I picked up the Winnie on Monday after travelling to Roleystone by bus. I had a talk with Marie and Geoff, and then drove home. Stephen and I went out to get the tyres checked, we were looking for the Big Wheels in Welshpool, but settled for Beaurepaires. It turned out that Big Wheels was on the opposite side of the road, but we drove up and down and hadn’t seen it. Beaiurepaires were very good and checked the tyres, but we had parked out the front at first, and when backing managed to clip an overhang. Stephen was watching lower down as I backed and hadn’t noticed. I didn’t check the damage to their place, and although someone came out, she didnt appear to be worried.

The Winnie damage was on the moulded plastic part up near the roof. It missed the light and didn’t damage the awning, thank goodness. I checked later and the lights still worked. I sought advice at Bunnings and bought a pack of very heavy duty garbage bags and a tape called Tarzan’s Grip. On Tuesday morning as we were getting things ready to leave, we put a patch over the damage. Stephen didn’t feel safe on the ladder, so he handed stuff to me. I felt OK because I took Geoff’s advice to put the ladder sideways. I had our driveway wall close by as well as the Winnie wall to hang on to.

Although we did most of the sorting out for our three nights away on Tuesday morning we still managed to be ready to leave at about 10.30 a.m. We had been doing the usual dance with our neighbours who share the driveway, thank goodness they are ready to help, and will work around our needs. During the day the Winnie is parked on a spare block of land that lots of people use as a carpark. But we dont like to leave it there overnight.

I booked the holiday here at Coogee Beach Caravan Park last year. We have stayed in Busselton during school holidays, and found it quite full of children, but this caravan park has mostly park homes, with lots of older people (walking frames, powered scooters, and bingo nights), with a few travellers. Although we have seen children, they are older and well behaved.

When we arrived on Tuesday it was warm and sunny and Coogee Beach was fairly buzzing with visitors. There are good facilities for picnics, the cafe, and the state trial of a shark net on part of the beach. We waited until later in the day for our first walk and also went out after tea to see the beach in the last light of the day.

Wednesday was also promising to be a warm day (its cooler here than further inland, of course). We started off with a swim in the shark protected area, and after a good breakfast and some time reading, etc. we caught a bus to Fremantle. We had lunch at Old Shanghai, very cheap little meals from the Japanese place, very good value we thought. We then went to the Luna SX to see La La Land. Stephen wanted to see it, and although it was very silly, the main characters were appealing and the music was enjoyable, especially the jazz.

We had a coffee at a lovely little cafe run by a woman from South China, then caught the bus home. We knew the weather was going to change, and our evening walk on the beach was made interesting with the clouds coming in and the wind building up. We put the awning away after sunset, a bit challenging with not much light, but we felt safer.

Early this morning we were woken by wind and rain. The rain was all over in about half an hour, although it has been windy, partly cloudy, and quite cool all day. Eversley had a free day as her car was in having a service, so she caught the train and bus to join us for a walk and lunch. It was good to catch up and really have time to talk. We caught the bus with her when she left for home to go to the shopping centre. We didn’t need much, but had run out of chocolate, so it was definitely time to go.

Stephen had to drag me out for the evening walk, we went north back to the shopping centre, then on to another area where there is a Dome cafe and sheltered beach area. The Port Coogee precinct is being developed with houses and apartments. The little shopping centre seems quite new and has a small range of useful shops, a Woolworths, newsagent, bakery, chemist and cafe. All within about 15 minutes walk of where we are staying. We caught the bus back, only about 2 stops, but we would have been walking into the wind, which didn’t seem like much fun.

The first couple of nights we had salad and some beef that I sort of stir fried in our electric frying pan. The meat was cut into chunks rather than strips, so took a while to cook. Tonight we went for our standby meal of tuna and rice, with salad, followed by fruit and yogurt, and, of course, the chocolate with our peppermint tea. We have started watching The Crown, I have a Netflix subscription and this is one of the shows that can be downloaded. We link the ipad to the TV, the show doesn’t play fullscreen, but occupies as smaller window. I like the small file sizes that don’t clog up the ipad.

It has been quite a contrast to our time at Jarrahdale. Here, we have water, power and a drain for our grey water, lots of things running off the van. It was much easier to drive the Winnie out for the day at Jarrahdale, but here we can catch buses, so don’t really need to. It’s interesting to have the contrast. On the whole, I liked camping in a more rural location best, but having the sea a short walk away is lovely too.