FROM HERE TO KALGOORLIE

So we left you in Margaret River and headed south to the Valley of the Giants. The Valley of the Giants is in Walpole, a little, friendly country town with the biggest eucalypt trees in the world. These trees are 60-80mtrs high and up to 400yrs old,they are truly amazing to be in their presence.

You can take a drive through this incredible forest or do the treetop walk, we did both and it was good to get up close and personal. They really do look like they are something out of Lord of the Rings and going to grow legs. You really feel a special presence being around these enormous trees.

Can you believe they used to drive their cars through here in the 60's, until that particular tree died. No one knows why these particular trees grow here. The rest of Walpole is filled with green luscious hills of farming. The day we were there it was pretty miserable. But we haven't been blessed with the best weather lately, it has been incredibly windy, cold and rainy. The rest of the coastline is as you would expect, really rugged but beautiful.

Next we headed for Albany.  We stopped at a beautiful free camp site called Cosy Corner, right on the beach, 30 minutes outside of Albany.  We had been spotlighting most nights on our trip and had not seen anything but here got to see Quokkas, rabbits and a possum which the kids thought was cool. 

The Albany coastline was amazing but freezing and windy!  We visited the wind farm which produces 50% of Albany's energy giving it the "Greenest city in WA" label.  We also got to see whales breaching along the coastline.

All the information we had about Albany was raving about this Whale World, and the kids were all excited. We thought it was going to be filled with some great info about the whales in the area and had already seen a photo of the sperm whale skeleton on display. BOY, WERE WE IN FOR A SHOCK. Now I've read some other blogs raving about this place (obviously we thought differently) and we all thought this place was in really bad taste. It was all about the days of killing whales between 1954 - 1978.  We were taken to the boat ramp where you stood for 20 mins listening to an audio of them killing, cutting, sawing the whale apart. Yes, actual audio from that time. Then we were lucky enough to be taken to the top deck where they saw the head off and spear the blubber into the ovens under the deck.  But it gets even better, they actually take you down to the cookers and play another audio of them cooking the whale fat into oil. Now the greenie in me was disgusted, to say the least. Spencer said he felt sick, Scarlett was practically crying and Phoebe and Michael just wanted to get out of there.  I know that this was part of our history, but to be honest this place, to me, was glorifying this horrible act. A place to forget!!!

So onto Esperance, and what a nice beachy town.  It felt a bit like Kingscliff to us. The camp ground was opposite to the beach and we managed to pull the bikes down for a ride. So bitterly cold and windy here but did get into Cape Le Grande which is a great spot to see whales, a small accessible national park. Unfortunately we didn't see any. Now Esperance is home to Sammy the Seal, and the kids were pretty excited to catch him under the jetty, poor old Sammy though looked like he was on his last legs, think he was nearly ready to hang the old flipper up!!!!

Now we haven't stopped much over the last week it's been go,go,go,next stop on the the express trip was Kalgoorlie. I was always a bit curious about this place. It's a very old town with the remains of tho gold field homes everywhere. This is where they discovered gold, and still mine today with iron ore, bauxite,silver, copper,lithium and nickel. This is the tough man's town, we reckon you have to be pretty hard to live out here. This is home to the superpit, a working mine and the tour we did through Goldrush tours was fantastic.

It also incorporated a tour of the flying doctors which was very interesting. They have 6 planes here at a cost of 4 million dollars each and then $600 000 to revamp them. They come from Switzerland as a passenger plane and are then converted to the special needs of the medical staff. There are some photos of Spencer and Phoebe ringing for help in the olden days, they look worn out to me!!! I can't believe this service isn't fully funded by the government, they still have to do some heavy fundraising, and thankfully the mines have chipped in and bought 2 planes recently.  Michael was so cranky about this that he sent off an email to Kochie and Mel on Sunrise so stay tuned!

The super pit is really super big, these trucks look like little tonker trucks in the photos but are huge and you can see the kids in the super scooper. This place is run 24hrs and the truck drivers do 12 hr shifts and get paid about $1500 a week. All mines have contingency plans in place before they even start the mine, and have a conservation plan in place. So when the mine needs to be back filled they have the local flora and fauna already growing and can go straight onto the site. That includes all piping and cables need to be dug up after the mine is no longer needed. They are extending this pit so it's huge. The trucks generally know if they have hit gold by the weight of the truck and have listings of blast times everywhere. 4 blasts a week here!!!! I can't remember how much they make here but someone is getting very rich here. All the gold bullions go straight to Perth. Oh and if one of you guys were interested in a super big play toy one of these trucks will set you back $6 000 000 and just to show off even more the tyres alone are $25 000 each, and there are 6 of them and they only survive for 6 months.

