wednesday 21st september

just remembering the final 2 days before we left albany robbie spent out with landy andy in his boat doing a spot of fishing. on the first day they were out they had a visitor, a 5 metre white pointer which circled the boat for about 10 minutes, had a little bite at the prop and then moved on with no damage done:

on the way home the boys were chatting to someone who obviously passed their story on because the next day they were all over the news.
today we decided to be tourists, so after the washing was done, even tourists need to do the housework occasionally, we headed off for cape naturaliste lighthouse. once again it was windy with showers and i swear we almost got blown off the viewing platform. unfortunately it was not a good day for whale watching so no whales were seen today, we thoroughly enjoyed the lighthouse though:

after a coffee and snack we moved on down the road to ngilgi cave which was extraordinary and amazing and just a tad too warm for climbing up and down so many steps. i never thought i would ever go down into a cave so there is one more new experience to add to my list:

once we were outside again robbie even found some beautiful flowers to photograph:

we were fairly hungry by now so we headed into dunsborough looking for food and found the bakery, the food was very nice but i don't think they wanted us to sit down and eat as they started packing up around us, it would probably put me off going back there.
so it will probably be early to bed for me tonight, i think my knees will be swearing at me tomorrow from all the steps in the cave and the lighthouse but worth it i think. tomorrow we will be moving on again.

20-9-11

well it's been a while, with both of us working practically full time we didn't have much time to do too much but one thing we did do was go whale watching, we went out twice on the boat sail-away, very nice indeed. i think we would both highly recommend this activity.

 we moved out of the caravan park (to make way for renovations on the flat) and into a house at work for 3 weeks when we were obliged to move out again due to circumstances beyond our control. we decided we would get out of town for a while so moved out to the kalgan river caravan park which we loved. we had a camp fire most nights and lovely visitors to our camp site. a lovely, relaxing, much needed 2 weeks.

so the time had finally come to move on from albany, we packed up in the pouring rain on sunday 18th september and headed off to windy harbour which really lived up to it's name with lots of wind and not a small amount of rain but we were tired so it wasn't a problem. the caravan park at windy harbour was quite nice but not worth the price considering the power was limited and we couldn't even boil a kettle.
we headed out early the next morning for augusta, nice enough caravan park but limited internet access, we went for a drive and ended up at cape leeuwin, we were a bit late in the day to do the lighthouse tour but we managed a good look around:

that brings us to today, we arrived in busselton by lunch time and set up at sandy beach caravan park, feels a little bit country and right on the beach. we visited the busselton jetty, shame the underwater observatory was not open but we walked out to the end and caught the train back:

 we have booked to stay here for another day so it will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.

wednesday june 15

sitting here getting over gastro, i thought it was a good time to update the blog so here goes.
on sunday june 5 we didn't want to go far from home as we were having friends over for dinner so needed to be home for most of the afternoon to cook a roast. now it just so happened that the albany classic was on that weekend (as i understand it, it is kind of like targa tasmania) and sunday was the round the houses stage. we headed into the city with every intention of going down to the boatshed market before watching the racing for a while, however there were so many streets blocked off for the racing we found it impossible to get to the market so we found ourselves a possie and checked out the cars instead.

robbie had a lovely time snapping away:

after a couple of hours of very noisy cars we headed off home to cook our roast for dinner, which, if i do say so myself, was rather yummy, and was followed by delicious raspberry cheescake, provided by our visitors. we had a lovely evening which was over all too soon as i had to get up for work in the morning, robbie had the day off but even so he had to get up to take me.

it was thursday of last week that gastro appeared at work, consequently i was working in the middle of it on friday and also on saturday, by sunday i was sure that i was going to get it but we were brave and set out for walpole for lunch anyway. we had lunch at the golden wattle cafe which was very good, robbie especially was very impressed with his seafood basket and salad. after lunch we decided to drive back towards albany keeping our eyes open for something to do/look at. we saw a sign for sandy beach and headed up the road for a look:

quite pretty but nothing out of the ordinary really. we then drove up a road which took us to the rest stop holiday park which is on the water and looks very nice:

 the pelicans seemed to be very much at home on the end of this jetty:

 and they weren't terribly impressed with us when we came to close for comfort:

 this guy was braver than the rest:

after wandering around there for a while we set off back towards albany again, then robbie spotted a sign for jassi leather works which manufacture and sell ugg boots, sheepskin jackets and things of that nature. of course we had to check that out with the intention of getting robbie some new ugg boots, didn't happen but i'm sure it will before we leave here and we did come away with a leather/lambs wool vest for him, gotta try to keep him warm somehow. they also had some hand crafted furniture in the shop and this giant chair out the front:

it was fairly difficut to get into it.
home again and off to bed early to prepare for work in the morning. gastro was still rife among the residents so once again i wallowed in it all day and sure enough tuesday morning we both had it. we are coming good now though, robbie will be back at work tomorrow and i will be back for my afternoon shift friday, hopefully everyone at work will be over it by then too.