as we possible could, slowly taking over their van, couch, electricity, & daily routine in the week that followed.

I was punished for this with my first wicked hangover of the trip.

The camp spot was great. The toilets (still pits) didn’t smell, for a change, & I was able to pack the Hazchem suit under the bed temporarily.

What I should have done was lend it to the Caretaker.
The poor bugger endured one of my WORST NIGHTMARES a couple days after we arrived.

Some idiot had dropped a beer bottle down the toilet & while he was helping the Shit Truck Driver pump the contents of the toilets out, the bottle exploded covering the two of them.

IN SHIT.

IT WAS IN HIS MOUTH, PEOPLE.

IN. HIS. MOUTH! 

I could almost cry for him. And run him an ammonia bath.

Apparently he took it better than I would have. There was no retching. No screaming. And no uncontrollable sobbing. Just a mad dash to the ocean for a good scrub & then a call to council to see what test he might need.
I’ve made a mental note NEVER to do his job.

Not for all the tetanus shots in China.

Sunset: Coronation Beach.

I wasn’t going to include it, but I think Geraldton really deserves a mention.
We didn’t spend too much time there but we went in every few days to shop & get fresh water.

Its a decent sized city with what, I suspect, is a ‘nice side’ & a ‘not so nice side’. 
There were some spectacular old buildings. Nice parks. Even a cathedral, for crying out loud.

Then we went to Woolworths.

You can tell a lot about a place by the state of it’s supermarkets.
Something was just not right. And I wasn’t the only one to notice it. Laithe & I agreed things weren’t looking too good, then Georgie came up & said to me “Mum. I just saw this lady. I think it was a lady. She had a moustache. I’m sure it was a lady?”. Even the 5 year old had noticed something was up.

I’m certainly no glamour, & we have spent the last 8 years in Cairns, but something was really rough around there. I think it was the unmistakable smell of alcohol vapours & body odour at 9 in the morning.

After the supermarket we went to fill up our water containers at the information office.

While Laithe was doing that, I watch, with a keen, twitchy eye, a potential domestic on the main street.
There was this young woman walking down the street, completely unperturbed, with this young guy dancing around her just like that little yappy cartoon dog, except he used the ‘f’ word & the ‘c’ word far more than they do in a Looney Tunes episode.
He was one of those weedy little guys. You know the type.

Skinny as a rake & as ugly as a hat full of arseholes. Acting all tough. Threatening to throw punches. And using every swear word he could think of, which seemed to be his entire vocabulary.

I put the kids in the car & distracted them, not wanting to have to explain to the 5 year old what a ‘c*#t’ was.

I don’t know how the girl felt. She didn’t seem too concerned. He was wearing a fingerless glove, FFS. Just one.
Come to think of it, he did kind of look like some sort of love child of the Jackson variety.

I don’t fight. I’m a lady. I do ladies things. So instead I stood there giving him the evil eye, which actually seemed to have an effect, & thinking “What a winner.”
He continued the verbal abuse & the physical threats while she just walked on towards the train station. I think he even threw some rocks at her but she just kept on walking.
It was pretty impressive on her part.
We didn’t hang around in town too much longer.


Back at the beach this guy was sick for three days with a temperature which he pretty much took in his stride. He just ate less & slept more.
Then he puked.
On my bed.
*Cue me dragging the sheets down the beach to wash the vomit off in the ocean. Sand & sea weed sticking to everything.*

Not to worry. He convalesced under the watchful eye of Doctor Georgie, who was at the ready to provide pillow fluffing, First Aid in case of a relapse & diversional therapy during recovery.
   

He spent the rest of his time pointing out every “Caterpillow” that crossed through our camp, & loving the neighbours dogs to an almost suffocating death.
  
These things were everywhere.


Emerson & Sausage. He doesn’t look convinced.
The dog, that is.

We spent 6 nights at Coronation Beach but it was no fun after our neighbours left. We had to go back to talking to one another.