The town itself looked a little weary as there was an earthquake here back in April so alot of the buildings have scaffolding and some have even been closed down. But the earthquake didn't seem to rock the foundations of the red light district. Prostitution is illegal in WA but they have this so called law called the containment law where you can have a brothel as long as it's near a police station and they are all in one street. These fine establishments have the girls on show in front of their doors ready to go 24hrs. The girls have a lovely oasis to live behind the fence where they have a pool and a massage therapist and an on call doctor service all at your fingertips. It is certainly another world here, where the pubs out do each other with half naked to fully naked bar staff called Skimpies!!!  How hygienic!!!Yes guys get excited BUT it is known that one of the prostitutes here is 80yrs old!!!! Ahh Kalgoorlie you are a rough old town. The madam is on the city council and the coach for the women's softball team and her name used to be Bruce!!!!

So until next time, we'll see you on the Nullarbor.

PHOEBE IN ESPERANCE

Hi guys, I've been missing all of you. I' ve been to some cool places lately, my favourite has been Big Valley at Margaret River. There were 3 special sheep I became friends with their names were Dancy, because he loved to dance and jump in the air. Then there was Buddy who always came up to you and gave you a cuddle and Noogy because he head butts people, but he was very gentle. We got to feed the baby lambs every day and put them to bed they were very cute and soft. One was called Buf because he had a big head when he was born and Chardy was named after Chardonnay of course. I was nearly crying as we left the farm, I'm hoping mum and dad can buy a farm and have lots of animals. I would really like a horse some puppies and sheep.

We went for a big bike ride today and I got really tired, we went to see Sammy the seal but he was on holidays. We are doing lots of schoolwork which I don't really like doing, I wish we didn't have to do it. We have started writing a book about a kookaburra and a  red roo, and the kookaburra is called Cooey, so will let you know how I go.

We have special spots in the car I sit behind mum I like it when we get to watch videos, Scarlett is in the middle and she is funny when she falls asleep and Spencer likes playing his game in the car.

When we were at Cosy Corner near Albany we had a very funny next door neighbor, a shy little quokka. I had never seen a quokka before they look like a possum with a little tail and a bit like a kangaroo. Spencer got scared when he went outside and ran inside all frightened he thought it was a feral cat. Then we went spotlighting with Dad and saw a possum and some rats in the bushes, it was very cold.

Mum has been teaching me how to knit with bright pink wool and I'm really liking it. I still love my drawing and got some magic pens in Fremantle that change colour. Spencer and I have been playing chasey alot in the park. Scarlett and I like playing on the slippery slide and knights and princesses.

I'm having a fun time  and seeing new places and learning alot. I started drinking tea in the morning to warm me up and I feel like a big girl now.

MARGARET RIVER - PART TWO

Welcome back from Margaret River, I thought you might like to see a picture of our new farm...

I'm joking....we didn't buy property although tempting, and Michael was dreaming of becoming a butcher but didn't get to the chopping, but I did join a knitting group and met the most beautiful people and did actually make a jumper!!!!!!! Justine the lovely lady that owns The Wool Shop held my hand through many stitches and you can just sit on the big comfy sofas all day if you want and just knit, knit,knit. She has many classes that you can just come and meet the locals while knitting and drinking coffee from Yahava and having a good old laugh. I know me knitting, but it was more than that for me, the people of Margaret River are really special. They all look out for one another and are the friendliest most thoughtful group of beings. All the people we have met here have touched us deeply, we feel like we are part of their community and have opened their hearts to all of us. After all the travel and incredible people we have met along the way, we will have treasured memories of this place.

Having the coast and the beaches right at you door stop you have the best of both worlds. The surfing here is unreal, and we did travel north to Cape Naturaliste which rugged but beautiful.

South to Cape Leeuwin, Augusta where the tallest lighthouse in mainland Australia is at 39 meters high and 176 steps later, it was very impressive. We did the tour and it was well worth it including the eeriness of past light keeper's ghosts.

Margaret River has some impressive caves to see if you have time. We went to Mammoth Cave and at $50 for a family and an audio tour was good value. This cave is millions of years old and active stalagmites and stalactites it was really cool to see. The kids loved it, they could go at their own pace and at such history and findings of fossils we all were really impressed with the scale of how big this cave actually is .

On the farm today the owners daughter is bringing some baby rabbits to farm this afternoon which we are all excited about, she's going to start breeding them for meat. We have extended our stay 3 times this week we can't seem to bring ourselves to leaving this place. Phoebe has started knitting so we are having an afternoon session overlooking the hills and pulling the balls of wool out while we look at the woolly sheep. Spencer is going to finish naming all the sheep, you should see all the little lambkins with their mums. They don't go very far from them and the cheeky ones play chasey which is so funny. There are no male lambs as they go off to slaughter at about 6 months old. Sheep only live to 8 or 9 and they have their babies around Easter so it has been a real treat to see the babies with their mum's. Michael has been getting up and close with permaculture so there might be a farm in the distant future.

