Cervantes to Geraldton

Day #143 February 3rd, 2009

Today we woke up after a somewhat windy night sleep, around 8 AM to check out for 10 AM. We didn’t really love the caravan park and were ready to leave. We went back down to the beach and took some pictures of the beach and the ocean, Jenny collected some shells and then we were off to the small visitors centre – located in the news agency. The lady there gave us some ideas of what we can do around the area in addition to the Pinnacles. The Pinnacles are thousands of limestone pillars, up to 4 meters tall, which form the Pinnacles Desert. They have been carved into these shapes from the wind over millions of years. The moonscape scenery is made by the pillars rising out of the stark desert landscape of yellow quartz sand. It is a favourite subject for photographers. We drove to the Nambung National Park; they had a loop about 3 km long, winding through the Pinnacles Desert. The day was beautiful, blue skies and a few fluffy clouds. We took tons of pictures as we couldn’t believe how beautiful the area was. The Pinnacles were as far as the eye could see. Far off in the distance were beautiful white sand dunes and the ocean to one side. Some of the Pinnacles were small and others were up to 3 to 4 meters tall. We took some funny pictures; some of us jumping off them, one of Jenny peering through a hole and one of Ross pretending a Pinnacle was a giant wanker! After driving through the designated loop and stopping to take pictures whenever we wanted to, we headed to the information centre. We checked out the information centre and then it was time for lunch. For lunch, we found this beautiful little spot called Hangover Bay. We were blown away at how beautiful it was; a spot with a picnic table and BBQ area over looking the bay and white sandy beaches. There were sand dunes behind us and amazing parkland all the way around, making unreal 360 degree view for lunch. We enjoyed our packed lunch and strolled down the beach before driving to the next spot. We were told to check out the stomatolites and Lake Thetis. We couldn’t find the stromatolites, due to poor signage, but walked up a large very steep staircase to a lookout over looking the ocean on one side and Lake Thetis on the other. We drove to Lake Thetis next, it didn’t look very exciting so we left to find the infamous stromatolites…we drove all the way down this dirt road but it just kept getting more and more narrow – only to have it open up to the ocean! With you guessed it, no stromatolites. The view was very nice but we were determined to find the stromatolites. We drove all the way back and decided to check out the lake a little bit closer. Low and behold there they were; grey mounds by the water, they looked like rocks but were made up of tiny microbes that only grow a microscopic amount each year, which in return is the interest in them. We didn’t get it – boring! After that we began our drive North to Geraldton. We took the scenic drive from Cervantes to Geraldton, stopping at a few ocean towns to check out the ocean views. The water is getting warmer as we go north. We stopped in a place called Dongara for some fish and chips, which were delicious. Today we finished the drive past Geraldton to Drummond Cove Holiday Park. We had a swim in the pool, ate our supper, called home and fell asleep for the night.

Perth to Cervantes

Day #142 February 2nd, 2009

We got up at 7:30 AM to beat everyone to the nice showers, and get packed up to be out of the park at 10 AM. We still haven’t found a home for everything in the van yet – so packing up takes us a bit of time. Hopefully, we will be quicker at it as time goes on. After we checked out of Karrinyup we headed to find some caravan stores to find out why our lights and water pump were only working sometimes. Today it is HOT out, doing errands is very difficult when all you’re doing is sweating buckets. We finally found a caravan place and figured out why we were having difficulties. Our problem was easily fixed with a battery charger; a charger that charges the auxillary battery while we are plugged into 240V at each camp site, rather then the alternator charging while we are only driving. After finding one, we headed to the Big W (like a crappy WalMart) for the rest of our odds & ends, and groceries at Woolworths. After all that was done, we drove to Subway and both ate a foot long sub! Yum! And enjoyed sitting in the air conditioned restaurant. With full bellies we started our drive to our first destination, Cervantes. The drive was ridiculously hot, and because we were driving in the middle of the afternoon we had the sun just beating down on us. Jenny burnt her left arm as we didn’t think that we had to keep reapplying sunscreen on in the van. We both drank about 3 litres of cordial and we were soaked from sweating so much. We have never been so hot in our entire lives. The drive was short only about 3 hours drive to Cervantes, a little town North of Perth, but it felt like a century. There was nothing to special about the town itself, the caravan park we stayed at was a thumbs down. When we got into the caravan park it was really windy and cold, we were disappointed after being so hot driving but we were determined to swim anyways. The temperature had fallen from about 40 degrees to no warmer then 20 degrees. After setting up the van in our spot, we headed down to the beach. On the path through the dunes we saw a black snake – scared us a bit but it was more scared of us. The water was warm, clear and shallow. We only had a short swim due to the cold wind but it felt good to swim. On our way of the water, Jenny saw a jelly fish and shortly after felt something bite her heal. She was ok, nothing big – just enough to scare us. The next day after checking out of the caravan park, everyone was surprised to hear that we saw a jelly fish, as they are not known to be in that area. We had a great sleep that night, nothing else too exciting, just researched what we were going to do the next day.

