The Great Southern

So apparently that’s what this part of West Australia is called. But it feels a little unfinished to me. Great Southern WHAT? Land? Coast? Area? Forest? Part Of The State? Gahh…. Every time I read it or hear it I go slightly mad. So we finished up in Albany by welcoming Dunc home and visiting Whale World, the must-see which was far too far to catch a taxi to. Whale World was well worth it – we spent a good 3 hours there, watching movies and climbing over boats, but it is based in an old Whaling Station. This meant the subject matter was less ‘gorgeous sea creatures with amazing songs’ and more ‘blood and guts and oil and blades’. The horrible smell was still very obvious to both Lexie and I, though no one else in our tour group could smell a thing! I did not know I had such a keen sense of smell. Though come to think of it, I have been able to ‘spot’ the burn offs well before Duncan on our drives. It seems to be burn-off season here right now.

We managed to manoeuvre Bertha out of the teeny tiny caravan park the day that all the other children arrived (of course..) and made our way to the beautiful town of Denmark. It very much reminded both Duncan and I of Healesville in Victoria. We were perfectly timed for morning tea and wandered the town to find the most incredible children’s toy store. We then popped into Dinosaur World where Angus got to experience a “life changing moment” and hold a real live snake for the first time. I’m not sure who enjoyed it more in the end. We couldn’t get the kids to put poor Monty down and now they would like a pet snake of their own – good grief!

  

We were planning on staying at the Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk Eco Caravan Park, as it seemed to be the only place. Every single review on it was appallingly bad. Apparently the guy running it has had the local free camps closed down. He was so incredibly rude when I rang to book. What kind of business answers the phone with “lo?” Not even an entire “Hello”. A local businessman asked where we were staying and actually advised us to go anywhere else if we could!!?! He was able to confirm that we could fit Bertha at the treetop walk, so we really had no need to stay overnight afterall. So it was a quick drive to the Treetop walk, a wander among the tingle trees way up in the clouds, a well-timed walk in the drizzle down on the ground and a hide from the short downpour in an enormous tingle tree.

Then it was a quick repair to Bertha before we could go anywhere… She runs on air – the air pressure needs to inflate the airbags to lift the bus off the wheels so we can roll. We had a bleed in one of the air hoses – fortunately the hose which powers the little ram to open the door, so it was right under our noses. Good old rescue tape came to the rescue! Phew. Sadly while Dunc fixed that problem, he knocked a very tenuous connection for a wire to power the windscreen washers, so then he had to repair that too – with a much better connection than previously! Thank God he can fix these sorts of things!!

We were able to continue on our way and spent our night in a free camp a looooong way from the nasty rude man at the eco park.