Steam Shoes and Knickers

On Thursday night we got talking to a nice couple-Bernie and Leanne from Perth. They have not long bought their van (in Melbourne to save paying stamp duty) and are pretty new to caravanning like us. They custom built their van and suggested we go look at their battery set up for free camping the following morning. It looks simple and was added after the van was built, so it seems a pretty good choice for us. Anyhow, I noticed the car next door had Traralgon on its number plates and a Yepoon Hash House Harriers sticker on the back. (I met Russell through HHH).

Ross and Joy (Steam Shoes and Knickers) have been to many Latrobe Valley and Warrnambool HHH runs, we remember them from the Balls Up at Dallas Brooks Hall and a good friend of theirs went out with a good friend of ours. We spent a lovely couple of hours with them reminiscing last night and were a bit sad to find out they would be moving on today. Hopefully we will catch up in Perth although they are not too fond of cities and may move on fairly quickly.

Bottle Brush on the Bibulum Track


Yesterday, we took the car into town for its 30,000 km service (poor thing looks more like 300,000), then walked home along the Bibulum track (part of a 1000 km track that snakes from Albany to Perth). It was a lovely 3k walk through town, then over little creeks, through groves of tea tree and past quite a few wild flowers.

The Tinny Waiting to go Fishing


We’d launched the boat before taking the car into town, so headed out and did a bit of fishing. We moved around for a couple of hours not catching anything, so I finally said to Russ it was time to go home-I was a bit bored. I said we should cast our lines out one more time then go. I thought I had caught an octopus at first, but I pulled in the biggest bream I have ever seen personally. He was 41cm. Legal size is 25 and we only keep the ones over 30. He made the other 4 we caught look like babies. We had him for dinner last night and gave Ross and Joy the other fillets.
Big Bream, Bad Hair Day


It’s Saturday now and Russ is in paying for the car service. We offered to go get cash for them yesterday, but they said “no, just drop in and pay with your key card tomorrow morning”. I couldn’t believe they could do business like that-I would be standing by the eftpos machine (with my hand out waiting) when dealing with strangers passing through. They really only had our word that we are here until Monday. Russ said we must look honest, but I’m sure jail is full of people who “look” honest.