We then had about a day and a half at Esperance. Then drove to Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Then had 2 days at Kalgoorlie-Boulder. I will write some more about these soon. We are then going to spend the next 2 days doing lots of driving to cover the 1300km across the Nullabor. We plan to do a free camp overnight and arrive at Ceduna in SA on the Sat afternoon/evening. We have tried to make sure we are stocked up with some extra books and audiobooks for the car trip. We’ll have a few days in SA and then be back in Canberra by the following weekend. Will try to keep up with the blogging – it’s been quite a chore lately, but I’m determined to continue to the end.

It was quite a detour to go to Hyden, the home of Wave Rock, instead of straight to Esperance. However the kids were keen to see it (it was in the book ‘Are we there yet?’), and Michael and I wanted to see it too. So we made the nearly 350km trek north east to Hyden. We’re getting used to long drives, so it didn’t seem too bad. We drove through some nice scenery when passing through the Stirling Ranges NP. We passed through some wheatbelt country too. We arrived at Hyden around 4pm. Because it was a Sunday, virtually everything was shut. We made our way 6km out of town to where the caravan park was situated right at the base of the rock. We checked in and were setup by 5pm. Since it was only 200m to the base of the rock, I asked if any of the children wanted to walk there that afternoon. All except Lauren did. Lauren and Michael were tired and said they would wait until tomorrow to see it. So I took the others – it was even closer than I had expected, and we were the only ones looking at it at that time – Sam remarked on how different this was to our Uluru experience.

The next day, we packed up the van and drove out of the van park and parked in the carpark area nearby. Then we walked to wave rock again and all had fun doing the usual surfing poses on the rock. We then did the walk up above the rock. Then we did the 600m walk to another rock formation called Hippo’s Yawn. When you see the rock, you can understand the name. The kids had fun here too, pretending to climb into the Hippo’s mouth, and Sam climbed up on top of his nostril! As well as seeing these rock formations, we saw lots of ‘dragons’ – of the lizard variety. They seemed to be everywhere and had such a funny way of scurrying along. We had fun spotting them.

We then returned to the van and had hotdogs for lunch (using the generator to heat them up in the microwave). It was about 12.30 then when we started driving again, heading south-east towards Esperance, back on the coast. Esperance was about 400km away, and we weren’t planning to try to get there tonight, but planned to drive as far as we felt comfortable to and then stop at a free camping spot overnight.

We drove nonstop until about 3.30 when we reached Ravensthorpe. We stopped here for some afternoon tea and a play at the playground. We decided to drive a further 80km to a free camping spot at Monjingup. This was a nice enough spot. The kids had a bike ride and a play while I got some dinner. Then it was off to bed.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by Albany. It is not a place I have heard much about previously (in fact, apart from the Margaret River, I have heard very little about any of the south of WA). Yet I found Albany to be a very interesting and picturesque city. It is the 6th largest city in WA, and as I found out, the first one to be continuously settled by Europeans. It was settled in 1826 when the British Government gave instructions for it to be established as a military post. Several other European ships, such as Dutch and French, had visited the shores of what was then called ‘King George Sound’ in the preceding decades, but they had never established a settlement. By sending an establishment over to western Australia, the British were wanting to claim the whole of the continent for themselves.

Some of the things that struck me about Albany were:
– the history – I didn’t know much about Western Australian history, so this was interesting. Also there were some lovely older suburbs closer in to town with well established trees and quite pretty.
– the geographic location – with a ‘sound’ and 2 very closed harbours, it was a great place to establish a military post for defence. These aspects also made the scenery very dramatic.
– the beaches and parks – there were many picturesque areas around Albany. There was a drive along the cliff from the beach area to the Princess Royal Sound and it had great views.
– the town centre – had some historic buildings. It also was set on a hill overlooking the harbour. From where we were staying at Emu Point, we drove towards town and came over a crest and the harbour came into view – it was quite impressive.