We moved on the next day & headed for Kalbarri via Northampton to collect more water.

We decided to save on fuel & splurge on a caravan park in Kalbarri. Murchison River Caravan Park to be precise. Unpowered site $36.
My standards & expectations have dropped considerably in the last 5 months but I’ll stick to the old rating scale & give it 3.5 Pubes.
There’s a shower block that’s generally tidy, if not old. I think they have an instant hot water system which I’ve found to be shit & dangerous when showering the kids. One second its warm, the next it’s scalding, then it goes ice cold- which is good for the partial thickness burns you’ve just received three seconds earlier. There’s also a set of those cubicles with toilet & shower in one. I’ve avoided those because they smell like pee.

Ignoring all that, Laithe is IN LOVE with Kalbarri.

Murchison River meets the Indian Ocean.

We trekked out to Nature’s Window & The Z Bend for sunrise the other morning. We beat the heat but not the flies.


It was shaping up to be a stinker that day so we decided to escape the van & head up river for some fishing & crabbing.

We got nothing.

This little guy got me though. Lying in the shallows, minding my own business, & I cop a short, sharp nip to my 5th intercostal space.
Any higher & I could have been in a lot of trouble.

On the way home we threw the crab pots in further up the river. This time with some success.


Dinner was sweet & salty that night.

Yesterday we took a drive south to check out the pink lake we’d missed,some convict ruins, & a couple beaches we’d been told were good.

                          Pink Lake                                                             Lynton Convict Ruins

                       Time to go on a diet?                                                  Lucky Bay (the second Lucky Bay we’ve been to)

Lucky Bay was Laithe’s favourite.
There’s a natural rock wall the whole way along that the water gently flows over. It means fish get stuck on the beach/lagoon side & its just like swimming in an aquarium.
We scored some fish for dinner without having to catch a thing. The kids had an awesome time playing with the big kids, chasing crabs & exploring the rock pools. And I had about my 4th swim for the entire trip.

It’s hard to stay homesick when you know the scenery each day can be this awesome.
I’d still like a thongless shower though.

Onward & upward quite literally tomorrow. We get to meet more family up around Shark Bay.
In a caravan park. With electricity.
We’re all just about pooing our pants with excitement.

On a hot summer night would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?

It’s a long weekend.

You know what happens on long weekends? Local people go camping.
With shitloads of cars, boats, kids, bikes… & alcohol.

I’m still trying to grow my eyebrows back after last months long weekend/pit toilet extravaganza, where 100-200 people descended on the peaceful Waroona Dam, south-east of Perth, & its TWO available loos.


This was just a fraction of the crowd…and boats.

Each morning started with the breakfast of champions, a can of coke & a cigarette, & the irritating sounds of nature were drowned out by the gentle hum of generators, speed boats, & 4x4s doing doughnuts in the mud at the edge of the dam.

It was blissful.

The nights were hot so all van vents & windows were open to full capacity. This was great because it let in all the second hand cigarette smoke & meant we could enjoy the entire soundtrack for the weekend, as it was played by our surrounding neighbours. It involved a whole lot of Meat Loaf, Foreigner, Jimmy Barnes (naturally), The Eagles & a bit of Neil Diamond, punctuated by intermittent bursts of raucous laughter, some inappropriate language at decibel, the unmistakeable sound of someone ‘taking a piss’ right near our van, & a few verses of “Oi, Narelle! Show us ya tits, woodja?!” To which Narelle was, apparently, obliging.

After all the alcohol was consumed they went to bed.
Only rise the next morning, surprisingly early, to head up to the pit toilets & scar me FOR LIFE.

This wasn’t merely about pubes on the seat. We have gone WAY past that being an issue anymore, thanks princess.
Nor wasn’t about just shutting your eyes to block out the trauma, or using your new found foot dexterity to open/close lids/doors, or doing your best to hover.

