Saturday 30 November 2013 - Kalbarri, WA

Saturday 30 November 2013 - Kalbarri, WA

Cripes, it’s almost December... Christmas is upon us soon and the year is nearly over! After saying goodbye to our new but lovely friends on Quobba, we spent three nights in Carnarvon readjusting to camping life and taking care of a few housekeeping odds and ends. (It seems that even when you ‘throw it all in and hit the road’, there’s still mundane chores and errands to do. While we can have a temporary hiatus from it, we really can’t escape it all forever!) We reorganised the car and camper (again!) – even after ten months, we’re still modifying and thinking of ways to make touring life easier, quicker and more convenient. How we arrange everything depends heavily on the climate and the type of country we’re in, as well as the number of nights we spend in any one camp. Considering we’re constantly varying these factors, we’ve learnt that there’s no such thing as the perfect setup. Well, not in a camper trailer with a boat, fishing gear, tools towed by a wagon with two children in the back. (We’ve decided we would love a ute, one with an awesome canopy with side openings and lots of shelves/storage area.) But in the meantime, we’re working hard to make the best of what we’ve got and Glenn got the great idea while we were at Quobba to build a roof-mounted shelf in the back of the car. It tidies up a lot of our crap that’s been floating around the back.

Anyway, moving on to more exciting things, we treated ourselves out twice to meals while we were in Carnarvon. The first was a delicious lunch at the cultural centre, where the girls were quite thrilled because they got to eat pancakes and icecream as a main meal and Glenn and I enjoyed a BLT and chicken salad accompanied Coke and latte respectively. We also enjoyed the price tag of $42. Sadly, we were a little less enthusiastic about paying $78 for dinner at one of the local pubs (Gascoyne Hotel) after a cat stole the beef steaks we had out thawing the following afternoon. The meal and service was nice enough, but not really worth what it cost.

Yesterday, we said goodbye to the Gascoyne and finally turned south, although we weren’t sure exactly where we’d end up. We called in and had a look at Bush Bay and New Beach, free bushcamps about 30km out of Carnarvon, but weren’t all that impressed. A little further on is a much nicer beach called Gladstone, where we decided to have lunch. If we hadn’t done a whole lot of sandy exposed beach camping over the last few months, we probably would have spent a few days there, but we’ll just put that on our ‘to-do list’ for now. Next stop was 40km west along the Shark Bay turnoff, to see some really (really!) old rocks. They’re called stromatolites and they hang out at Hamelin Pool. I was impressed. The girls were impressed cause they had an icecream that I’d bought from one of the local plantations the previous afternoon and kept in the car freezer.

We could have stayed nearby or pushed on towards Denham and checked out Shark Bay properly, but as I said, we’re a bit over camping on exposed coastlines with constant wind, sun and no shade. So that’s going on our ‘one day’ list as well. We pushed on, back out to the highway and drove further south to Kalbarri. The landscape had gradually changed along the way and during the last hour or so of driving, it turned cool and overcast, with a few light drops of rain. After a bit of humming and ha-ing, we decided to stay at the caravan park in town that had a pool, playground and jumping pillow for the kids. At $40 a night (unpowered!) we can only afford to have two nights here!

Today is still cool but most of the clouds blew away by lunch and we had a lovely time exploring the area. We called into the parrot breeding centre, which the girls really enjoyed. I’m not much into birds, but was really impressed by the layout and how much work the first owners had obviously put into it. The gift shop was pretty cool too. 

Now we've pulled our next trick. There was a sign in the window of the caravan park we're currently at asking for a couple to take care of watering the lawns and raking a few sites in return for nightly fees. I asked them about it and they didn't have anyone lined up yet, so we've scored the gig! We're here until the start of the school holidays (20 Dec in WA) and it's pretty great - kids have entertainment right there; 15 hours a week (which we can split between us or do together with the kids) and plenty of time to explore the area. There's some great bike paths and good fishing here, but we didn't know if we would bother getting the bikes and boat off... now we will for sure! Sweet. :)