WordPress has done an odd thing and deleted most of my post from yesterday. I don’t have time to do anything much at the moment, but will rewrite the rest and post photos when I can. I used my laptop yesterday to write the post, then was working on my iPad this morning which had the original draft. It got confused. Anyway, Kulin, where we spent,last night, deserves it own post.

Yesterday we finished packing up (did our main preparations the day before) and set off for Gorge Rock, about 19 kms from Narrogin. Stephen had a doctor’s visit at 9.30 am, so we couldn’t leave early, which meant pretty solid driving in order to arrive in Narrogin in time for the St John of God Choir meeting on Zoom. They are meeting each week, but this was only my second time. There were a few issues with getting everyone on, then we spent time doing exercises in preparation for singing. Stephen went to the IGA to get us some extra drinking water, biscuits and Minties.

With the choir we are all muted whilst Bernard sings and plays guitar. When Stephen joined we had the nice experience of singing as a foursome, with Bernard and Eleanor on one iPad and us on another. We only had about 10 singers, partly I think as some had difficulty accessing the meeting.

Towards the end we waved goodbye and set off for our overnight spot at Gorge Rock. We enjoyed the views over farmland as the sun was setting on the drive. There were two other camper groups here and they waved to us as we arrived. We wandered around a bit before settling in for the night. I cooked a simple one pot meal with vegetables and meatballs. Stephen chopped up the veggies. Then we had fresh fruit and icecream. We shared a beer as well.

On the first night in the van it’s always a bit difficult to work out our systems, especially at the ‘pinch point’ where we have to make way for each other. We love our new smaller van so much that we don’t mind at all. Although it was two years old when we bought it and had driven across Australia it feels almost brand new.

This morning we walked out to the rock, then climbed up. We were very glad of our fly nets as there were lots of little flies. I enjoyed frustrating them as they walked around on the outside of the netting. They also walked around on my hands whilst I was taking photos, only slightly annoying as they were so small.

Gorge Rock used to be the local swimming pool until an Olympic sized swimming pool was built in town. It was a meeting place for the whole community. The rain water in the rock pool was sanitised during the summer and drained before the winter rains so that it could fill with fresh water. There was a hall and other facilities here. Now there are some picnic tables and fire pits. We would have liked to have markers on the rock itself as we could see a second rock summit with a cairn on top, but couldn’t work out how to get there.

Back at the van we’ve had morning coffees and Anzac biscuits and are relaxing at the moment. The plan is to spend the next night at Kulin, which is about 30 kms away. It has more facilities and we don’t have enough drinking water to stay another night here. We are also hoping for better Telstra reception so that we can watch online TV programs. We have a bit of a signal, but the internet is slow and rather patchy, dropping out completely at times. At Kulin we will still be at a bush camp but it is located in the township.

We have a very chatty neighbour, Stephen found it interesting for a while but was glad to escape for morning tea. A workman dropped in for ‘smoko’ in a big machine and she spent his entire visit talking to him as well. I don’t know if he had quite the break from work that he was hoping for.