Windy Harbour

Thurs 5^th June

 
 

 
 
 
 

The road today was fairly uneven and there were lots of ups and downs.  When we left Albany, there as a bit of traffic and Bernie and George got left behind when they couldn’t get through a couple of roundabouts easily. The result was that Bernie caught up enough to hear us say, “Take the third exit to Denmark, but by the time George got there he took the second exit (that also went to Denmark) When we got there we waited and George was there within a couple of minutes. Our first interesting stop was at a cider and toffee factory that had all sorts of sauces, jams, ciders and toffees to sample. The lady showed Mick a dried tarantula which was enclosed in a brochure of information. As he opened the last bit a rubber band unwound and made a noise – not only Mick jumped back, so did everyone else.  We ate ice-creams for morning tea. I had mango and it had a bit of chocolate in it; Mick had rhubarb honey & cinnamon. They were huge, delicious and very creamy.

We continued on to the Valley of the Giants near Nornalup, and took the treetop walk. It went up 40 metres and was about 600 metres or so long. It gave a fabulous view of the forest canopy and you could see right down to the forest floor. The trees are red tingle trees and can reach a height of 70 metres while their girth can be up to 20 metres in circumference at ground level.

 

 

Our final destination was Windy Harbour where there was a camping ground. It looked quite neat, with trimmed grass big sites, and a camp kitchen.  Not only that, but we were able to connect to power – a pleasant surprise. As soon as two jugs were turned on, the whole system tripped and had to be reset. The price was $9 which pleased us greatly, however when the boys went up to pay it turned out to be $9.20 each plus $6.50 for power, $10 for the key to the toilets etc. Hmmm, not so attractive! Anyway the boys argued and we got it for $18 per van with most deciding not to have the power. A couple of times the manager rushed down saying, “Who’ turned on the power? The generator is going, somebody is using power!” The camp kitchen was only available until 8:30pm when all the lights went off. Actually the “town” doesn’t appear to have electricity, just solar power. And there are no T.V. antennas on any of the houses/shacks we have seen. There was no way I could open the locked shower door with any of the keys. Mick finally succeeded with a lot of jiggling of the key and shoving of the door, but then when he shut it he couldn’t get it to open again. Back he went for some more keys. “Oh that’s never happened before,” said the manager. Bulldust to that! Eventually we got the doors open again and propped them open with the rubbish bins. We were told that to get hot water you had to press a button and the water would flow for 15 seconds as it warmed up, then you press it again and have your warm shower. What we weren’t told that you have to press the button every 12 seconds to keep it flowing and at best it was barely luke warm and a mere trickle.  OMG Windy Harbour – and the wind wasn’t even blowing! The campfire we sat around was lovely and warm and made a pleasant ending to an interesting day. We listened to the waves, whinged about the park, sang a few songs and could hear some bandicoots at the fringes of our camp, but they didn’t let us see them; unlike in Albany when they were running around and under our vans and cars. At first Woody was a bit concerned about them because he thought they were huge rats.

 

 

Fri 6^th

This morning there were quite a few kangaroos and kookaburras checking us out before we set off from Windy Harbour and drove along a newly constructed clifftop drive. It was well designed with good turnaround space for caravans at each of the viewing platforms. We were once more treated to magnificent views of the coastline and the rugged cliffs. We continued on towards the coast and drove through beautiful tall tree country and then farmland, mostly grazing. We ended the day near Margaret River where we have booked in for two nights at a farm stay/caravan park. From our site we are looking out on sheep, cattle, goats, mules and a big black pig. There are also cute ducks wandering around and sh…ing everywhere so we have to watch where we walk.