Our first day in Albany was a lazy day (for us parents anyway). We slept in a bit, then got up and did some jobs. The caravan park had a playground, a jumping pillow and a good area for bike riding, so the younger 3 kids were happy doing this (Lauren prefers to do more resting these days too). I was feeling very tired again, so Michael took the kids for a walk along the beach just near the van park, and I had another sleep. Then they came back for lunch, and then everyone had to have rest time after lunch. (Michael had a bit of a sleep then). Around 3pm, we were planning to head off to the shops – we needed to do some grocery shopping, and also needed to but Bethany some new runner shoes as she had holes in the others. Lauren and Sam asked if they could stay back at the van – so we said they could if they were just reading books or having a bit of a bike ride. It felt strange for Michael and I to be going off with just 2 children after having 4 around us in most of the things we do. Anyway, that pretty much took up the rest of the afternoon, but I had wanted to have a bit of a drive around the town centre and go up to the lookout on Mt Clarence, near the town centre. We rang Lauren and Sam to say we would be a bit longer and did these things. The views were great. We decided we’d have to come back with L&S tomorrow. We went back to the van and Lauren cooked dinner for us tonight.

The 2nd day at Albany was filled with more sight-seeing:-
– We went back to Mt Clarence. This had interest for a few reasons the views, the ANZAC history and the downhill bike track.
The lookout right at the top of the hill had great views over Princess Royal Harbour and King George Sound.
The ANZAC link to Albany was something I had not known about and found interesting. For the 1st and 2nd ANZAC convoys, Albany was their last place of departure from Australian shores, before sailing to Gallipoli. There is an Avenue of Honour on the road at the base of the hill, with plaques along lines of trees. At the top of the hill is a monument to the Desert Mounted Corps (the Light Horsemen). Michael loves the story of the light horsemen, so there was a lengthy retelling and a good history lesson here. Apparently Albany held the first dawn service in the nation (in 1923) and it is going to be the place for the major centenary dawn service in 2014/15.
The downhill bike track was of interest to Sam, so he had put his bike on the back of the car that morning and he rode his bike down the hill and met us at a predetermined place at the bottom.

– We went to the historic precinct at Albany on the foreshores of Princess Royal Harbour and visited the Amity Brig. This is a full scale replica of the ship that brought the first group of settlers, led by MajorEdmund Lockyer, to Albany in 1826. Being on board the ship and seeing the size of the sleeping areas and so on, gave some insight into the hardships that would have been faced by having 45 people plus animals on board for 6 weeks. It was only $10 for our family to tour the ship and it was a very well done replica. It had information stations located throughout the ship with audio information (using the audio wands that you were given at the payment desk). Once we had been through this information, the kids were allowed to pretend they were sailors and so on – they had a great time with this.

– We had lunch at the park near the Amity Brig

– We then took the drive around to Torndirrup NP which is on the southern peninsula of Princess Royal Harbour. There are a few places of interest around here.
There is the blowholes. We did this walk first. It is a 900m walk to the blowholes and there is no guarantee they will be ‘blowing’. When we were there, the swell was not right for the spray to be coming up through the gap in the rocks, but we could certainly hear the sound – it made us all jump the first time we heard it as we got close. It was pretty dramatic just seeing the coastline.
Further along the coastline is ‘The Gap’ and ‘Natural Bridge’, 2 natural features carved in granite rock by the wind and waves. It was much shorter walks to see these (which was good as Hannah and Beth were getting tired by now).
The last thing we saw around here was ‘Whaleworld’ – a former whaling station which is now a museum on the history of whaling. We didn’t go in to the museum, but we saw the whaling boat (which was the last one used at this station) and found out that Albany was the last whaling station in the world to cease operations in 1978.

– We then returned to the van park for some down time.

It was a nice drive to Albany, through some nice forest and pretty towns. We came to ? Around lunchtime where there was a tourist attraction called the Treetops Walks. It was a steel boardwalk built within a tingle forest, with the highest platform being about 40m above the ground. We had our lunch at the caravan before we went to buy our ticket to do the walk. It was a good walk. As we walked along the boardwalk, there was an occasional gust of wind. The narrow trees swayed quite a lot, whereas the ones with thicker trunks didn’t. It was amazing to see how much those thinner did sway. After the boardwalk, there was also a walk along the ground called the Ancient Giants Walk, where there were a few very old tingle trees still standing.

