Tuesday October 2nd, 2018

We had a sunny spell late this afternoon and the featured image is of us on our campsite at the Mt Barker Caravan Park.

We had a relaxed morning, and a leisurely breakfast. I did some washing and got it mostly dry in the dryer. We have the clothes airer set up in the van, finishing things off. I don’t plan to do another wash as this should keep us going until we get home.

Four of us went to Albany today. Stephen chose to stay at the caravan park. He walked to the Visitor Centre in the afternoon when the rain eased. We found that the weather was different in Albany. We had some sunny spells and no rain.

Glenn caught a bus to Middleton Beach and the rest of us went to a cafe for takeaway coffee and cake before heading up to Mt Mitchell. There are a couple of viewpoints as well as the tower to climb. Can you see Geoff in the tower photo?

After returning to pick up Glenn we had lunch at the cafe at Middleton Beach, then came home. Soon after we arrived back it began to rain again, a light misty rain.

We watched the first hour of the movie ‘The Leisure Seeker’. It is by turns very funny and very sad. We are not sure where it is going, but a road movie is about being on the road. We hope we are a little more competent in our travels than the characters in the movie.

Highlights of the day: Visiting Muir Lake Bird Observatory, the Muir Nature Strip and seeing Lake Muir from a lookout point.

Muir Highway meanders between Manjimup and Mt Barker. We had visited the Lake Muir Bird Observatory a few years ago in June when it was disappointingly quite dry. Even at this time of year after good rain, the lake was quite a distance from the bird hide. If we hadn’t accidentally gone down the wrong road we wouldn’t have known that the lake is quite large, with lots of water. I didn’t take a photo from up there, but here is a photo from the hide.

Going down that road had another bonus, we found lots of wildflowers in the little nature strip on our way back to the highway.

We had a look at the camping area at Muir’s Bridge. It had been a possible place to stay last night, if our fridge had been able to operate on gas. It looked really nice, with a path leading down to the river (the Frankland River). However, it would have been a long way to drive yesterday after the walk in the morning. We has a very comfortable night at Manjimup and the drive today was interesting, without being too long.

We arrived here at about 3.30 p.m. (I think), and have a level slab for parking, with an extra bit for our ‘patio’. Stephen set up all the plumbing, etc. and when Geoff came over to say hello I asked him to help us set up the awning. It has come in handy as a place to use the electric pressure cooker. We are having a chicken ‘something or other’ and it is nice to have all the steam happening outside of the van!