Blog Two - Carnarvon - Banana Central

We left Denham yesterday and headed towards Carnarvon. On the way we stopped off at a few interesting places. The first stop was Shell Beach, the way the bay is there are constantly little cockel shells washing up on the beach. They use these shells for making bricks and putting in chicken feed to harden their shells. The next stop was the Stromalites. Stromalites are the result of cynobacteria developing and forming rocks and/or cow pat shape sponges. This is a very rare phenomenon in the world, purely because the water is so salty. Salty water means no predators. Scientists use the stromalites to prove that the earth has held life for 4.5 billion years (the cynobacteria are responsible for generating enough oxygen in the atmosphere for sustainable life enable other oxygen producing plants to develop and make the atmosphere what it is today. In Bill Bryson’s book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, he discusses this exact location in great detail. David read this book last year so it was neat to get to see the stromalites in Shark Bay.


We went on a tour around where a telegraph station used to be. This station used to be in charge of broadcasting telecommunication signals from Perth to the mid and North-West. We stopped at a couple roadhouses along the way, for little breaks before arriving in Carnavon in late afternoon. We booked ourselves in the last free spot in a caravan park and settled in with wonderful neighbours. One of our neighbours, Gib came over to us and asked us if we would like a coffee so we said yes and that ended up with us chatting to him the whole night showing us some home brew beer and port that his friends have made. He is a love spoon maker, which is a welsh thing and his wife is from Assinaboia, Saskatchewan. I love when I meet Saskatchewan people over here. It is very rare.

This morning we went to the town to check out the touristy things to do. We walked out on the Mile Long Jetty and ran into our other neighbours from the caravan site. They were a couple from Tasmania and also very friendly. We chatted with them about travels and exchanged good places to head to and then they offered us a place to stay at their house with the opportunity for me to teach at the school that she works at (she is in charge of finding relief people at the school in their town).

Carnarvon is known for their mangoes and bananas. They have a lot of fresh fruit and veggies but mostly those. It is banana season right now so we see bananas all over the trees. Today we went to a couple plantations and spoiled ourselves with some fresh fruit and veggies to each over the next few days. Tomorrow we will head off to a little spot north of carnarvon where there is free camping and apparently a beautiful spot for snorkelling and spotting humpback whales.

Time to enjoy the rest of our beautiful day in the company of our “Grey Nomad” pals.

Holly and David.

Blog One - Monkey Mia

‘What an amazing first couple of days that we have had since we have moved on from the cattle station. For starters, it is not as cold in the evening.


Our first trip was to Shark Bay, where we arrived at a town called Denham. We found a Top Tourist Park and because Bernarbara was needing a break we decided to stop there for the night. The owner was sat outside the office on his bike selling fresh cooked crabs for 3 dollars. We snagged a couple from him for dinner in the evening. I think they made up our van site out of a random area of space that our van could fit and it happens to be right next to the Fish table. A couple men were there cleaning and gutting the fish that they had caught from the day. While we sat there awkwardly in our van in the middle of everything they called over to us offering us a fish from the batch that they had caught….Yes PLEASE! One of our neighbours saw this and giggled to herself. She came over to us and started to talk to us. She was an older lady, I soon realized that everyone was older. I believe we are the youngest people in the campground by quite a few years, actually. These older people are known as ‘Grey Nomads’ which is our version of the ‘Snow Birds’, or Britain’s version of “The Grey-haired Brigade”. They travel to the warmth in the winter. The high light of where we were sleeping was that Bernarbara was parked right next to the beach. This was the best place to crack open our crabs and watch the sunset. I do not think I have had a yummier crab in my life, so sweet and juicy. Later on we went to the kitchen and cooked up our fish with some yummy Regan’s Ridge oil. I have to say, we were quite spoiled for dinner that night.

