I have got to be honest that other than the first two days after our last post it has been pretty boring whilst in WA (Western Australia to the English). I'll explain later, but with such expectation which kept us alive during the Nullarbor we were a little flat until a couple of days ago.
Anyway, after leaving Albany with a slight hang over from the 'treat night' that we had just spent on the town we headed up to Permberton, which are home of a lot of massive trees which some poor person had to hammer pins into the side of several to create bush fire look out towers. These still serve the bush fire look out purpose but are more of a tourist trap. I rose to the challenge to climb up them, although I bailed out of my first attempt as my legs went jelly ever with the safety of a bit of chicken wire to hold me in (yes it was not much). Brave Steve finally got up there, whilst Helen sensibly sampled the journey, valuing her life a bit more than me.
After feeling like a real man after climbing a tree and not taking any notice of the 10 year olds and 70 year olds easily doing it , we ended up heading down to the most South Westerly point in Australia, Cape Leeuwin, where we were excited to see our 1,000 light house since being in Australia. I got told off by making a comment to the guy that I have been up 3 light houses todate and that they had all been the same so he could keep trying to sell me the trip up to the top but he would be wasting his time.
We finished the night in Margaret River, after popping into one of about 1 million caves that were up the coast line. Our first night in MR was pretty shocking, the WA storm battered everything up the coast line including us. I can proudly say the the van did us proud although we did not get any sleep, Helen's thongs went walk about in the evening (that will be flip flops in English language) and there was a slight wetness in the van (caused by me opening the door to have a look at whether the table was still there) which was obviously okay as it was on my side of the bed. As you can imagine the next couple of days was spent touring around some wineries and sampling the wine, which was nice and relaxing, something that we needed after a fair amount of driving.
We then headed up to Freemantle, after a nice stop off at Busselton Jetty (1.8km long) and gnoamsville, a place where people take their gnoams to live with other happy noams. You can see some pictures of gnoamsville in the gallery, we have managed to take a close up of the naught gnoam - by accident of course. Was expecting a fair bit from Freemantle, however sadly it did not turn out to be like that. It was tipping down with rain all the time and we met the husband of the horrible women from Nz, basically talking down to us because we did not have a caravan that was bigger than our house or have a satellite dish and have only taken 3 weeks to get there which meant we had not seen any of the country. Anyway little did we know that we were in the middle of old people's caravan home - well not quite, but it seemed like it. Anyway after getting frustrated we saw out our time there. Went to Rottenest Island that looks beautiful in the sunshine, shocking in the rain and ended up throwing up on the way back on the ferry, with pretty much the rest of the boat, as it was soo choppy. We took in the delights of Perth in about 1 hour, with the rst of the time sitting in traffic travelling as everyone in the town seems to be in a car, which is interesting as the front page of the Western Australian states hits the nail on the head saying that Perth is a disaggregated urban nightmare where everyone has to drive as the public transport is shocking.
Anyway we needed some peacefulness so we headed North and spent a bit of time in New Norcia which is a town formed by Spanish monks in the mid 18 hundreds who believed in actually helping the aboriginies rather than doing what we all know about.
After now being relaxed and enjoying our trip again we visited the Pinnacles, which when we first pulled up to we were wondering what all the excitment was about, as you are first greeted by some tiny rocks which I tought some clever photographer had made look around 10 times more impressive. I will admit that I need not have worried as they were pretty awesome. The rocks were so vast and random, which apparently no one actually knows why these have formed there, other than the sand keeps moving and revealing more and more. Anyway I will let the pictures tell the story more on this one.
We have now headed further North passing through Geralton, visiting the Western Australian museum, learning about the HMAS Sydney II and the early Dutch explorers and settling down in Kalbarri,a pretty coastal town with a lot going on, probably more than Perth to be honest.
Now to the Royalty. About 50 km from Kalbarri is Hutt River Province a place where one man and his family (sorry Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley) decided to put two fingers up at the local and federal government when their farming quota was being brought down considerably that they decided to declare Hutt River their own principality, which essentially means that they are not governed by the Commonwealth, Australian government etc and therefore do not pay any tax or receive any other benefits such as free medicare etc.
You would think that us plebs would not get to meet any of the Hutt River royal family, but to our delight we met Prince Leonard, who took us on a guided tour of his royal gardens and gratefully sold us some of his clobber from the gift shop. I was a bit nervous about meeting this guy as everyone in Kalbarri warned us that he was a right nutter, but we actually found him to be a very interesting and pollite man, posing for photographs and even getting excited that Helen spent some of her birthday there (along with another couple who turned up where the husband was also sharing his birthday - very random). Anyway there are a few pictures, one of me looking rather too excited which I have uploaded.
We then spent the rest of yesteday in a beachside campsite in Denham (I know how to treat a lady on her birthday), watching the sun go down (well I did, Helen was on Skype) and heading to Monkey Mia to watch the dolphin feeding we have finally settled in Canarvon. Not really much here, on our way to Exmouth to go to the reef which we are both looking forward to,
Steve & Helen
PS. I wish the old man in the caravan next door would stop snoring!!
