Category: Western Australia

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” →

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” →

We almost didn’t stop in Pemberton. We wanted to. It was on the itinerary. But the caravan brakes decided to pack it in so stopping in the rain in the most contoured country we have thus far traversed was tricky.

We did of course manage to wrestle the van to a halt and I would just like to take this chance to say a big thank you to the very helpful mechanic at BP Pemberton upon whom I imposed myself with my break problem late of an afternoon. He was running around his garage like a headless Chopin (thank you iPad auto correct that was supposed to be a headless chook) but still managed to rewire our burnt out trailer cable connection in less than an hour and all for 33 bucks! You just don’t get that kind of service… anywhere. Continue reading “Day 92-94 ‘Karri on!’” →