This morning we headed off to the famous, Monkey Mia, home of the dolphins. Monkey Mia is a very popular place to visit because every morning they have wild dolphins come in for a little snack while tourists stand around and watch and take photos. We got to see the last feeding and the dolphin who came in was named Puck. She is 30 years old and has been coming to Monkey Mia since she was young. She has many of her own that are frequent to MM. Now, the exciting part! Usually they pick 5 people out of the crowd to feed a dolphin, knowing my luck I didn’t get my hopes up for feeding her. Well, not only did I get to feed her I was the first one asked to feed her. Unfortunately, David decided to play around with the beach bag before looking up to take a photo, so when he finally looked up I was already coming back….No Photo. L Still really cool though. We spent the rest of the day walking around the reserve. We did a little bush trail where we had a few run-ins with Emus. Usually on the farm we were used to them running off as soon as you got near them. Not these ones. We had to keep our distance. We would be walking and then all of a sudden right next to us we would see one eating, camouflaged in with the bush. We also saw a mum with 4 little ones. So cute, don’t worry, we definitely kept our distance with that one.

I am now sat on a picnic table overlooking the beach at monkey mia waiting for the sun to set, hoping that I will get one last glimpse of dolphins coming up to the shore, playing around. I know I will sleep good tonight, my skin is also tired from the amount of sun it has had today, luckily we are not burnt lobsters.

Time for sunset photos,

Holly and David

P.S. I have photos to put up but the internet is not allowing me to.  Maybe another time.  Check back again.

Short Update

Well, after a good two weeks at Murchison House Station we are finally off again, getting to even warmer weather.  It has been high twenties/thirties during the day here.  Still a big drop in weather in the evenings though.  The trip around 1/3 of the station was AMAZING!!! He has about 70 km's of private beaches.  They are nice beaches as well.  The one we went to is a perfect beach for just spending the day at with a family or friends.  We took lots of pictures, unfortuately I left the camera in the van so no photos for this blog.

We spent the last couple of days at the farm making it look beautiful for tourists.  Yesterday, I also started building a massive shed with the girls.  After a full day of working hard on it though, we had Calum come over to us and tell us that we were doing it wrong.  Luckily, the "engineer" of the group took all the grief because she should know better. haha.   The last two weeks have been good hard work.  I have enjoyed it.  New muscles hurt everyday.  It makes up for all the biscuits I have eaten.  haha.

Today we are off to Shark Bay, where we will spend a few days in the towns of that area.  There is a place called Monkey Mia where you can feed the dolphins.  Or watch as a million other tourists watch as well.  We have no more wwoofing places set in stone yet.  At the moment, we will just go with the flow. There is our small update for you.  Not sure when we will have internet again.

Until next time,

Holly and David

Murchison House Station

Kalbarri National Park

Murchison House Station

We have settled for a couple weeks at Murchison House Station  just next to the town of Kalbarri.  It is 350,000 Acres…. It is 3500 sq. kilometres.  It is amazing!!! We have only seen a tiny bit of the station.  The owners, Belinda and Calum have been here for 13 years and Belinda says there are still places that she has not seen.  They are opening the station up to the public for 4-wheel drive tracks, so we have spent a couple days writing up the signs on old windmill (I cannot think of the word but the water pumping windmills).  On Saturday, Calum is going to take us along the coastal track of the station and put the signs up.  We are looking forward to it.  Each day we do different things, we work from 4-7 hours a day and we join Belinda and Calum for supper in the evenings.  There is a French guy, Austrian girl and a German girl also on the farm with us.  There are also campers that come and go that we get to meet and usually have chats with at the bonfire in the evening. A couple we met last night had a massive bus.  They had two young kids and they have been living out of their bus for a few years just travelling around Australia working as they need too.  Cool.