We got back to the van and continued our drive to Albany – about another 1 and a half hours away. We found the van park we were staying at at Emu Point and set up. We decided we would have fish and chips for dinner that night, so I looked up where there was a fish and chips shop in Albany. I found out that there was a well-loved one just around the corner at Emu Point Marina. It was called The Squid Shack. We decided to drive there and eat dinner there, as I read there were tables there. We did that and enjoyed a very nice meal of fish and chips and salt and vinegar squid. Then it was back to the van for the usual bedtime routine.

At Shannon Lodge we had a wonderful time in the Natinal Park.
We stayed for 3 days.
I slept with Beth.
We went for a drive through the Karri forrest.
Lauren and Mum climbed a fire lookout tree it was a ladder of pegs up the side of the tree.

Our time at Shannon Lodge was very enjoyable. It was a chance to spread out a bit, and it was beautifully peaceful and private.

On our first day there, we took things pretty slowly. Beth was awake early as usual, but we set her up with her iPad, and the rest of us had a bit of a sleepin. We made porridge over the potbelly stove and had our showers. Hannah and Beth got into their game of Little House on the Prairie (Hannah was Laura and Beth was Carrie) and Lauren and Sam were keen to start a game of Monopoly (we had bought the electronic version in Perth when the kids had seen it there). Michael and I sat outside for a while relaxing and catching up on blogging. We had a late morning tea, and then I put together some lunch things so we could go for a drive. There is the Great Trees Forest Drive in the Shannon NP which takes you through some of the best old growth forest of karri, jarrah and marri trees. There are information stops along the way, set up by DEC and accessed via your car radio. So we listened to these. Some of the things we learnt were:-
– There are more than 700 types of eucalypt trees in Australia. In this particular area, the Karri, Jarrah and Marri make up most of the eucalypt trees, with a few extras scattered around.
– Karri is the 3rd tallest tree type in the world, growing up to 90m high ( the tallest tree is the Californian redwood which grows up to 112m).
– Jarrah grows up to 40m. Their branches grow upwards, like celery sticks.
– Marri, is also known as redgum. They grow up to 60m. Their branches grow more outwards.
It was a lovely drive. We planned to stop at a picnic stop marked on the map to have lunch, but when we got there, we found that both the track to it and the table itself were overgrown. We were nearly back to the lodge, so we went back there to have lunch.
Then some of us had a nap, while others watched a movie.
In the later afternoon, we lit a fire in the outdoor fireplace, ready to cook sausages on it for dinner. I also started a game of cricket outside with the kids. It was very enjoyable. We then sat down outside for dinner. As I washed up inside, Michael supervised the kids toasting marshmallows over the outdoor fire. It was a nice end to a nice day.

On our 2nd day there, we had another slow start. I got up early with Bethany and her and I had breakfast outside together which was lovely. Then Bethany played happily outside for about an hour while I did some reading and blogging etc. No-one else woke up until about an hour and a half later, so it was nice and peaceful. I decided we would have an early lunch of pancakes today before going for a drive to Pemberton and seeing some of the sights around there. So we had lunch about 11.30 and then set off. It was about a 20min drive into Pemberton. There was a climbing tree just outside Pemberton called the Gloucester Tree. The climbing trees are a system of trees which were used many years ago as lookouts for early detection of any bushfires. There were platforms built high up in the tree and steel rungs driven into the trunk to make a ladder. The Gloucester Tree had the tallest platform at 60m high. Lauren and I climbed the tree (Hannah and Beth were too young and Michael and Sam felt queasy with heights in this situation). It was a challenging climb up, but we made it and were rewarded with a great view over the tops of the trees and out towards the ocean. We then all did a nearby walk through the forest. We then drove back into Pemberton and the Michael and the kids went to a playground while I picked up a few groceries. We had thought we would see a few more things around the area, but the kids were keen just to go back to Shannon Lodge and play some more. We did that and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon there. We had dinner and then the usual bedtime routine.

The next morning, I got up early again with Bethany and enjoyed some quiet time again before starting on the pack up. We decided to have the kids do some schoolwork before we left the lodge that morning, and then they could do their own thing in the car during our drive to Albany.