Where does the time go?

Again, it has been an age since I have had the time to sit down and write a story. Probably the single biggest misconception that I had before we left home was that I would have time for doing stuff – playing guitar, sitting around the fire (there has been very little of that), playing scrabble with Sarah, writing long and interesting stories of our travels to make everyone envious…

Sadly, time is something that is always in short supply. “How can this be?” I hear you asking…well as with home life, there are always a few unavoidable things that need doing every day and every week.

While we have been coming south along the west coast we have been moving pretty quickly and while this has served us well in terms of getting to the places we wanted to see, it is quite time consuming – particularly with the long distances between stops. When you’re in Victoria you can stop in one place for a week and drive in a different direction every day to see something or somewhere interesting without it being too arduous.

In The Kimberley and The Pilbara, you drive 600km, look at the thing there, and then it is 600km to the next interesting thing – so you can stop for a week, see the interesting thing, and then sit in camp for the rest of the week, or you can move every three or four days(which is a fast as we can manage).

The second is what we chose to do, and it has paid off, but it has made for even less time than previously. Basically, every move we make burns a whole day – particularly with those long driving distances. Two moves per week and you’re down to 5 days of doing stuff.

Work, school, washing clothes, studying, cooking, washing up, filling water tanks, emptying toilets and fixing stuff all needs to be done. Then you go and see the stuff you’re there to see (possibly one adult at a time due to dog rules), put in a bit of fishing for an hour or so, and then it is time to pack up and move on. Work and study are happening late at night just to fit them in, and sometimes just the thought of getting out the computer to write a story seems like too much effort.

Now we have hit the southern part of Western Australia we have slowed down and will probably mostly move once each week for a while. Also, the moves are likely to be much shorter. This morning, for instance, we moved about an hour away from our previous camp (although we did make a detour via Bursons to get the air conditoner fan replaced on warranty (bought it last week in Geraldton)). Anyway, here I am with a bit of time up my sleeve…

Stories – I am so far behind that I will never catch up, but we regularly run through all the stops we have made (Hamish likes to show off a bit with his recital of all the places) so I thought since we’ve been on the road for more than a year, I might do some summaries of stops – mainly for future Jim’s benefit, but also to add some photos that we might not have seen previously. I am going to work backwards.

This morning we left our camp in the Swan Valley, which was about half an hour from central Perth. The real highlight there was The Swan Valley itself. Strangely enough we were only camping there due to availability and cost, but then it turned out that it is a great wine region (the region is great, Sarah can comment on the wines), and they like brewing beer, roasting coffee and making gelato and selling all of it to punters like us. We were pretty happy to oblige, helping with sales and enjoyed most of the things on offer in The Swan Valley.

We caught up with Mum in Perth. She is here in WA on a three week tour of the wild flowers, but had a day off on Perth which coincided with us being there. We went to Kings Park and saw all the wild flowers there, so I am guessing that Mum could have gone home happy after a day here, but she wants to see some Ningaloo Reef an other places of interest as well.

Yesterday I decided I really needed a whole day to catch up on everything I need to be doing – couple of assignments due, an online exam, bit of work, job applications etc etc. Sarah took the kids down to Fremantle for the day and I looked after the dog. One day wasn’t enough time for me however, so I’ll be burning the midnight oil for the next couple of weeks I think.

Before Perth we had been in Sandy Cape (close to Jurien Bay) and we mostly stayed put in our camp there. We did go into town on the day we arrived, and then the next day we checked out Cervantes and The Pinnacles Desert, both of which were quite interesting. We only had three nights there, and got blown away on the last night, escaping to Perth in the early morning.

Before Sandy Cape we had been in Geraldton, and this was the first decent sized town we’d been in since Darwin. I think we were all pretty excited to be there. We’ve had a lot of weeks when we had minimal, or uninteresting fruit (if you’re paying $7/kg for navel oranges, that $3 orange has got to be pretty good) as well as bugger-all in the way of fresh vegetables. We buy our meat in bulk and freeze it, but even that is down to mince, sausages and chicken. What are we having tonight?? Sigh…

Geraldton had a bit on offer – we had to fix the fan and they had a Bursons, which is good for those who can’t wait for a cheap air conditioner fan to be sent from China. We also replaced our toilet and our ensuite tent (which had fallen apart after being subjected to a lot of high winds). We didn’t do too much while in Geraldton – more washing, bit of a look at the horizontal trees and a bit of a look around town (and buying replacement stuff). The kids were very excite about Aldi – this was mainly because along the way they had found a total of four dollars, and Aldi is the only place where they can turn that two dollars each into potato chips.

Before Geraldton we had been camped near Kalbarri. Kalbarri was an expensive town – I went to swap the small 3.7L gas cylinder at the only shop in town that does gas, and they wanted $38. The most I had previously paid was $27 somewhere very remote (Kalbarri is sort of remote, but it depends which direction you’re coming from really). Anyway, it was “Thanks, but no thanks.” and we got the gas at Geraldton Bunnings for $23 (still well over the odds for Bunnings in my view).

Kalbarri was also quite a picturesque town – the water reminded me of Golden Beach at Coloundra, but without Caloundra town on the headland (and Bribie Island wasn’t an island but was a peninsula of some sort). Bottom line is that it was a very pleasant place to be.

Kalbarri National Park was also a great place to have a look around, although as usual with everywhere we go, there were mobs of people there. The gorges are spectacular and really just appear out of the otherwise pretty boring scrub. Sarah had a recent post which included photos of most of these places, but I will see if I can find some of my own to add to this story.

Well, that is probably enough (far more than enough I am sure) for everyone to absorb in one sitting, so I will sign off with a promise to post something interesting in the near future.