Leah's Birthday Weekend

We’ve had a lovely weekend with Todd, Blair and Leah-it was great to be here for Leah’s birthday celebrations. On Friday we arrived back from Malloy and went with them and about 15 others for a really fun night at the Oxford Pub in Leederville. It was a warm night and we were lucky to sit outside in the courtyard where there was a bit of a breeze. The food and company was great!


Saturday we went over to Midland Market for lunch, a few veg and a couple of big pot plants for Leah’s birthday. We managed to find two beautiful ones that will suit a couple of pots she has already. Saturday night, all of them went out and Russ and I had a nice quiet night home alone.

Sunday we went with Blair and Leah to visit Leah’s parents John and Christine in Mandurah. It was really hot, but we all enjoyed a family BBQ for Leah and her BIL Tim’s birthdays, before coming home for a swim. The only down side of things was I tripped coming out the back door in Mandurah, fell over a fan and into a garden bed. Luckily I missed the table edge on the way down! And no, I hadn’t had a drink! My leg is feeling very sore right now.

Right now it’s Monday morning and Russ and I are sitting listening to a huge amount of thunder with very little rain. I just hope we get the rain to clear a bit of the humidity. I just saw a big flash of lightening too.

1st anniversary

Monday we took Brice’s boat up the river for a picnic. We travelled as far as you can go to a campground just passed the Alexander Bridge on the Blackwood River, where we tied up and had a nice lunch of fresh salad rolls and fruit.


It’s a beautiful boat to travel in and I felt a bit like royalty cruising at 8 knots past all the little tinnies out fishing. It was fun to get into the ski zone where we could open it up and speed!

We had a BBQ dinner with Brice and Phyllis to finish off a wonderful day. I was very touched when Brice said how glad he is he invited us over for a drink the night we arrived in Denham back in May last year! This makes me think of another funny thing one of our neighbours said on Sunday night when we were having a casserole tea with them. He said in all seriousness that we were the friendliest Victorians he had ever met-that some of them are very snobby or grumpy and rude, but we are OK!!!!!

Yesterday we went out in the ocean (“ocean’s” actually because when we went behind one of the islands, we crossed from the Pacific into the Indian!) looking for fish. All we caught was 6 small sand whiting and 2 tommy ruff (or herring if you are from WA). Still it was a nice day, although a bit rough for Phyllis who got quite icky so we came home about an hour earlier than planned. I used to think I got sea sick, but seem to have grown out of it which is good. Last night we ate venison steaks for dinner with mash and veg. It was good, and good to have a night at home alone. We opened ourselves a very nice bottle of wine to celebrate our 1st anniversary–it was 1 year yesterday we headed off from Warrnambool on our trip.

Today is a day of rest for us; we are doing our laundry and house work. Tonight we‘re having curry with Phyllis and Brice (Phyllis is Indian so her pork Vindaloo should be good). I’m making a chicken one.

This time in a week we’ll be in Traralgon and I have to say I’m looking forward to it a lot.

The Festival of the Pig

Last night was the annual Festival of the Pig! It’s a pig on the spit organized by a group of people in the park every year that we were lucky enough to get a guernsey to. It was $10 a head and I took along a salad for Russ, Brice and myself to be shared with everyone. There were 45 people and some really wonderful salads to go with our very delicious pig. After our delicious pig, there were some very nice desserts too. And after all that, there was a bit of joke telling, singing, and our neighbour Bob played his electric mandolin which was really good! I was pretty impressed that he actually made the mandolin himself too as it was beautiful. It was a fantastic night that I’ll always remember this lovely park for.

On the way home from the Festival, some of our neighbours were still up chatting around their fire, so we spent an hour with them before heading to bed. They will be in Denham in May when we are there, so we have made arrangements to catch up up there.

Today, we rose very late and sat and had a cuppa with Brice before heading out crabbing in our boat. It was all going very nicely until we hit a log and damaged our motor. It will have to go into the marine place here for repairs in the morning which is a bit of a bummer as I had my heart set on a few more crabs. We caught ourselves 3 big beauties and planned to make chilli crab with them (which we did and it was fantastic).

