Sunday January 19^th, 2025

Well, a few days have slipped by. On Thursday afternoon we went for a walk along the beach in an easterly direction. We’ve done the walk before, but it was still a good feeling that we had enjoyed the beach on our last day at Cosy Corner.

On Friday morning we packed up and were ready to leave at 10.00 a.m. Our chosen route was up through the Chester Pass Road, then on to Katanning for an overnight. We didn’t get to enjoy the views so much as it rained heavily all day. Fortunately that road is fairly quiet and we could drive at what felt like a safe speed. Every time we stopped to get into the Sherwood we had to brave the rain.

There were only a couple of vans at the free camping place in town. In the evening we went to the local Chinese restaurant and were the only ones eating in, though lots of customers came for takeaway. It made a good ending to the day. The rain had stopped, but the air was cool and we had a comfortable night.

In the morning we had breakfast at the Dome Cafe, a tradition whenever we stay in Katanning.

Yesterday we enjoyed driving through the towns and villages on this route. We stopped for lunch at Yorninning Dam picnic area. Overnight camping is allowed and it is a very nice area with lots of shady trees.

It was a bit warmer and I was glad that Stephen wanted to stay at the Brookton Caravan Park rather than the Lions Park free camping. It meant we could have the air conditioning on for part of the evening. We also appreciated having flushing toilets and a camp kitchen. Stephen doesn’t shower in our little bathroom in the Sherwood, and he really wanted to have a shower and wash his hair. Unlike me! I’m careful with the water I use if we have to last two or three nights, but still have two wet washes and wash my hair each morning. Stephen does, of course, wash in the Sherwood, he just doesn’t splash about.

Today, Sunday, we are returning home. It’s about 130kms to our house. We have a function to go to at 5.00 p.m. We’ve been fortunate with the weather so far, but Perth and the SouthWest are going into what feels like the first heatwave of the summer. We’ve had hot days, including one of 43C, but then have somewhat cooler days after. So, it is good to be heading home to an air conditioned house.

Monday 13^th January, 2025

It was feeling so lovely to be here at Cosy Corner that we have pretty much decided that we will stay here for the rest of our time in Albany. That means we have three more nights here and I need to pay at the ticket machine.

In view of this, we took advantage of Site No. 1 coming up and have moved into this spot. This meant a bit of packing up, but not too seriously as I drove slowly to the new site. This site has more shade and is a little closer to the beach.

There was a little light rain overnight and into the morning, but it cleared by late morning and it was sunny for the rest of the day. We didn’t do much, beyond enjoying our new site. At about 5.00 we went down to the beach and walked about 1km to a relatively sheltered spot where we’ve swum before. The water is shallow and there is a rocky island a little way from shore that seems to protect the area. A short while after we arrived a mother and child arrived, with the child going immediately into the water. When she was joined by another child they swam out to a rock and played around there, jumping into the waves and obviously having fun. They were still out there when we left.

The children helped to make us feel even more safe, given that we stayed fairly close to shore. We really enjoyed the swim and later sat for a while on a bench overlooking the swimming area.

Then home to snacks and a little left over wine. We had leftovers for tea, an easy option. I had fried eggs and bread to go with our salads for lunch.

To stay here longer we will fill up our water tank, get some more drinking water, and do some shopping. As we are meeting friends for lunch nearby on Tuesday, which means driving out, it will suit us to continue into Albany to stock up.

Tuesday 14^th January, 2025

We had quite a storm overnight. I closed some windows and brought the hatch down a notch (which meant bringing the Starlink in as well, I was worried about water dripping down the cord). That was after the storm had been going for a while, so probably too late, but I felt better.

Wednesday 15^th January, 2025

We joined some friends at The Old Dairy Café in Torbay yesterday for lunch. It is in a beautiful location on the top of the hill. The day was almost chilly and there was a mesh protecting us from the wind for most of our time there. When they finally opened it up we could really appreciate the views. We had a lovely time catching up.

