sunday 24th april (easter weekend)

we have had a big weekend, rebekah and joshua arrived down here about 1pm on thursday which totally made me want to stay home instead of going to work but i was good and off i went at 3 to work until 9. robbie had a medical for the maintenance job at my workplace (medical passed, starts on wednesday)  so the kids went with him and had a look around town (not to mention a drink in the pub) while he had his appointment then he took them for a drive around various spots about town. joshua had made shepherds pie which they brought with them so we all feasted on that for dinner, he makes a mean shepherds pie. after i got home we discussed what we would get up to on friday, the decision was made to go to the treetop walk and time permitting follow that with the pentland alpaca stud and wildlife park.
off we went to bed, joshua in the caravan and rebekah behind the couch in the lounge room ( i offered her the bathroom which has the advantage of having a door so she wouldn't be disturbed in the morning but she wouldn't be in it), only to be woken at 3.30am by the park phone, someone was at the office door looking for a room for the night, nothing to be had but that didn't help us get back to sleep.
so after our disturbed night we were up early to head off on our sight seeing, first stop was the tree top walk near walpole and i must say, while it was quite scary it was also quite spectacular. if you have an issue with heights then you could have a problem with this activity, the highest point is 40 metres off the ground and the walkways tend to sway and wobble around a bit, depending on how many people are on any one span. i was disturbed by this a few times but i made it over:

after completing the treetop walk, we wandered around the ground level walks among the tingle trees:

a visit to the gift shop completed our visit, we then headed into walpole to have a bite of lunch. wooz and suz was open and as we had a good meal there last time we had lunch there again and again we had a good meal.
next on our agenda was a visit to the pentland alpaca stud and wildlife farm. the drive there was a bit too much for joshua and a nanna nap was had on the way:

 we all thoroughly enjoyed this stop, there were many animals to feed and pat, including alpacas, wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, rabbits, goats, donkeys, horses, ferrets, and there were also some animals which were off limits for touching but still interesting for looking at including a bison, buffalo, cattle, foxes:

we headed back home to relax a bit before rebekah and i went to the squid shack to pick up a fish and chip dinner for us all, we should have went earlier as we had to wait over an hour for our order they were so busy. we eventually got our dinner which was very good as usual, we are squid shack fans.
an early night was on the agenda after the previous night's disturbances.
saturday morning rebekah and i went into woollies for some last minute purchases which were necessary for sunday we then organised ourselves ready to head out sight seeing again after caitlin joined us. whale world was our objective for this outing, we left about 11am, shame robbie and i both left our cameras behind and we had to go back for them, at least we hadn't gone very far out the road. on the way to whale world we called into the gap/natural bridge for a look, many people were there ahead of us, it was a popular venue at the time:

we arrived at whale world after our small detour to find half of albany there ahead of us, goodness me it was crowded, and decided to have lunch before taking the tour. we got a reasonable meal at the cafe on site, and were left with about a 45 minute wait for the next tour so we decided to check out the nocturnal animal enclosure while we waited. most of the animals were sleeping of course however the visit was livened up by a very vocal sexual encounter between a pair of flying foxes, they were extremely loud about it but didn't really seem to be enjoying themselves:

we moved on to the tour along with heaps of other people which made things very slow and it also made it very hard to hear what the tour guide had to say quite often. we stuck with the tour for a while then struck out on our own, i must say we saw a couple of things which we missed last time when we just wandered around on our own, so i would recommend the tour but with smaller numbers. we had a lovely time, including some fun stuff:

by the time we had finished at whale world it was time to go home to get ready to go out to dinner at rustlers.
dinner at rustlers with caitlin, her mum and her brother was very nice, the food and atmosphere are good. we decided, on katherine's recommendation to have coffee and dessert at liberte which is just down the road. the coffee was good, the dessert average but we found it much too noisy for our liking with the juke box blaring it was actually much more comfortable outside. we left the young things to it at about 9.30 and came home for a bit of an early night. the youngsters went on to the pub for a while and i'm not sure what else, i went to bed.
sunday began with an easter bunny visit followed by an outing to the boat shed market where rebekah and i indulged in a waffle (i can definately recommend that). we decided to take a drive to two people's bay and take a walk along little beach which was also very popular as the weather was nice. robbie copped a wave almost to the waist while he was concentrating on taking a photo so had to travel home in wet shorts. by now it was time to head home to put the roast on and also for bek to cook the cake we had been discussing for a week. the only problem was i have no beaters so we had to whisk the meringue, that took a while and there were a couple of tired arms by the time we had finished:

 here is the finished product, the cake is chocolate (with real chocolate in it) topped with chocolate meringue (drool):

 plated up ready to eat:

 yum yum

the roast was also very nice after a drama of the oven going out half way through we managed to eat no more than half an hour later than anticipated.
a lovely weekend was had by all, gonna miss my kiddy winks when they go home.

sunday 17th april

weekend off, so yesterday we decided we would go out for the day, after the washing was done we set out for denmark. along the way we saw a signpost for muttonbird island so we thought we would have a look and what we found was a beautiful and obviously very popular beach:

after a bit of a wander around we took off again on the road to denmark. when we arrived we visited the visitors centre (mostly for the loo) where robbie found some guys doing some wood turning to have a chat to. a fuel stop was on the cards before we went looking for somewhere to have lunch, we found a cafe which had pretty good burgers and were willing to leave bits out for me :) we also ordered a raspberry muffin each for afters which, when we got to them, were quite disappointing.
after lunch we headed back out of town and decided to go back to albany via mt. barker for no reason other than robbie likes to check out different roads. we saw this old building along the way so robbie pulled up for a photo:

a bit further along the road and we were getting views of the stirling  ranges, another photo stop was in order:

so on we went and when we got to the intersection we turned left towards the stirling ranges instead of right towards mt. barker as originally intended. robbie loves side roads so we headed up one which was signposted mt. trio and found, you guessed it, mt. trio and also a walking track which we did not tackle as it was 4 hour return and we also didn't have walking shoes on:

we moved on again and headed towards bluff knoll lookout which was well worth a look, the amenaties were also very good here:

so that was our sightseeing for the day, we ended up about 80 km from albany at the finish and spent quite some time in the car but also saw some interesting and beautiful sights. back to albany for a scratch dinner of bacon, chicken burgers, eggs and chips (very yum actually) and an early night.
sunday i cleaned the house and we popped down to the boat shed farmers market for a few veggies, we also came away with some strawberries (mmm) and had an ice cream while we were there.
we had a very quiet afternoon, robbie had a call from skillhire to go into work monday morning at the hospital site again. we had pork chops with veg for dinner followed by strawberries and cream, sooo nice.
Monday 18th april.
robbie went off to work, i pottered around for a while then rang the hairdresser in the north road shopping centre for an appointment. i walked in, it took about 45 minutes and was quite a nice walk with no real hills and the weather was good for walking. i had my hair cut so i no longer feel and look like a woolly sheep and i can once again see where i am going. i grabbed some bits for muffin cooking while i was near the supermarket and headed back here, i was back by lunch time. after lunch i cooked some muffins then cleaned up and had a quiet afternoon.