First camping experiences in the van

Day #141~February 1st, 2009

We slept in today at Karrinyup Waters Caravan Park. We spent two nights here, very nice park for our first park. We are getting used to the van and where everything is etc. The park itself was so nice, our site was in front of a pond with lots of ducks, swans and Australian bird life that we haven’t seen yet. We spent the entire day in the pool! It was such a nice and relaxing day. The pool was really nice, it had a walk in shallow end that you could gradually walk down the slope into the deep end, which was about 8 ft deep. There was also a hot pool that was also a good size being 5.5 ft deep in the middle. The park was clean, with lots of amenities everywhere, the camp kitchen and BBQ area, play area and jumping pillow for kids, and the pond as we mentioned before. The staff were very friendly and informative about travelling North. We gave this park a two thumbs up – we decided to take pictures in front of the park entry sign giving it a thumbs up or down whether we liked it or not. Also a good way for us to remember where we’ve stayed.

Our last days in Perth

Since Rottnest Island both of us have been busy working and trying to save as much money as possible. We took on as many shifts as we could and accepted overtime when the opportunity was there. Unfortunately this meant working different shifts from each other. We did all the local touristy things around Perth and spent as many days as we could at the beach on our days off together. Before we knew it our 3 months were over and we were packing up our room. With work complete we decided to have all of our friends and housemates that we met in Perth over for a BBQ. On Friday night we had a great time with our friends, lots of food and of course booze. Pretty much everyone is able to make it, Brigid and Mark (our housemates/Irish friends), Jonah and Louise (new housemates), Michelle and Adam (our new Canadian friends from Ottawa!), Zoe (no Ben) and Charmaine (friends we met through the hospital) and some of Brigid and Marks Irish friends too. We all ate well and had a great night. Saturday the 31st of January we woke up and cleaned up the house/back yard, packed up the van with all our clothes and food. It was a very hot day, and in retrospect we should have started to pack earlier. But nonetheless we had the van packed by late afternoon, said our good byes to Brigid and Mark and headed to Karrinyup Waters Caravan Park for the night. Karrinyup is a very nice caravan park in Perth, our site was right in front of a pond with lots of duck, swans etc. After a busy day of packing in the heat we were just happy to crash for the night.

Back up and running!

Hey everyone, as many of you know our blog was postponed after our bad luck in Rockingham. With out our laptop it made updating the blog very difficult and expensive. So what we decided to do was wait until we could either buy another computer or had better access to internet. Well the latter has come true, as we are now staying with a family friend. In October of last year, Tennille stayed with my parents in Guelph for a week during her Rotary exchange. My parents really enjoyed hosting Tennille, and couldn’t say enough about her. They told us that we would have to meet her as we drove through Melbourne. Well as luck would have it, we weren’t able to find work in Adelaide so we continued on to Melbourne to better our chances. When we arrived into Melbourne, we decided it would be best to find work for 3 months or so. When we met Tennille, and her partner Jace and their 10 year old boy, Kobe, we were blown away that they wanted us to spend our 3 month stay with them. So with access to the internet, a warm place to stay and bed to sleep in, we’re extremely grateful of Tennille and Jace’s hospitality. We are now able to update the blog and bring all of you up to speed on our travels through out Oz. Unfortunately there won’t be any of our pictures from our travels North of Perth, but with the help of some of our friends we are able to show you, through their eyes what it looked like. From now on the entries will be directly from Jenny’s journal that she has used to remember our trip. We have been working on it together since we stopped updating the blog, in order to include both of our perspectives and share our experiences with you. Hope you enjoy!!

Hey everyone for now the blog is on hold because as most of you know, if not all of you, we no longer have a computer. We are in the process of researching our options, but for now internet is very scarce. We apologize to all of you who have enjoyed following us along and we will hopefully be up and running soon! Hope everyone is well and are warming up in the spring weather. We are doing well otherwise and are in the most beautiful place in the world, at least in our eyes.

Miss you all,

Jenny and Ross
xoxo

We're alive!

Hey guys, sorry it's been so long since our last entry. I'm sure you're getting frustrated checking the blog when there is not entry but don't fret because we are working on it. December and January in Perth were relatively boring, just working working and working. But now we are on the road and have more opportunity to update the blog. Blogger.com is giving some problems but we think we have them worked out. We are having an amazing time travelling up the West coast and have already seen so much! So stay tuned and check in in a few days and we promise you, you won't be dissapointed. Miss you all

JR