Afterwards we drove into Albany to dump our toilet and fill up on water. Deciding to have three extra nights here meant that we really had to stock up a bit. The potable water tap next to the dump point, which we have always used, had a sign underneath ‘not for personal use’, which was very odd as it wasn’t clear that it wasn’t potable anymore.

We rang the visitor centre who rang the council on our behalf. They confirmed that it was no longer suitable for drinking and that we should use the tap at the Rose Garden. That has a sign saying ‘for camping’. It’s close to the IGA and I did some shopping whilst Stephen filled our tank and water bottles.

It was still cloudy and a bit cold when we got back and we took it as a sign to have a quiet evening in. We did go down to the beach for a short while after sunset.

This morning (Wednesday) we took a walk down to the beach to practice flying the drone. I’ve done it quite a few times, but always have such a gap between flights that I forget. I really need to watch a tutorial before we go out. Stephen stood and provided shade so that I could see the controller screen whilst flying. It felt moderately successful, though I came home and watched a couple of tutorials.

We have a small drone which would not cope well with wind, but luckily there was only a slight breeze which didn’t cause any problems. I do need to be prepared for flying as everything needs charging beforehand and there are often firmware updates. They take quite a while on our Starlink internet as although the download speeds are very good, the upload is relatively slow.

Stephen made us cheese sandwiches for lunch, our normal lunch. I bought a chocolate flavoured coffee yesterday and Stephen liked the smell of it, so we are having it for afternoon tea with a shared Melting Moment.

The Number 1 site that we have moved to has good afternoon shade, which makes it very comfortable to sit and do our ‘work’. I mean reading, studying astronomy, watching tutorials and answering Starlink queries on Facebook.

Thursday January 16, 2025

We went down for a swim last night at about 5.00 p.m. The conditions seemed slightly different to last time, with waves coming from different angles. It was a short swim, more of a dip, then we sat on the bench for a while whilst I flew the drone again, just to keep in practice.

This morning we did some chores (handwashing clothes, emptying the grey water and the toilet cassette. We had quite a cold night, but this morning is pleasant, sunny with a cool breeze.

(There will be a second Albany trip in February when Stephen is singing in a concert in Albany with the WASO chorus.)

Thursday 9^th January, 2025

We drove to Williams, taking the York/Williams Road. Our original plan was to go to Highbury for a free overnight, but it was really too hot for free camping. I remembered a photo I have of staying at the Williams Caravan Park, which looked quite pleasant, with shady trees. So, we ended up with shade and power. We used the air conditioning for a couple of hours until about 6.15 p.m. when it became much cooler. We wandered over to a little park with sculptures of Australian animals. We were taking videos on the Osmo Pocket 3, but I’ve managed to accidentally delete them. Stephen took some videos and photos, which are now our only record. There were a couple of llamas at the caravan park, I’m very sorry to have lost the footage as they are very cute indeed. Perhaps we will go back to the Williams Caravan Park to see them. I didn’t take a photo of our camping spot to compare with the photo we have from June, 2016. We chatted with fellow campers Richard and Shiela, who are from the UK.

Friday 10^th January, 2025

We had a peaceful night, with a cool breeze that made sleeping very comfortable. It was sunny in the morning and we hadn’t allowed for the morning sun when deciding on shade. It was fairly cool up until 10.00 a.m. when we left.

It’s fairly exciting travelling on Albany Highway and we longed for the peaceful York-Williams Road. We stopped at Kojonup and went to one of the bakeries for hot drinks and a shared custard tart. Just as well as instead of driving directly to our overnight spot we took a detour via Yonkers Road for the views of the Stirling Ranges, then another detour through Cranbrook looking for a back road into Kendenup. We didn’t find it and went back to Albany Highway for about 20kms until our turnoff.

We selected an unpowered site, more for shade and privacy than saving money as there is only a $5 difference. It was only $32 per night at Williams, and here it is $20 for unpowered and $25 for powered. We have the same level of facilities, with toilets, showers and a place to wash dishes. And better views, looking through trees into farmland.

