24 Dec, Perth

Hello over there!

We haven’t written for a while because we have been too relaxed. However we haven’t missed the opportunity to send our well wishes and prayer for your safety - as you travel, exercise or try something out of the ordinary - during this time of celebration of the birth of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus.
We write from sunny Belhus, to the north of Perth, we are staying at Rob’s Uncle and Aunt’s.
After saying goodbye to Emily’s parents in Bunbury, we headed due south, to Augusta. We tried some fishing to no avail. But enjoyed the scenery and the sunshine. We stayed in Leeuwin national park, at point rd and Conto’s spot for a total of three night. Nice location but very windy coast. We did some Christmas present shopping in Margaret River after wish Rob finally tested out his new snorkel at Prevally Beach.
We headed from there to Busselton for a night and day. On Saturday morning we woke up nice and early (which turned out to be a wise decision) and headed for Mandurah train station. We were off to the cricket at the WACA. Day 4 was anticipated as the best day to go for the 1st test against South Africa. It started well, with keeper Brad Haddin fallinf just 5 runs short of what would have been a fantastic 100. We enjoyed the WACA atmosphere sitting on the grass of the west bank with a much un-MCG crowd of 10,071. We enjoyed it so much that we will return for some of the domestic 20-20 matches when Emily’s family join us for a week mid Jan. Turns out the cricket ended up being a good time for the Proteas not us, but that’s sport.

We found a caravan park to freshen up and sleep and in the morning we headed to the Gateway Community Church. There we met some friends who had moved from Melbourne. We spent 3 days with them and they took us through the Burke st mall equivalent and helped us relax.
We drove from there (west perthish) to Rob’s family on Tuesday and we will stay there for 3 weeks or so while we try to get some work and also get to know Rob’s cousins a bit more.
We hope you enjoy this Festive season safely with your family and friends.
Much love - Rob and Emily…. Ho Ho Hover and Out.

14 Dec - Bunbury

Morning All, Finally some warmer weather!! yay!! 26 sat, 36 sun (allegedly)

after trying out 5 different 4wd tracks on thursday and all of them being either gated or tree over track, it was decided to stick to the main roads. we stayed at falkland falls in a lovely little hut, with a pot belly stove. so warm and dry, nice to escape the rain. it had rained overnight everynight for the last 5..! On the same day we also went to the tree top walk and opted for the free ground level attraction... been to the otways, that bigger and better... we also went to the 'swarbrick' interpretive cultural forest part, basically: greenies putting art into nature and saying how great nature is and dont chop it down. nice walk though. good on them

in the morning on friday we met a couple travelling from belgium, and they were great, welcome, company. what started off as a "hello, how are you", turned into a lunch, dinner and late hour conversation. Man, this couple (Heikki and Sandy) had a wealth of information to give us, which is very valuable to us because they are going the opposite direction.

Saturday morning we drove from our rest area, 190km SE of Bunbury, to meet up with Emily's parents who are "on business" in the area. If anyone from the company is reading this, they are not having fun and are doing lots of work.... we stayed with them in bunbury and this morning (Sunday) we are going to go to church together. given the weather, the company and the town, it feels a lot like home.

Tomorrow Emily and i will travel south again to augusta area and work our way back up a bit slower. We have a lot of snorkelling to do.

Enjoy your day, whoever is reading this. Over and out

11 Dec - Albany to Denmark

Hi Everyone. Sorry its been so long. Time has been flying on by for us. We had a fantastic 3 days in and around Albany, and we had a dairy feast travelling thru Denmark.
We got to Albany, and for all us east coasters that’s pronounced Al - bany as the locals assert. We drove in on Sunday morning hoping to go to church ‘somewhere’. we followed the signs to the visitor centre until there were no more signs, then we got lost. So we turned around, heading for the car, when I stumbled across a bookmark lying on the ground, from a local family church Christmas carols. Coincidence? So we logged on the net, since we didn’t have any maps and couldn’t find the visitor centre, and googled our way to church. Great service, followed by a bbq at a very welcoming family’s house. Ended up getting a few mud maps on some great campsites around, which, eventually is where we stayed for three nights. Oh, to not have to set up/pack up for a while. Relief! While in Albany it rained, blew, rained some more, shone, then rained again. In amongst all that we got to see ‘Whale World’ (where we couldn’t stop singing the Wayne’s World theme song), where we found out that Australia has a rich whaling industry, finished not so many years ago! Notice how we don’t bring that up when bringing down the Japanese… We saw some pretty amazing rock formations, ‘The Gap’ and ‘natural bridge’. We went to the blowholes, and conveniently it was very windy, therefore being a great experience (except for the 78 step climb back to the car…)

