Day 98-102 Albany: an end to the singing

Emma here: “Oh, I’ve seen the colour changes from Albany to Broome”. I know we’ve actually gone from Broome to Albany but that is the line from a John Williamson song and Greg sings it every time Albany is mentioned!! I’m so thankful we have now been to Albany and we can stop talking about it, so we don’t have to endure him singing anymore. It’s not just me, the kids now tell him to stop too!

Greg here: The funny thing is I’d never listened to a word John Williamson had sung until this trip. It seems we had inherited an album of his along with a range of other music and Emma, in a quest for something different to listen to, put it on somewhere on the road between Katherine and Kunnunurra. The music just seemed to make sense while traversing the country about which it was written and as it was about the sights from Albany to Broome it kind of got stuck in my head. I don’t understand why my singing is not better appreciated, after all being a pop star was my second career choice. Continue reading “Day 98-102 Albany: an end to the singing”

Life in a caravan – Chapter 3, unfounded fears

Before we embarked on this trip I had two concerns. Well three if you include my totally irrational fear that Amy and or Oliver would be consumed by a salt water crocodile, somewhere in the top end, while I wasn’t watching. The first was that the car simply wouldn’t make it and that we would be stranded somewhere, dying of thirst on the side of a desert highway while feebly trying to wave down passing road trains whose eyes simply were not open to the needs of those pesky caravans that slow them up all the time. The second was just how we would all go living on top of each other 24 hours a day seven days a week for five months! Numerous well meaning friends and colleagues had warned me about the dangers of committing to life in a caravan. Continue reading “Life in a caravan – Chapter 3, unfounded fears”

Day 95-97 Tingle tingle

Intellectually I know. I know you just can’t grow a tree to a girth of twenty five odd metres or a height of seventy or more without water. So at some point, in the south west of WA, it has to rain. One of those points was the 8th of October. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

Of course the Tingle trees were delighted. Isn’t that a great name. Tingle trees. I’d never heard of them before we hit Walpole. The kids had. They’d been in the back seat of the car listening to ‘The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me’ by Roald Dahl which as chance would have it features the rare purple flowered ‘tingle tingle tree’. This did of course lead to some confusion upon our visits to the real Tingle forests with both Amy and Oliver inquiring where the purple flowers were.  Continue reading “Day 95-97 Tingle tingle”