In the evening we went to the sports club for a meal. We were ready to go at about 6.10 p.m. and rang our local host to find out what time the kitchen closed. He said 6.30 to 6.45 p.m., so we did a very fast walk (1.2kms) to get there in time. Actually, there was plenty of time. They lost our initial order, so started our meal at just after 7.00 p.m. We chatted to some people coming in the driveway, but otherwise did not actually speak with people other than the staff. We had a couple of drinks, a cider, then a lemon soft drink.

We enjoyed the walk back as we could take our time enjoying the stars coming out and the last of the sunset.

Stephen had to get up for some Enos in the night and even I had a slight tummy problem. We had ordered two separate meals, but could probably have shared one.

Saturday 11^th January, 2025

It’s quite exciting to type 2025, we are now a quarter through the new century! Today we’ve decided to stay another night here and Stephen arranged payment with our host. We are on an unpowered site, but have shower, toilet and washing up facilities. It rained lighting this morning, as predicted by the BOM, but the clouds have cleared and we have some sunshine. This morning we took our time over getting up, having breakfast, and having showers. Stephen emptied out some of the grey water and helped with shaking out the mats and I hoovered the floor. It’s very handy to have the little Ryobi hoover, which works using the same battery as our Ryobi fan.

This sounds industrious, but we’ve also spent time reading and listening to news and current affairs through our various apps.

I had us on the 50GB for $80 plan for our Starlink Mini, and this morning found we had already used 100GB. That just in a couple of days. The 50GB worked for our last trip and it seems a bit strange, but we have not been trying to save data, so it’s probably correct. Streaming video takes up a lot of data and I’ve been backing up photos and video as well. So, I’ve moved us onto the unlimited plan, paying an extra $100. The unlimited plan for a full month is $195. I will likely change back to the 50GB plan for our second Albany trip in February.

Stephen has out his sketch pad and is working on a star map. Last night he was looking at Mars as it appears to move towards Gemini. Later in the month it will appear to move away from Gemini due to our different orbits. It had been cloudy yesterday, but cleared up in the evening so that we had quite a good view of the stars.

We are going to Gilberts, a local winery, for lunch. It is too far to walk there and back, especially in the middle of the day in partial sun. That is part of the reason why we are staying the night, but perhaps also because we realise that I need rest days of not doing a lot of driving. We are about 80kms from Albany, so will go to Mt Barker for shopping and dumping, then out to one of the beach camping areas near Albany.

Sunday 12^th January, 2025

We enjoyed our lunch at Gilberts. We discussed the winery with Harley, our waiter, who is a local from Kendenup, and also with the owner. Our meal was a cheese and cold meat board, very well done. Apparently they used to have a chef and do more of a conventional restaurant menu, but this doesn’t appear to be popular anymore. Anyway, it was a good atmosphere and we enjoyed the food very much.

Afterwards we drove around the Kendenup area locating the local attractions from a brochure. It was interesting, but we were tired when we got back and happy to settle in for the night. We had bought a bottle of wine so that we could have a small drink each at the winery and perhaps a bit more with our dinner. Which we did.

It was colder than our first night, with a little light rain in the early hours.

Today we packed up and went to Mt Barker to dump our toilet and do some shopping. I had bought some pumpkin when Matt was coming to tea, but hadn’t used it all up. I wanted to make a pumpkin soup for our evening meal, so we bought some additional ingredients, including dried soup mix, and onion, and some greens.

Our drive here to Cosy Corner was made interesting by Google Maps. It sent us on a route through farms and bushland on gravel roads. Even when we finally arrived at the road into Cosy Corner we were diverted again onto a gravel road due to the main road closure. It was after 12.00 when we arrived, so we probably shouldn’t have found a site, but we did, after driving past it initially, looking for something flatter. In the end we came back to it and snagged it just before some other campers came in looking for places. Whew! I paid our fees for two nights and we settled in and had lunch.