Every morning we are in charge of feeding all the animals.  We have a calf and two goats (who think they are all the same), lots of chickens, ducks and ducklings, two ponies and a pet kangaroo, Skippy.  Skippy is like a child, when we come to feed him in the morning he jumps up on us wanting food.  The station also has about 30 sheep, that we see every once in awhile, a couple hundred brahma cows, and a few thousand goats.  The first couple days at the farm we cleared a bunch of fence lines.  It was very tiring and hot.  It was all uphill but the top of the hill made the work all worth while with all of the beautiful views that we could see.  This area of the farm used to be a coral reef thousands of years ago.

Our second night at the farm they decided to give us a real Aussie experience, kangaroo hunting.  We went up to what felt like Scar’s stomping ground in The Lion King.  Calum’s 6 year old son, Aidan, was with us as well as his ex-butcher friend, Damien.  Aidan was super keen on the whole thing.  The first to run out the the kangaroo and right in there helping his dad.  It was a really fun experience but after awhile I started to feel bad for the poor kangaroos.  I couldn’t kill animals for a living that is for sure.  It was definitely a cool experience though.  We came back to the Homestead and hung up the kangaroo bottom halves to leave over night.  The next arvo we got to have a go on skinning the kangaroos and cutting them up.  The kangaroos we did were for the dogs, probably lucky as we all had our turn on butchering the meat.  The day after we watched the pros show us how it is done. 

 On the weekend we had a day off to go visit the rest of the National Park.  We went to The Loop and Z-Bend, it was beautiful! The Murchison River ran through these beautiful gorges.  There were some scary parts for me in the walk though.  We had to do some rock scrambling up high and go up and down ladders.  It took me awhile to work up the courage to do that.  Me talking about this does not do justice though.


Tuesday Morning we sadly had to say goodbye to Kendra, unfortunately her trip up North with us came up short as she was unable to find transportation from when she needed to leave us so the safest thing was to get the bus from Kalbarri back down to Perth where she will take the train to finish her travels. 

Calum and Belinda have a tour that they do three times a week at the farm that shows people the interesting history of the Station, we have been spending the last couple days driving up to where we were shooting kangaroos (which is about 30 minute return trip) collecting rocks bigger than my head and BIGGER.  After a few trips of hauling the rocks back to the homestead they now have beautiful walkways next to some of the sights on the farm.  I also feel like I am ripped in the arms, back and shoulder muscles. Haha.  Yesterday after we used our big muscles for carrying heavy rocks we decided to take a trip down the river in the kayaks.  It was beautiful and calm.  We didn’t make it to the ocean though, maybe next time.

We would love to stay here longer and help out but unfortunately we must get back on the road and seeing Australia again, so on Tuesday morning we are heading off from the station and heading up to Shark Bay to see what all of that area has to offer. 

Until next time,

Holly and David

The West Coast So Far

Ok Guys...First Blog of The Trip..

We left Darryl & Donna's on Sunday Morning and heaqded out to Moora to see Shane & Michelle before we left. We interrupted their Speedway Car Modifying and had a coffee with them before we left and had our first long drive in Bernarbara. She Did well...
We drove to Geraldton where we camped in a seafront Camper Park. It was very windy but a warm wind so we didn't mind. We went to have a look around the town before having our last spout of Luxury for a few days and sat in the cinema to watch Toy Story 3. We Love Spanish Buzz Lightyear!!! On our Way back from the cinema we got pulled over for a Random Breath Test, very nervous I blew into the machine gave him my Drivers License and the Policeman went back to his car to do his checks, he came back and Said 'Thanks Dave' Hahaha!!! We got out of there quickly...
It rained all night, the window leaks on Bernarbara so no we know. And in the morning we went and had our breakfast of Oranges, Yoghurt and Honey by the Point Moore Lighthouse, before we got blown away and rained on.

Geraldton is a very small and quite old town. We had a certain number of things to do before heading off. I left the girls to do their things in the shops and post office while I went and searched for a beard trimmer, Didn't get one and a place to get a stereo and fit it into the car. Mission Succesfull...My man rectified my mistakes asking who did this and that. Frenchy I said..I Didn't touch it...He even took the door facade off and fixed our faulty speaker in the door. It was a good day.

