Crabs in Dongara

It’s Sunday and we’re still in Dongara. What a great little place it’s turned out to be! We originally booked for 3 nights, then booked another 3, then this morning, another 3. There are crabs in the harbour (a short walk away) which is the main reason for us extending and our freezer is slowly filling with crab meat to take back to Perth to turn into things for Blair Leah and Todd. There isn’t much in the way of fish in there, but I did get a nice flat head yesterday-he’s going on the barbie tonight.

Dongara is a bit windy and we haven’t had a day we could put the boat in, but it’s a nice park. We have good neighbours Shirley and Don, and although he is just over 80 and she somewhere near, they are very active and lots of fun. It was a surprise to find out Don was over 70 let alone 80! Wednesday the park put on nibbles and this morning a pancake breakfast. It’s a good chance to meet lots of other travellers and hear their tales.

Coleseam National Park


We both really enjoyed a trip out to Coalseam National park about 60ks out of town. They discovered coal there over 100 years ago so hence the name! It's got small gorges, camping and picnic areas and a very pretty dry river bed with fossilised shells along the mud banks. We followed a thunderstorm out there, and copped just enough rain to wash a bit of the red dust of the car and boat and enough lightening to have me wondering if aluminium boats attracted lightening!



Another enjoyable day was spent driving up South Beach, follwed by a lunch and a bit of fishing. We finally gave in though to the wind and tiny fish taking our bait and went back to the jetty to have the same thing happen!

South Beach Dongara

Dongara

I haven’t been a very enthusiastic blogger since we got back from Europe, so I thought I better get it up to date. I haven’t been enthusiastic because we were staying in parks and towns we’d stayed in before and apart from more wind and drier conditions, not much had changed.

We really enjoyed our few days in Kalbarri-especially fishing out along the beautiful river, but left Saturday and went to Geraldton (another park we’ve stayed in). Brice is staying there while he carts wheat for a couple of months so it was great to catch up with him-sad to see the state of his health though. In a good year, he has 13 trucks there, this year he has only one so you can imagine there is not much wheat around. The farmers with any wheat are going to get good prices, and the price of bread will rise.

Tuesday we drove less than 70kms to Dongara and plan to stay here 4 nights. This is a new town and park for us at last and it makes a nice change. The park is small and friendly and has absolute waterfront (which would be nice if the wind would stop blowing!). We are about 500 metres from the boat ramp but it doesn’t look like the boat will be going in at this stage. The boat harbour has a big wall which Russ fished off last night and caught lots of (undersized) fish. Tonight the park puts on free nibbles at the BBQs-we have to BYO drinks. I like parks that do that for their visitors and wish more would.

This is a really pretty town and after a drive round yesterday, we both felt it was one of the first places we’ve come to that we could consider moving to. We probably couldn’t afford to, but it’s nice to dream.

October 18th Denham to Kalbarri

Yesterday, (October 18th) we left Denham and drove south 350ks to Kalbarri. It’s a lovely place we’ve been to before, but that bloody wind is blowing even harder than it was in Denham. Russ wasn't too keen to come via here as the fishing's not too hot in our tinny but I like the place.

We hadn’t actually towed the van any distance for 12 weeks (apart from to and from storage) so it felt a bit strange to have it behind us again. I drove until lunch time (I usually do because I get sleepy in the afternoon) and Russ after that. I was busy admiring the huge grevillias either side of the road when we nearly hit an emu. They are really stupid birds, almost as stupid as the hundreds of pheasants we almost killed in England, but a heap bigger.

After we set up, we went and did some shopping then some 4wding in search of a fishing spot we’d been told about. It was all going really well until I said we’d come one particular way and we hadn’t and we ended ups slightly stuck in some extremely soft, thick sand-Russ was Not Happy Jan! anyway, a bit of air out of the tires and we were on our way again.

The good bit of the road


When we got home, a guy was trying to pop his pop-up up but it wouldn’t work-the winder was broken. He ended up just standing there looking very pissed off, having a beer before booking into a cabin. They towed the van away to be repaired this morning.