So we reluctantly leave Margaret River unless we wake up tomorrow and extend again????  Having fond memories and nearly losing us to this place we will catch up next time from Albany and Esperance.

MARGARET RIVER - PART ONE

Hi from the amazing Margaret River!! I'm writing the blog this week from the rolling hills of Big Valley at Margaret River. With the sheep baa baaing in the background, the sun shining brightly and the smell of fresh air. The kids are off... somewhere... playing with the sheep! Margaret River is about 3hrs south of Perth on the coastline, this is wine country, but it is so much more than that, as we have discovered and had 10 glorious days here.
We had a heads up on where to stay from our friends the Shafers, and Big Valley has certainly been one of the highlights so far. Big Valley is a sheep farm owned by Shelly & Kevin Silverthorne and has nearly 2000 sheep.

This is our backyard at the moment pretty cool huh! There are the cutest baby lambs that the kids feed every day at 5pm and green rolling hills to disappear into. So needless to say the kids want to live on a farm now, they've all put their order in for all the animals they want including guinea pigs????

Well where to start, we were excited to get to Margaret River simply for the wineries and the incredible produce here. And you know Michael and I we love a drink and of course our food. Which by the way I think we have certainly given it a good nudge this week. You really have to get into the spirit of things and immerse yourself in the place and appreciate all it has to offer. Mmmmmm... Thank god I didn't bring the scales on this trip, the belt has been let out a few times!!! What a diverse, magical, inspiring, tantalising place to be. The wineries we've done have been fantastic, alot of them charge for tastings so we did stay away from alot of those, but there are so many wineries here it would take weeks to get through. I must admit though they all accommodate for kids, with massive playgrounds and some really inventive ideas to keep those kiddies busy while you're spending that hard earned money on giving your taste buds a party. I'm not going to go through every winery we went into, don't want to rub it in too much, let's just say, when you get to this region you have to just get lost and try everything. Everything here is so tastefully done to the amazing architecture to the inventive interiors to the inspiring gardens.  The food and fresh local produce here leaves your taste buds tingling.

The Colonial Brewery was a special favourite, they brew their own beer and on a rainy day we got to sit in front of the fire and watch the kids in the playground while having lunch with a local Windows red, ah what a hard life. Annie Brook was also a great place to pick up $8 bottles of Shiraz that were yummy.

The Bootleg Brewery was a great place for a good feed and the kids loved the play area. It's been pretty cold here especially with the rain this week, but when that sun comes out the place just glistens.

It's not all about the wine and beer...well....yes there is the Margaret River Dairy Farm, great cheeses. The Nut and Cereal place, great muesli and spicy nuts, Providore for it's incredible infused garlic olive oil and dukkah dip. Ok ok so your mouth is watering I'll stop...but I can't leave out the Margaret River Chocolate Factory this place was heaven!!!! I'll let the pictures show you what I mean. The Oompa Loompas had a day off when we were there so we had to make another trip out, it was a hard decision!!!!

The Soap Factory was a little bit of indulgence for the senses and the Yahava coffee place was the best coffee we've tasted. Michael has taken the teacher reigns this week and given me a break, I think he is a fantastic relief teacher, he's been cracking the whip. Although the kids said they want Mrs Wood to come back from holidays even though Mr Wood is very thorough.

So they've been real troopers this week and so took them to the Sunflower Animal Farm, every animal known is here, from lamas to pigs to chickens to rabbits. Those rabbits are so fast you should have seen us trying to catch the little buggers. But as you can see we did have a cuddle due to the AMAZING RABBIT CATCHER SPENCER!!! The guinea pigs were also up for a bit of catchy!!!

After a morning of rain we stumbled across The Shearing Shed. This was so much fun, a working sheep farm with 4000 sheep and held tours for $10, best value yet. Spencer got to shear a sheep and the girls got working, putting the bails of wool together and I was put to work sweeping the wool. Michael got the best bit and had the dirty job of cleaning the sheep poo!!! The farmer was a great character and taught us all about running a sheep farm. It was really interesting and much harder than I ever imagined, those amazing sheep dogs and kelpies make the farmers life a lot easier what devoted loyal animals.

So with Part One done as if you haven't had enough of Margaret River there is a Part Two to come. Where we buy a farm, Michael gets a job at the local butcher and I start mixing it with the locals at knitting classes!!!!  The kids have become expert tree climbers and talk about becoming farmers!!!!