When we got home from crabbing, yet another neighbour invited us over for a casserole tea, saying we didn’t need to bring a dish as they’d given us such short notice. Not to worry, we just took our chilli crabs and rice that we had planned to eat anyway. The people who ate crabs and chilli loved them and I got asked for the recipe, so they must have been OK.

Brice’s Indian lady friend Phyllis arrived today to spend a few weeks with him, so we are looking forward to a curry night with here before we head back to Perth on Friday. This has been a really enjoyable place to stay!

Malloy and Crab Pots

Feeding the Neighbours

We are having a wonderful time at Malloy. The weather has been great-not too hot and good for sleeping at night. The wind can get up a bit, but we find places out of it to fish and crab. Not many fish in our part of the river though, but we did catch a nice feed of whiting closer to the mouth the other day. There are crabs up this end and although we never catch many, they are a good size so that makes up for it.

The other day when we went down to the river mouth, we noticed a crab pot that looked to have been abandoned. No one ever puts out one pot. On the way home we pulled it up and saw it had the remains of a fish head long eaten, but threw it back. Two days later it was still there so we rescued it (pinched is not a nice word!). Yesterday we took it crabbing and lost it when its rope came undone (that’s what you get for “rescuing” something). Today we went crabbing in almost the same spot and caught it again! Talk about a saga.

Brice arrived yesterday-he’d been down in Perth having tests so his boat and caravan were already here. He had dinner with us last night. For entrée we had 3 huge crabs and then lamb chops in onion gravy, mash and veg. It was all pretty yummy and the crabs really were so big they were enough.

He thinks we’ll get a fish out in the ocean tomorrow which will be good, and he said we should pack a picnic and take his big boat up the river as far as we can go which would be fun.

There are also lots of other nice people in the park. Many are here together and have been coming for a gazillion years, but they are friendly and have invited us over for drinks before dinner whenever they are sitting outside. Everyone has a small boat (except Brice and the odd other person) so all are keen to talk fishing and fishing locations. It’s one of the better parks we’ve been in so far.

Russ and I will have been on the road 1 year on Tuesday 20th, it certainly has been a wonderful year.

Malloy and Crabs!

The park in Busselton “looked nice” but it was really scary. It was full of old people who all looked the same-they all drove sedans that they covered at night, about 1/3rd of them rode push bikes and many called each other “mum and dad”. The park put on water aerobics every morning (so it was a rush to get to the showers before it finished) and boot scooting once a week and as a special treat last night, they had a brass band on the common for all to enjoy! I was pleased to get out of there before I was brainwashed into joining the festivities! As we were leaving this morning, our neighbours raced out to ask if we had been their neighbours in Denham in May which, as it turns out, we were. We’ll also be meeting them there again this May

We had to drive about 90ks to Malloy (through Margaret River), so arrived here bright and early and are now well set up. Malloy is near Augusta which is where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet. We’ve been there before a few years ago, but it was lovely to go out there for a drive this afternoon.

The park is lovely-a bit sandy, there is duck and kangaroo poo everywhere (the ducks circle the vans like Indians around the wagons) , but we are only 70 metres from the beautiful Blackwood river (and the park’s boat ramp) where the park manager tells us we’ll be able to catch black bream, whiting and blue swimmer crabs so big we’ll only need two each for a feed. I nearly wet myself with excitement when she said that.

This park is small and not particularly full right now. Everyone drives a 4WD and has a boat so we think it should be good fun for 2 weeks. Did I mention there are BIG crabs to be had? Of course it will be good. Our friend Brice (from Denham with the big boat) is here, but has had to go back into Perth for a few days for some more treatment for his bone cancer. He and his daughter should be back Tuesday. The park manager has kindly agreed to store the caravan and boat for us when we fly home for Yvonne and Paicey’s wedding which is great-the boat doesn’t have to go back on top of the car now for about 6 weeks.

There is no TV reception here, so I guess all those books we bought at garage sales and op shops are about to come in handy, I can also see us playing a bit of scrabble and Canasta too.

