After a very productive
morning in Dongara bringing you an actually "working" website, we put
in a full 7 hours of driving south, with the goal to get past Perth, and away
from the confusing highway infrastructure that had us spinning our first
day. Passed it we did, so far into
no-mans-land, that we were having trouble finding anywhere to park our van for
the night. The one caravan park that was
close was all full up as a new mine had just started up, and it was full of
miners - now that would have been an experience! A big trucker guys who had overheard me in
the shop inquiring about places to camp, stopped along side us outside and
said, "aw, just park in the trucker parking alongside the
roads." I asked if he was sure it
was ok... "right, just pull off into the back area after dark, and you
should be right." Not sure the thought
of being amongst a bunch of truckers in the dark was the most appealing and
safe option, so we thanked the nice guy, after chatting briefly about his one
time spent in San Diego at the grand opening of the Spaghetti Factory in the
gas lamp district years ago, and headed down the road another 100k's to the
next town. Pulled up to the only caravan
park, behind the BP petrol station. It
had one of those neon signs illuminating the entrance - bright red MOTEL light
the moonless night sky up like the flickering MOTEL signs you see in horror
movies. That's exactly how we felt. At least we were in a real caravan park, and
not some random dark trucker parking lot, but tough not to confuse the two at
this point. As we settled up our bill
for the nights camp site with power, the owner highly recommended the
restaurant just in front of the park. I
thought surely there must be something he's referring to down the road, but no,
there it was, a sit down restaurant in the BP petrol station. After a long haul on the road, neither of us wanted to cook or clean our already poor
options for dinner- burgers or pasta with meat sauce. We took the man up on his recommendation and
hiked it up to the station for some fish-n-chips, that we were only allowed to
take away, or eat at the mini-mart counter.
Satisfied with our heavy bags-o-grease, we strolled back down to eat in
our camper, which still reeked of fish the next morning.