So we drove to Kalbarri Next, a big spot on the Tourist trail and the last stop for the Trans WA. The Western Australia Bus service for Perth. So we know that Kalbarri is the point of no return after Perth.

Coming into Kalbarri is stunning, you feel as though you can see home from the cliff edges and the Cliffs give the view a magestical touch. We wanted to see the sunset on our first night but it was too coudy. We did see it poke up a little but decided that it might be better to see it on a clearer night. The next morning we watched the pelican feeding in our pyjamas along with about 50 other people. Not in their Pyjamas. The whole pelican feeding thing started when in 1974 a guy who owned a restaurant used to take his scraps to the same area on the beach front, the Pelicans got so used to it that they kept coming back. And to this day they still do leaving behind the legacy.

We decided to hit some of the national park which included a spot we stopped and viewed on our way in. We did the rounds, walks and saw some epic coastline, we stopped for tea biscuits and Olives at nearly the last one and decided not to proceed. In other words we were tired. It's a hard life..

And now we are at our second ever WWOOF-ing place. Murchison House Station. A cattle station that covers around 3500 square klm's. Only a small place..hehe

The station is for another blog as I'm sure you'r tired of reading this now.
Thankyou & Goodnight :)

David & Holly & Kendra

Goodbye Gingin :(

We have been living at Len and Judy's for the week, helping out with odd jobs here and there around the farm.  The first big rains of the year have finally started.  After months of having barely any rain at all we have had a few days of on and off rain, winds, thunder and lightning.  It is supposed to last until next week. Ah, and! The weather here has been in the minus at night time for the past two weeks.  Everything has been hit with frost, the paddocks of feed are ruined, plants and trees are dying.  Len and Judy say they do not remember a year where the frost has gone on for this many consecutive days.  We have to scrap ice off the windows of the cars in the morning.  The poor sheep are shivering cold.  We have the air conditioning on all the time (recycled air for heat and/or cold).

On Tuesday, the shearer came here and he sheared all 70 of Len's sheep.  I helped out a bit with throwing the fleece and picking out the bad bits and then grading the level of the wool.  I really wanted to make myself a pair of UGG boots with the soft wool.  It was a really cool experience.  The lambs were cute going in, not so cute coming out.  Betsy's dad is from Len's rams so all of the lambs here looked like little Betsy.  David and I had a good laugh at all the different sounding Maaaa's coming from the lambs.

Yesterday, we picked up Kendra from the Regan's Ford bus stop.  She will be traveling with us for a couple weeks up north.  We spent the afternoon in the shed with Len working on a seat for the car.  He welded it all together and this morning David and him screwed it into the van.  Judy sewed together some curtains for us and we put them in.  We also had Darryl put in a bed in the back of the van yesterday.  Someone can sleep on the bottom and some can sleep on the top.  Today has been a bit of a getting ready to go day for us because of the rain there is not much for us to do on the farm.  Judy, Kendra and I sewed little cushions with our left over mattress foam.

We cannot believe that tomorrow we will be starting our journeys travelling again.  We will miss our life here.  I don't think it has hit us yet that we are leaving though.  We are ready to survive off of olives, oil, bread and honey.  One of the ladies I worked with at the school has  a bee farm and I went to visit her this week to say good bye and she gave me a little bucket of honey to take on our travels.  After today, we will try to blog about our travels on our computer but we will not have access to internet everyday, as we are planning to live out of the van for the next couple weeks until we find a WWOOFing place to stop at next.  So, next time you read a blog make sure you read all of them as we may put a couple up in a day OR you can just read a really long post.  We will also try to add in a couple pictures.  We have added more pictures up on facebook and still have lots to post.  We do not want to waste people's download space though. 

Anyways, time to spend some quality time with Len and Judy.

Cheers,

Holly, David and Kendra