Back at school

Louka went back to school yesterday after her big summer holiday. At her school, all years except Kindergarten started yesterday. The kids went back to their last-year's classrooms and teachers till mid-morning, when they were sorted into their new classes.

The mum of one of Louka's classmates has older kids at the school, and is very pleased that her son has this teacher. Louka said she was strict but understanding - made rules but didn't expect anyone to be perfect.

Perth post-Christmas trip: heading home

After eight days of sociability we were exhausted. I was looking forward to getting home, but Louka was reluctant to leave all her playmates. However, we weren't going to get home in four days, as the days are a lot shorter travelling East. Pandering to my lack of enthusiasm for dirt roads, Graham revised the route plan to include southern WA - Albany and Esperance - instead of the outback dirt road he'd originally planned. And instead of passing through Broken Hill and Cobar, we took the route through Mildura.

I have to say, after the weeks of dry, scrubby land-scapes in Perth and the Nullarbor, the southern route was delightful. Before we reached Albany the bush became denser, even (comparatively) lush. Just north of Albany I started to see gorgeous brilliant orange flowers on small trees beside the road. They belong to the West Australian Christmas Tree and are really common round the southern part of WA.

Near Albany ia Torndirrup National Park, with some spectacular rocky coastline. Signs warned of the dangers of being blown or washed off the rocks, so I kept a close I on Louka, who has a tendency not to keep to paths. The Gap was the most spectacular, a huge vertical split in the rocks into which the sea rushes with a great whooshing booming noise and the waves rushing up high in the air. We also drove round Frenchmans Bay to the Whaling Museum, but just played on the beach for a while.

Next day it was on to Esperance, a beautiful part of the WA coastline. Here there was green bush, bright blue sea and a cool climate. Actually a bit cold. We climbed the spiral stairs to the lookout tower then walked the Rotary track which included large expanses of strangely-textured rock.

Later we tried to walk out to the end of the ultra-long jetty, but it was only fenced on one side and Louka kept trying to climb the fence so we gave up about 2/3 of the way. But we did see the sea-lions swimming below the jetty and, on our return, another one sleeping in a bed of seaweed on the beach.

The next day it was back into arid country and we made it to South Australia. Graham got his wish to sleep beside the road. Actually it was a rest area, with tracks winding round for miles away from the road. Louka had fallen asleep by the time we got there.

We had issues with quarantine heading through South Australia. There was no quarantine at the border, so we thought it was OK to bring fruit into SA. Then we had to dump the fruit in a quarantine bin at Ceduna. We bought more at Port Augusta, then had to dump that at Mildura. The second lot would have been ok if we'd kept the receipt, but we hadn't known there'd be a second checkpoint. What a waste.

Next day we had lunch at Renmark. It was beautiful on the Murray River, with trees and grass and ducks. We went for an easy walk along the river, then headed onwards to Mildura for the night.




Mildura, also on the Murray River, also had trees, grass and ducks. The caravan park had fairy lights on all the trees and bushes.

Next morning we headed home, via the Blue Mountains. A quick phone call to my parents ensured a nice lunch was waiting for us at their weekender in the mountains. As we approached, the clouds gathered and for the last leg of our journey it was pouring with rain. 

First wobbly tooth

On our way back from our holiday in Perth, Louka complained about a sore tooth. I rang our dentist and made an appointment for when we got home. But the next day it transpired the tooth was simply starting to come loose, so when we arrived home I cancelled the appointment.

It took three weeks for the tooth to finally come out –– in the middle of the night. This morning when I woke up I saw the gap and asked what had happened to the tooth. Louka said "in the bed" so I carefully removed the bedclothes and there it was. So tiny.

So she can at last use the tooth fairy box she made in pottery class last year. And my contacts tell me the tooth fairy leaves a $2 coin.

Perth post-Christmas trip: staying there

Boy it was good to settle in and eat home-cooked food again. We'd been surviving on pasta with stir-through sauce for our dinners and either takeaway or chips and fruit for lunch, and Deb put on a wonderful spread for Shakey's birthday dinner. It was also good to sit down at a proper table with good company.

We stayed till late then drove down the hill to Graham's mum's place, where we shifted our bedding (king-size latex mattress, pillows and doonas) to the rug in the living room. It was very comfortable.

During our stay we visited Deb and Mark, Bruce and Josie, and Leonie and Tom, and Eddie and Jola, with rarely a couple of hours to ourselves. Louka has changed quite a bit in the past year: previously she preferred to play with me, or at least have me involved in her games with other children, but now she loves to go off and play without me. So she had a great time with Shakey and Samantha, Kofi, Tom and Dylan and Alice and Peter. In fact she enjoyed Alice's company (making another monster-repellent potion) so much we arranged a museum trip with her (and family). The Perth museum is smaller than the one in Sydney, but I think more interesting in some ways: the exhibits are arranged so that geology, paleontology and biology are all related to one another. It made the lumps of rock much more interesting to the girls.