Today we went back out to River Road (no trouble at all this time) and had a lovely day fishing off the bank for bream and mulloway. We only got two of each, but that is more than enough for our dinner tonight. It was beautiful out there. We were 6km up river from town and we didn’t see another person all day. We saw lots of groups of emus coming down to a small beach opposite us where they would just sit for a while before wandering off. I reckon we saw ten different groups. We also saw kangaroos and many different birds-ducks, swans, pelicans, gulls, terns, herons, sea eagles etc and the emus. And we lost no gear, found a nice rod holder and $2 so a good day all round.

Our week in Denham October 4th to 11th

We’ve been back in Denham a week today, and I have to say it’s a very different place from the last time we were here. It’s school holidays now and the majority of people here are in tents or pop tops and have children with them. There are a few tinnies and a few boats a bit bigger than our tinny, but no serious fisherpeople like Brice. It gets too windy to get out in the bigger boats and is really starting to get warm-round 30c most days.

Because of the wind, we have been fishing off the beach near Monkey Mia twice. I have never caught anything doing that so I was pretty happy to catch a couple of nice sized yellow fin bream and we caught quite a few whiting both times (some of them very good sized) and Russ caught a flat head. Our two fishing sessions got us 3 feeds.



Yesterday the wind dropped and we were finally able to put the boat in at a place Russ and Todd had been to-Eagle Bluff. They found a channel with fast moving water and were able to bring us home a couple of nice pink snapper from there. Yesterday we found the channel, moved off it then couldn’t find it again! We caught about 50 undersized pinkies which was lots of fun but were just about to give up and go back to the butcher for something for dinner when Russ caught us a nice 54cm pinky. A fish that size is more than enough for the two of us so we ate him cooked on the BBQ last night with chips and salad and the rest of him is being made into fish cakes for dinner tonight.



It’s been pretty quiet socially here, so it was nice to have our neighbours stop by for a drink and a chat after dinner. They are really funny, friendly couple from Perth but left today as Gill’s deputy principal died (52yo woman) and is being buried tomorrow. Gill is a year younger than me, has had 7 children, 5 grandchildren and only retired 3 years ago from the Perth to Rottnest swim-something she’s done many times. It was quite a late night for us last night so today is just going to be a quiet one. There are a few clouds to ruin the beautiful big blue sky too.

I did forget to mention we had a really nice day out driving 100ks back towards the highway and into Hamelin Pool where we saw the stromatalites (thought to be the oldest living organisms on earth) and the old telegraph station. On our way home we called into a few of the bays, inlets, caravan park and camping grounds along the road to Denham. The stromatalites don't do much, but it was a nice day out once again.

A lot of stomatalites not doing much

Back in Denham October 4th to 18th

We arrived safely back in Denham yesterday. It was a really windy drive, so we were happy not to be towing the van. We stayed in a self contained unit in Geraldton and did a big grocery shop to bring on with us-between those groceries and all the toiletries we bought in Bangkok, we won’t need to shop for a very long time!

Perth was great. Blair, Todd and Leah’s new home is so nice and we were very comfortable for the week we spent there before leaving on Tuesday. It was wonderful just to relax after the long flights, then to shop and cook after so long. We both had haircuts-I have at last found a hairdresser I like and she is only about 2 minutes from the house. Saturday we had a Grand Final/ house warming party which was a lot of fun. Leah and I were probably the only ones cheering West Coast on, and I was only cheering because Sydney won the year before and I thought they should share!

We got the van and boat out of storage yesterday. Leaving them here was an excellent solution for almost no cost, but the van was full of dust and ants. It took a long while to clean it, put those groceries away and get the fridge down to something reasonable to put the cold stuff in. We also had trouble with the gas-one of the park managers just came up and had a go and decided it was the regulator. After he left, Russ the bush mechanic hit it with a shifter and now it works just fine. It’s a good thing we have the electric hot plates though or we would have been eating at one of Denham’s delightful restaurants (not).

I’m feeling a bit down after our very enjoyable holiday-I miss my sister Glenda, neighbour Janette and Kirstyn as I know they would have all been interested to see the photos and here our travel tales. Glenda has visited all those places we went so it would be good to have her to talk to. It’s also funny to look over the way and not see Brice and his big boat sitting there; the caravan park is a lot quieter now. The real serious fishing people have gone as it gets too windy from now on. We should get in a few days though as the weather is on the improve for the next few days (wind wise that is). It’s about 30c right now and lovely. So much pleasanter than hot humid smelly Bangkok at about the same temperature and the sky is so blue!