Busselton

We ended up staying an extra night in Nannup and leaving today-Wednesday. On Monday we went for another drive to Donnybrook and along the way bought ourselves a heap of tomatoes, nectarines and plums on the side of the road. Yesterday we went out to the local recyclers and got ourselves some jars and turned the tomatoes and nectarines into a couple of chutneys. Over the past few days we had bought a nice lime and date chutney ($12.95) and a beetroot and cranberry one ($6.95) and figured we could make ourselves a year’s supply for the price of those two. Funny too, when I read the ingredients of the beetroot and cranberry one, there was no cranberries listed! At least we know what we put in ours.

Today we tidied the house, said goodbye to the chooks, frogs and baby magpies and headed into Busselton where we’ll stay for 2 nights.

This is the first time we’ve been in a park since the end of October. It’s a big full one with nice amenities, friendly people and a beautiful pool that we swam in for a couple of hours this afternoon.

Still in Nannup

It’s Monday 5th and we are still in Nannup-we are heading to Busselton tomorrow for 3 nights, then on to Malloy for 2 weeks. The caravan park there has been kind enough to bring our booking forward so we can be in and out two days earlier. That means we can be back in Perth in time for a days sailing on the Leeuwin and for Leah’s birthday.

Nannup has been great. Christine and John arrived down Friday night (early, while we were out touring around) and it was really nice to have their company for two nights. We cooked the rack of venison for Christine’s birthday, and had stewed nectarines fresh from the tree for dessert. John cooked a great BBQ Saturday night, then we had BBQed bacon, eggs, sausages, homegrown tomatoes etc for Brunch on Sunday. Very delicious.

There were 2 couples staying in the house two doors up, so we went and had drinks with them Saturday night. One of the couples is friends with the house owners and has been doing a bit of electrical work on an extension there in return for a bit of use of the place. They invited Russ and I up again last night after John and Christine headed home too, so it has been a lot of fun. We went for a drive to Bridgetown which is a very pretty little place with not much open on a Sunday which is a bit of a shame. It seems the smaller places are a bit keener to cater to tourists and Sunday drivers. There was nothing in the way of interesting foodie things either (not at all like the other two drives) so all we came home with was 3 very nice bottles of wine from a tiny vineyard we visited.

It was a much cooler day yesterday and perfect for sleeping last night. I think I had the best sleep I’ve had in a month! Today we are just having a quiet day before we move on tomorrow.

Nannup

Yesterday (Wednesday) we made a few sandwiches and headed to Pemberton about 80ks away. Along the way we visited a waterfall (not much water at the moment) then stopped at an avocado farm (9 avocados for $2) and an organic food stall (beautiful chillies and kaffir lime leaves) then on to the bicentennial tree for lunch and a photo opportunity of Russ climbing the tree.


After lunch we stopped at the Pemberton wine centre and bought a couple of really nice local wines (a yummy Riesling and a verdelo) then stopped at a trout farm where we bought a smoked trout for dinner Friday night. We had a look around Pemberton, then drove on to Manjimup where we did a bit of shopping in Coles, then went to the local op shop and bought ourselves 9 books ($1.50 in total) and a wine glass (expensive at $1.00).

At home again, we cooked ourselves a delicious green curry including our chillies and kaffir lime leaves. Yum.

Historic Waterwheel Near Margaret River


Today we went to Margaret River, driving through the lovely forests and past lots of vineyards. It’s been about 6 years since we were here last and not a lot seems to have changed in that time. After a drive down to the mouth of the river, we had a walk around town, bought some Turkish bread for our lunch and some lovely local veggies (beautiful sweet cherry tomatoes, basil, cucumbers etc etc). We ate our lunch in a pretty park outside town-only problem was about 10 very cheeky ducks expected a share of my sandwich. I don’t think so duckies!!!

Margaret River Mouth


The venison farm was just as good as last time we visited-they make the best salami I have ever eaten. We also bought a rack of venison to roast for Christine’s birthday dinner tomorrow night, steaks, sausages, pastrami, prosciutto, cabana and pate. Then we went to an olive farm for a tasting (bought some lovely chutney and olive tapenade). We came home through Busselton, arriving here about 4.30. It was another great day out.