It was hot this afternoon and we had a choice of a calm, but hot interior, or a windy, but cool outside, sitting on our camping chairs. We opted for outside.

Around 5.00 p.m. we went for a walk along the beach, then came home to talk to Matt on FaceTime and cook our pumpkin soup. Stephen cut up all of the vegetables with a very inadequate knife. The soup took about 45minutes overall. I had soaked the soup beans so that they would cook more quickly. We still had some of the wine left, so enjoyed that with our meal.

We are watching the programme ‘Dr Karl’s How things are made’ on  ABCIVIEW and it’s very interesting. We watched the one on toilet paper last night and the one on chocolate tonight.

The forecast is for some light rain tonight.

A Guest Post from Stephen Hastings

Let’s spend the morning at Meelup beach
There’s toilets, showers and a breeze
And not too many people at this stage

The water sparkled blue and glistened green
A lovely day so it would seem
But then they came, the four wheeled drives,
And family cars buzzing  like flies
As swims were done the cars moved on 
To be replaced quite soon by newer ones
A constant noise of low rev motors
Filled our morning of drinks and photos

Wednesday 1^st January, 2025

It was hot on Wednesday. We arrived in Bussleton at about 2.30 p.m., going straight to the dump point and filling up with water. We then went to the Busselton Jetty and had a cold drink.

We had planned to stay at the Quindalup Boat Ramp for the night. We did this a year ago and were able to be tucked away out of sight of the actual boat ramp in the large overflow carpark. This time, however, there were signs saying no camping. We had our evening meal and tried to work out where we should go. Eventually we ended up staying overnight near a nature reserve. We arrived after dark.

Thursday 2^nd January, 2025

In the morning we got up, packed up, and went down to Meelup Beach. This was lovely. Whilst Stephen had a wash I had a short swim. We stayed until about 3.30 p.m. It got very busy, but had the plus of toilets, plus the Simmos Icecream and coffee van was there.

We thought we wouldn’t keep playing the ‘find somewhere after dark’ lottery and phoned a couple of caravan parks. We got one night at Amblin (now a Discovery Park) and three nights at Southern Stars Caravan Park, but with a different campsite for each night.

Our first night cost $100, but we enjoyed being able to walk through the park to the beach and have an evening swim. We also took the binoculars, our chairs and the tripod down to the beach after dark. There were kids on skateboards and a bright light near the place we had planned to set up. After a while we walked on to a darker spot. We had to keep our torches on when walking as there were people on bikes and skateboards going along the dark path.

Friday 3^rd January, 2025

In the morning we went for shopping in the newish Vasse shopping centre. Stephen was shown how to use a bread slicer as it is self serve, but if everyone needs to be shown, it defeats the purpose. There is a beautiful Korean restaurant there, so we mentally picked it for our lunch. We went to Macdonalds to fill in time, but found a very nice café we should have gone to on our way to the restaurant. It was a lovely meal, helped by the atmosphere.

Then we went to the caravan park. We really liked our ‘pitch’ and enjoyed a wine tasting and bought a pizza from the food truck for tea. There was no power, but it was such a nice spot we would like to have stayed, but couldn’t.

We got out the Seestar for a while, not long enough to get a good image, but it’s still nice to play with it.

Saturday 4^th January, 2025

Stephen was meeting his friend Richard for coffee in the morning, so I dropped him off and drove off to the beach to wait for him. When I got back we found a spot near the café and had lunch. We spent a couple of hours in the café, having afternoon tea.

Then we went for a little walk and spent time paddling and watching the sea birds.

Then back to the caravan park to our new pitch. It wasn’t as nice as the first pitch, but still had a view across fields. We got out the SeeStar again, but didn’t get much in the way of images, partly because of the caravan park lighting and we also started a bit early.

