Tuesday 16th, 2024
Having neglected to write for a few days I now have to remember what we did. Fortunately we have lots of photos.
We stayed two nights in the Donnybrook Caravan Park. On our second day we went to a lookout recommended by someone at the Visitor Centre. It was a little out of town, and very windy indeed, but had a good outlook over a valley.
We took advantage of the solar to cook a meal, which gave us leftovers for the evening as well. I took photos of the view. It was too windy to go for a walk.
The next day we moved to the free RV stay area in the town. We wanted to visit the jigsaw gallery and check out some more of the cafes and managed to fill in the day with wanderings and eating. After our evening walk down to the river we had tea at a Vietnamese cafe. The food was fresh looking and quite tasty, not great, but not awful either.
Yesterday morning I was able to go down to a cafe to pick up coffee and a breakfast wrap to share, one of the advantages of being in the town. Stephen went later to pick up a loaf of bread from the tiny bakery we had seen the day before. He chatted with the baker who is fairly new here from Germany, but has already started this business of baking bread and making preserves to sell. He gathers fallen fruit from the orchards and sources the flour locally.
It was his view that the surrounding area is rather like his part of Germany, but the distances between villages is much greater. His mother lives here, which was the incentive to come to Bridgetown.
The TV stay area is next to a larger carpark, and this filled up with a vintage car show. I wandered around taking photos on my phone.
Then it was time to start moving north. We ended up at Brunswick Junction, which lived up to it’s name with lots of trains and noise, including overnight. Most of the the little towns have an RV stay place, not a caravan park, but cheaper or free. We checked out the Donnybrook one, but for some reason we couldn’t book it and the toilet, shower, laundry block, which looks new, was fenced off. We take it as temporary as other people have stayed here.
Brunswick Junction has three bays at it’s showgrounds, very tricky to find, but some locals were helpful. It is free at this stage, and provides 24hr toilets, water and a dump point. The electricity outlets weren’t locked, but you would have to be a bit mean to take advantage given that we weren’t paying anything.
And yesterday we made our way to Jarrahdale. It’s close to home and has meant we have been able to have one more night in the Sherwood, but will get to choir rehearsal this evening. It’s very busy compared with our first visit here many years ago in the Winnebago. That time, as this, we opted for staying on the concrete hard stand, one of the few places where it’s possible to be level. There were two other RVs on the stand, but they had opted for either edge and we are able to fit in the middle without crowding them.
We had to sit outside after lunch as the sun was making the Sherwood very warm. It was quite cool and pleasant outside. The last vew days we’ve been having meals of cold meat and salad, which saves cooking and is fairly easy to prepare. We’ve had the lovely bread from the bakery to go with the meal.
Before tea we walked out and found the bike trail, which made for a pleasant evening walk. We watched the news, which was making a big deal of the terrible knife attack in Sydney and fairly little of the attack on Israel by Iran.
We’ved booked Friday and Saturday nights at Fremantle Village because we are singing at the Fremantle Songfest on the weekend and don’t want to drive home each evening. We will have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night at home (but with rehearsals every night for Stephen and two nights for me), plus fitting in a visit from Matt on Wednesday night. He seemed delighted when we spoke with him about it. As we are going away this coming weekend it’s our only chance to catch up in person.
Despite how busy it is here at Jarrahdale we had a peaceful night and I love the smell of being in the bush. Of course, it’s very dry, with little or no rain in the past few months, but the air is moist and I think it helps to make the bush smell good. We had a bit of a nasty smell a little while ago as it was the day for emptying the dump point, but all good now.
A few photos from this morning.