It was the first time I’d ever walked into a loo & almost instantly vomited.

The Alcoholic Grog Bogs of the masses had gone & done me in. It was too late to back out so I quickly wrapped my hoodie round my face, eys watering, & hurried on for dear life.

In my panic I couldn’t decide whether to breathe through my mouth or my nose! I didn’t want to smell it, but I didn’t want to taste it either! And, by God, could you taste it. It was like some sort of chemical warfare had been waged in the Peel district of WA.

I burst out of that cubicle gasping for air & heaving into the bushes. All I could think of was this guy saying:

“There’xs a xsmell in here that will outlaxst religion”.

After that I vigorously flossed my teeth & held everything until we went into town during the day so I could use the nice clean bathroom at the tourist centre.

Besides the dam at Waroona, they also have a weir.
It was nicer. But no camping.


 Fresh air. No motorised boats. Grassy areas & picnic tables to sit at, free BBQs, & a good spot to swim.

We also happened to be in town on just the right weekend for this…

Rural Cinema
For $10 we took our popcorn, pillows & sleeping bags down to the local cricket ground to watch the kid’s movie ‘Transylvania’.
With the pre-movie entertainment (local boys singing) it was such a good night.

The Drakesbrook Hotel (the local) loured us in with the promise of $3 pints all day & it didn’t disappoint.
Their entire meal was that nice ‘Deep Fried Gold’ colour but the kids ate free & we ate very well. It wasn’t just a massive meal, it was a good one too.
     
You can’t tell from the photo but that pile of calamari was about as big as my head.


This long weekend the only things that are different to the last are the scenery & the soundtrack.
We’re at Sandy Cape, near Jurien Bay.





T'here’s cars, boats & kids everywhere, & ‘Beer O’clock’ is at 8AM.

There’s a hardworking caretaker here so the toilets are physically cleaner, but the midmorning aroma can still induce vomiting at 50 paces.

The soundtrack, while still involving Meat Loaf, is a little more acoustic this time, what with the guitars & the howling singing running well into the evening. It would almost be enjoyable if they knew much more than the chorus of every song they sing. 

We’re not far from here…

The Pinnacles

… & just up the road is Stockyard Gully National Park where we got to wander through Stockyard Tunnel. Torches were a necessity.


There’s a seasonal creek that runs right through it & these guys, my only real allergy, were hanging around everywhere…
My throat was swelling just looking!
   
We took our time, had a good look. I considered trying to re-enact part of My Girl but, given I barely resemble a 10yr old Macaulay Culkin & don’t carry adrenalin on my person, I changed my mind.


The Easter Bunny managed to find us but, at the 11th hour, Elegant Rabbit took a turn for the worse.
He ended up in a critical condition requiring emergency surgery, a complete facial reconstruction, & a full body cast. There’s a good chance he’ll never hop again.
Emerson couldn’t have cared less.

Somehow he had gotten the idea that easter eggs were, in fact, potatoes wrapped in coloured foil. So when he got up in the morning & saw them scattered all over the van all we got was “YEH! Potatoes! I wub them ebry time!”

I think he’s Irish.


It hasn’t been all sunshine & light around here.
We had a good, old fashioned, storm at the start of the week which shook the van all night, left tents down & water all over the place.
Some of us, those who slept through the entire thing, enjoyed it though.
  

So as the sun sets on this magnificent long weekend I hope you all had a lovely time, camping or no camping.

I’m sure I did.

And if you wouldn’t mind joining in the clapping as we fade out together…

You took the words right out-a my mouth *clap-clap, clap*
It must have been while you were kissen me
You took the words right out-a my mouth *clap-clap, clap*
It must have been while you were kissen me
You took the words right OUT-A MY MOUTH *clap-clap, clap*
IT MUST HAVE BEEN WHILE YOU WERE KISS-EN ME!…

How long til the next long weekend?

School holidays!
Oh shit.