At our campsite (Floodgates) we had a local bandicoot, which I think had a wife and child, but they didn’t always stay together for photo opportunities…

We also had some cool neighbours, who were helpful in teaching us about fishing and fish filleting etc. They also pointed out some great campspots on the north west coast, for which Emily and I both invested in snorkelling gear.
On Wednesday, we travelled in and around Denmark and thanks to some generous friends we were treated to a lovely cheese platter and drinks at the Denmark Farmhouse Cheese. From there we drove to the honey meadery and treated ourselves to some honey ice cream, and I got to try out my Dutch to the shopkeeper - admittedly my Dutch is very poor. We then travelled to the toffee factory, where we discovered we didn’t have much cash remaining, no surprises… but found enough to get a little. Banana toffee if you’re wondering.
After all the eating, we decided it was time to try catch some more food, in the ocean. So we drove to Boat Harbour inlet and found a nice spot off the rocks, where *coughEmcough* caught a Gurnard Perch, which we read is venomous, but we cooked it up anyway. No signs, of vomiting so its all good. After I tried and failed to gain some fishing cred we left and went to set up camp. Parry beach was our final destination, which is where we are writing from.
In the mean time we will meet up with Emily’s parents this weekend in Bunbury, then continue head back and keep going with the great south west. Until next time, over and out.

04 Dec- Ravensthorpe - thanks for your emails :)

BRRRRR. I (rob) feel like we’re in Melbourne. Sunny, overcast, thunderstorms, clearing, raining, cold, humid, hot. When we left esperance this morning, it was clear and blue sky, not as windy, just nice really- but we were leaving! The last 48 hours have been strong southerly winds, with heavy rain and electric light shows. Esperance is a lovely town, I just wish it was warm and sunny. Oh well, you get what you’re given.
We set off at 1030, had lunch at Munglinup where the flies were “relentless beasts” according to Emily. Then we headed to the tourist information centre to get some umm, tourist information, I guess. So now we have set up camp 20k south of Ravensthorpe and in the next few days we will explore fitzgerald national park and surrounds. But as for blogging, there really isn’t much to report. We are still enjoying ourselves, it certainly beats working, and enjoying each others company. It’s really quite nice to take time away from reality and actually get to see my wife and get to know her more.
Hopefully the next blog will be more interesting than this, so until then… over and out

01 Dec. Lucky Bay - Esperance

Hi there. We write from sunny esperance. It took us a while to get here on Saturday, driving through (no exaggerations) 150 sand/bog holes which was thanks to about 300mm of rain that fell the 3 days prior. We decided to take the gravel road south of Balladonia, taking us to cape arid national park, which upon arrival, found out it is closed due to flooding, thanks for the update parks online - NOT! So we drove on into the night, until we hit Cape Le Grande NP (some 12hours later). Which, unlike cape arid, wasn’t closed due to ‘impassable’ tracks. Turns out all the people heading to arid np did like us, drove to lucky bay, problem being, they all got there early enough, so we hunted, looked, and found a spot in amongst all the campervans.
Anyway, now we’re here and we are having a great time- really relaxing. We didn’t even drive on Sunday, RELAXING!!!. We have spent 3 nights at lucky bay (cape le grand nat. park.) where the sand is white and the water is bright blue. The only shame is it’s not hot. Sunny days, but only about 21-24 C. however no rain, so it still is quite nice. We have done some scenic walks and rob did a ride with a fellow camper.
We caught another couple of fish, sent one back and ate the other, not bad, but not as good as the flathead. We will try for some squid off the pier tomorrow.
That’s all for now, over and out.