As usual we drove to Hillary's Boat Harbour, not because the weather was so hot away from the sea - it was actually very pleasant weather. A pontoon was moored away from the beach, with a slide into the water. I took Louka and Kofi out to it and both had a slide, but after lunch when Kofi wanted another go, the slide had broken and was being removed from the pontoon. But we made a lot of sand sculptures on the beach, and paddled in the water, then did the usual tour of the aquarium.

Graham's dad had been to China (cheap trip for people of Chinese origin) and brought back a cheongsam for Louka. She looks lovely in it.

John and Steph seem to have decided to live in Perth (at least for a while) and are in the process of buying a house close to Deb's and Bruce's houses. We climbed the fence and explored the land while Louka played with her cousins. It is huge and rather steep, but they see it as a great place to bring up the kids they intend to have in a few years time.

In the meantime, John has been building a multi-storey cubby house for Shakey. It's not quite finished, but the lower levels are available for playing in.

Other pleasant outings included taking pastries from the Gooseberry Hill café to Mundaring Weir for lunch. Louka found a large Morton Bay fig tree and tried to build a "wild girl house" among its buttresses.

Another was lunch at the Core Cider House at an apple orchard. The kids were given lunch packs and pictures of apples and pears to colour in. The food was delicious and the view very pleasant.


And any time all the grandchildren got together, we tried taking a group photo:

Perth post-Christmas trip: getting there

After the success of our Queensland trip, we thought we'd try driving to Perth to visit Graham's family. Of course this was a much longer distance, so we couldn't zig-zag around like we did that time, or spend two nights at most places. Instead we took a relatively direct route, stopping after a long day's drive.

First night's stop was at Cobar:

Next morning we headed for Wilcannia en route to Broken Hill. It got drier and flatter and the toilet stops bleaker.

We stayed the night in a caravan park at Port Augusta, a rather dreary industrial town, then headed for the Nullarbor. Graham's big ambitions for the trip were to drive on dirt roads and to camp beside the road instead of in a caravan park. The first ambition was somewhat fulfilled when we turned off the Eyre Highway at Iron Knob, driving through the Gawler Ranges National Park.

The road was mostly good, and we raced along at about 80km/h, slowing down for the stock grids where the road was damaged.

The landscape along this road was very beautiful, mostly for the colours: silvery-green long grass, bluey-purply-grey shrubs, ochre soil. The whole scene had a silvery look.

We considered camping in the National Park, but arriving at lunchtime we found it extremely hot with little shade, and decided it wouldn't be pleasant bushwalking there till evening, so we ate and headed on to Yalata, which the maps showed with a roadhouse and caravan park.

Yalata turned out to be an aboriginal community where the roadhouse and caravan park are closed down. I knocked on a door and asked if it would be ok to camp in the caravan park, and the woman who answered said we could, but that there were no toilets. However, despite it being free, with no other campers and having no facilities, it still counted as a caravan park for Graham rather than camping beside the road.

Next morning we continued on the Eyre Highway, stopping at a lookout by the sea.

Then at Cocklebiddy it was time for another spot of unsealed road. We headed off on the Cocklebiddy-Rawlinna "Road" to the Trans Access Road which runs beside the railway line. The woman Graham spoke to at Arubiddy, just out of Cocklebiddy, said the 145km road was "a bit rocky" and took her about 3 hours to drive. That didn't sound very good to me, but I was to find that "a bit rocky" was an understatement and 3 hours very optimistic for our trip. Then we saw thunderstorms ahead (and all around us).

We were crawling along at about 18km/h, emus kept running out in front of us, it was beginning to rain, the dirt was getting slippery and it was getting dark. I was a bit scared, but Louka was enjoying the lightning. About 30km out of Rawlinna Graham's phone rang - it was his mum! That was encouraging, and even better was the sight of lights ahead. We made it! It was late, I was tired, so we stopped beside the schoolhouse, ate some chips and muesli bars and went to sleep. Or tried to - the wind became a gale, blowing our eskies off through the rough scrub. I retrieved them and listened to the wind blowing the campervan about. When we awoke the wind had dropped and the rain had stopped.

Graham's mum's call last night had been to invite us to Shakey's birthday party on New Year's Eve at 6pm, so we had a long drive ahead of us. Fortunately the Trans Access Road was smooth and flat, and we could drive at 90km/h. We didn't see another vehicle on either the Cocklebiddy-Rawlinna Road or the Trans Access Road, about 500km. As soon as we turned off the Trans Access Road, onto another dirt road, we passed a road train. Then we were in Kalgoorlie. We stopped in Coolgardie for lunch, but all the shops were shut so we just ate snacks. Then as we approached York, Graham's smart phone warned him of a dangerous hailstorm. The rain increased till visibility was almost zero, so I turned off the road looking for somewhere to shelter. I stopped under a road bridge and Graham got out to cover the campervan with a tarpaulin. He had to wade through ankle-deep water swirling across the road, getting his thongs wet.

Evenutally the rain eased and we drove on towards Perth. The storm had held us up and we were half an hour late for Shakey's party. It was lovely to reach family at last and have a shower.