Sunday 5^th January, 2025

We had to move pitches again, and they wouldn’t let us stay on our pitch after 10.00 or go to our new one until 12:00 p.m., as they wanted to mow and water it. That could have been done on Monday morning, one day later. I would have treated us as being a three day stay myself, not moving us on at 10.00 and having a gap of a couple of hours.

Anyway, we went down to Margaret River to the White Elephant café on the beach. We had a very healthy lunch of Thai chicken and salad for lunch. We hung around afterwards and had afternoon tea at about 2.00 p.m.

Then back to the Busselton Jetty for a swim, then an icecream, then we walked half way along the jetty.

Then back to the caravan park where we were in time to have a serve of fish and chips between us with our own salads. We were too tired to get the Seestar out after dark. I went to bed at about 9.30 p.m.

Monday 7^th January, 2025

We woke up to a beautiful, sunny morning. It was cool enough overnight for us to sleep comfortably even though the forecast was for a fairly hot day, even in Busselton.

Driving home, I wanted to take the inland route, but this is not possible for quite a while due to the new bypass system. However, we called in at the Capel Bakery for lunch. The rest of the drive home was tiring for me, I expect it was a bad idea to do so much driving the day before we left. But, we arrived home safely, which is all that really matters.

Friday 27th to Monday 30th December, 2024

We chose Narrogin because it’s one of the many places close to Perth that is a designated ‘Dark Sky’ destination. We also like that it is quite a pretty town, rather like some of the little places you find in Victoria and NSW, with obviously cherished old buildings and pretty parks. It has a few cafes, but at this time of year only a couple were open. Plus it is set in gently rolling hills that must be very beautiful in winter and spring when everything is green. Even now, it’s attractive. There are many walks you can do in the cooler weather.

We had lunch at Wandering, actually in the caravan park as it had shade and we were given access to the toilets. Then on to Narrogin, where we checked out the RV camping area in the town, which has a dump point and potable water available.

Our Dark Sky venue is out at the Golf Club, where stargazers are welcome to set up in the large carpark. We were intially disappointed to see the carpark surrounded by trees as we thought it would not allow for good stargazing.

Stephen set up our Celestron 6SE in the late afternoon when there was plenty of light. It’s quite fiddly to set up from scratch, but worth the effort. We’ve been leaving it set up at home so that it’s easy to just take the whole thing out when we want to stargaze in our driveway. We power it with an Ecoflow mini, just the right size to be stable underneath the tripod. We have a smaller power bank that works well, but I worry about us accidentally treading on it.

We had a meal of leftovers whilst waiting for full darkness, about 8.30 p.m. We had the little Seestar S50, which is wonderful for astrophotography. You use an app on your phone or tablet to navigate to the celestial object you want to photograph, then it uses stacking technology to gradually build up the image.

Stephen had done a landscape alignment process before sunset, but still had to do a one, two, or three star alignment before he could go to objects. That took time and was frustrating, but eventually we were tuned into Jupiter.

The SeeStar decided to act up and would not connect to my iPad. Even when I eventually got it linked it kept dropping out. Some research the next day gave me the confidence to try again on Saturday night with more success.

I would say that both telescopes were a bit of a wash in terms of stargazing. On the other hand, the location gave us a wonderful view of the Milky Way, with almost no light polution. In that sense it was a success.

Only one person turned up to play golf in the evening. He said it would be OK for us to stay overnight in the carpark. This was not official permission, but other people apparently stayed there when there was a golfing event, so he thought it would be OK. This meant that we didn’t have to drive off after packing away the Celestron in the dark. It didn’t matter that we felt very tired because we didn’t have to go back to town to sleep.

We can’t use the outside light due to a malfunction in our control panel, so we had a little lamp, the light beside the door, plus our torches. It was enough, but maybe we need to spend the money to replace the control panel.

The next day was clear and sunny, and we looked forward to another night of stargazing. We went into town for a little bit of shopping and had coffee at the all day cafe in town. Very basic, but run by hard working migrants and it was a popular place.

We then drove out to the next Stargazing venue, Yillyminning Rock, about 20kms from Narrogin. We took the opportunity to fill up on fresh water and empty the toilet first thing on getting back into the town, so could have stayed the night there. But, after a warm afternoon, either sitting outside and braving the insects, or sitting inside where we relied on the fans to be comfortable, we decided we had to move. There were quite a few branches and trees down in the woodlands around us and it was obviously a risk to stay under trees. After a good walk around it was clear that we could not really guarantee that we wouldn’t be in danger, so we decided to drive back to another free camping area in Narrogin.

The one in the main park of town appeared to have some slightly dodgy residents, so we went to the Railway Dam on the edge of town. It looked very different to the last time we visited as the water was quite low. We stayed on the bitumen as the rest of the area was pretty slopy and it’s harder to level a camper than a caravan. There were two caravans there, which helped us to feel safe.

In the evening we took the Seestar out for a little while. My research had given me an idea of how to connect the ipad, which worked. I think it may have been that we were using a different wireless connection, the Starlink, and it was wanting our home network. I was able to link it to the Starlink wifi and that will be it’s ‘home network’ from now on. We didn’t stay out for very long, but still managed to get a reasonable 6 minute image over about 40 minutes. I also did some iphone star photography, it’s surprisingly good.

We had a nice meal of steak bought from the local butcher. We still had salads that we bought from home.

In the morning we took turns to walk down near the dam, Stephen to bird watch and me to have an encounter with the long necked turtles which live on the other side of the dam. The sign says they have been fed by visitors, which is why they rushed to see me, fighting over a position closest to me. They are very small, but I was still glad to be on a high bridge, well out of the way. Zooming into the photos of them swimming towards me, they look quite creepy! Stephen and I walked back to the bridge later, but they din’t come for him. But, we saw some tiny waders that were quite beautiful. We haven’t been able to identify them, so I must post on the birding facebook page to get an ID.

Sunday was supposed to be really hot and before we left home I booked us into a cabin at the caravan park so that we could have good airconditioning in the afternoon. We had a light lunch and hot drinks at a cafe before going out to claim our cabin at about 1.30 p.m.

It was a completely cloudy day, and if we hadn’t had the booking we might have driven home. However, it was good to relax. We had a late afternoon walk in the nearby Foxes Lair Nature Reserve and enjoyed a wonderful sunset, which also happened in Perth. The whole sky became a beautiful rosy colour.

All of the cabins in the caravan park are ‘accessible’. This means that even our one bedroom unit was very spacious. It would work for Matthew, except for the bed, which was too low to allow for the legs of a hoist. I should given them feedback on this as the rest of it was ideal, including the large bathroom and under kitchen bench access for wheelchair users. We also had a large car space suitable even for our Sherwood.

I had a great night’s sleep and we woke up refreshed and ready for going into Foxes Lair for a drive through. We took a short walk to the breakaway outlook from the main picnic area and saw the claypit picnic area. Stephen took a short walk in the Arboretum. It would be good to go back in cooler weather.

It would be strange in a farming community to have a nature reserve names ‘Foxes Lair’, but it doesn’t refer to real foxes, but dates back about 70 years to a convention held in the area. The formal proceedings took place in town, but a much less formal event took place in the picnic area attended by ‘foxes’ having fun. And that’s where the name comes from.

On the way home we stopped at Christmas Tree Well off Brookton Highway for lunch. The Christmas Trees were in bloom, as well as some other native trees. It was pretty, but after lunch it was very hot, so we packed up and headed home.

We had Matt for tea in the evening. We showed him some of the photos and videos we took in Narrogin. I noticed he was much more interested in the videos, so if we want to share trips with him video is the way to go.

Our next trip starts tomorrow. We had to come home to drop off the Celestron Telescope as it takes up too much space unless we are going stargazing. The little SeeStar fits in nicely and will definitely come along.