The Le Grand finale.

We spent yesterday at Cape Le Grand National Park just near Esperance.

Everything they say about the beaches in this area is true. The whitest sand. The bluest, blue water. Rocks. Greenery. Kangaroos. Birds. Magnificent.

It was too cold to swim but that only meant we had most of the beaches and roads to ourselves and that was totally fine by us.

We ran and climbed and tried unsuccessfully to fly the new parachute kite. We sang and yelled and screamed and laughed. We felt wild and windy.

The sad part is that those were our last West Australian beaches. The end of our five months on the coast of the West and South of the West. Wow! I really shouldn't be sad when its been so amazing though, should I.

As I type this my farmer boy is packing us up tight. Soon we'll hitch up, set off North and then later today we'll turn East and onto the Nullarbor. The next part of the adventure. Let's hope it's not Nullarboring.

Travel safe my friends.
See you on the other side, if not before.

On the road again...

We're on the road again.

To be honest I have no idea what was wrong with Miss Frankie Blue. She's all better now and that's all that matters. When the mechanic called early yesterday morning and started babbling on about electric brakes and drums and backing plates and said Bren could go and pick her up I almost cried. I think part of me really thought it was all over.

But it's not!!

Yesterday we packed up, hitched up and drove about 480km until we got to Esperance.

Esperance!!!! Home of Australia's best beaches and whitest sand. Yippeeeee!!!!

We spent the day today checking out some of these awesome beaches. It was raining and wasn't exactly swimming weather but maybe it will be by the end of the week. And we don't care anyway, we are just so happy to be here.

We drove up to check out the Esperance wind farm.

We sat and stared at the pink lake for a while but it wasn't very pink today.

We did a spot of op shopping and I bought my first floral sheets of the trip. I'm not usually into the orangey ones, but at this late stage in the trip I had to buy what was there. It helped that two of them were in their original bags too.

There would have been more op shopping but I had an incident with an overly keen shop lady who WOULD NOT LEAVE ME ALONE and drove me insane. She chatted, she offered advice, she leaned over me and got in my way and.....she didn't smell the best. So I thought I'd call it a day and we headed home.

Home!!! In our cozy caravan once again. Where the girls are catching up on some journaling, Bren is playing the ukulele and I am writing this.

Home. It is so great to be back.

Home. There's no place like it.

Oh and we won Explore Australia's - Road Trippers Hall of Fame!!!! Hooray!!!!!
How cool is that!
Apparently a craft blogger can turn into a travel blogger after all.

I hope things are going to plan in your world.
I hope they are not too crazy leading up to the end of the year.

Happy travels.
Later dudes! xx

Making good.

So what do you do when things don't go to plan? When the wheels fall off? When life doesn't behave the way you had hoped?

Do you have a tantrum? Do you fall in a heap? Do you bang your fist on the table? Do you cry?  Do you go to bed and refuse to get up?

Or are you the making it better type? Do you make lists and phone calls and pull things to bits and ask Google and try to rearrange things so they vaguely resemble the plan again?

I think I am a bit of both. I think I sometimes fall in a heap first but then I pick myself up, look around, reassess, put on some stripey leggings and get on with making a new plan.

Today, Monday, marks our one week anniversary in this cabin in Albany. It marks our one week anniversary off the road. It feels like longer than that though believe me.

Over the course of the week I have felt horrible and awful and lousy. I have complained about the ugliness of the decor, the teensiet living space, the cost of this mechanical extravaganza, the fact that our last days on the road are being spent in one place, the struggle of living without a car, without an oven, without so many of our special things. I think we've all had our difficult moments.

But then I keep reminding myself that Albany is a pretty gorgeous spot to be stuck. That our very main aim for this trip wasn't to see the most, but it was to be together and have time for each other. We still have that, more than ever in fact. And the usual happy, healthy, not wanting for anything reminders help too.

We have some board games, we have yummy market food, there is a cafe around the corner that makes great coffee, I have wool, there is a playground and a heated pool, we have our I-things, I think there is still one op shop I have yet to visit... We have all finished our books so we might have to rectify that issue soon but other than that we are good. Terribly lucky in fact.

Farmer Bren/mechanic Bren, has just called to let me know that the problem is not the axle. He is now lying under the caravan with the mechanic trying to figure out what's next. What is next??

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Looks like we'll be be in Albany for a while longer. It's all good.

I'd better have a shower and walk the kids to the beach.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

Have a great week my friends.

See ya! xx

Brake down.

It's amazing how quickly the language of travel changes.

One minute our vocabulary is filled with words like explore, adventure, discover, swim, climb, surf, mileage, reststop and camp. One minute we are looking forward to Esperance and the Nullarbor and the slow travel home.

The next we find ourselves speaking in terms of caravan drum brakes, and mechanics and parts being shipped from Perth. We go to sleep in a cabin and wake up with bedside tables, a full length mirror, our own bathroom, a toaster and a fridge as tall as me. And I am laughed at when I make the mistake of pronouncing the street our mechanic is on, Cockburn street, phonetically.

At times over the six months we have dreamed of clean white linen, sturdy chairs and a bed that doesn't get folded away in the morning, but this close to home it doesn't feel right. We miss our cosy caravan. We feel like a turtle without its shell. We long to be on the road again.

The indoors life with its little luxuries is overrated, give me a caravan and the great outdoors any day.

We know we are lucky that out of all the places we could have been stuck in, that gorgeus Albany is it. We know that if part of a road trip is breaking down, then we got off pretty lightly.

This morning the guy at the purple place on the hill knew my coffee order before I said anything. And  when I walked out with our morning strong lattes, he waved me off and called out 'See you tomorrow!' Is this how travellers beome locals?

We are hoping to be back on the road any day now. Maybe even this afternoon.

It's all part of the adventure.

Happy travels. xx

Pics in this post were taken last week at Elephant Rocks at Greens Point near Denmark. Seriously one of the most magnificent beaches I have ever seen.

Treasure.

Oh my goodness, I love op shopping!! I LOVE it!

Op shops, thrift shops, second hand shops, garage sales, market stalls...I love them all.

I love the anticipating and the hunting and the sorting and the looking and the wondering and the planning and the admiring and the riffling. Love it!!

To be completely honest with you, I think that a big part of the excitement of this trip for me was the hope that there would be lots of little second hand shops in tiny towns all along the way. Lots of granny treasures to sort through. Lots of floral sheets and table clothes and china. And there have been quite a few. And we have hunted them down and driven out of our way and found some lovely things. 

And then there are some that we drive past and stumble upon by accident. You should hear the chorus of OP SHOP!!!! that comes from our car at such times.

The photos on this post were taken in a second hand shop in Albany that was so much more exciting than the Good Samaritan shop we had been directed to half a block down the street.

I adore that we have chosen op shop treasures to fill our caravan. I feel proud that we eat off odds bits of English and Australian fine china and not metal camping plates. And when accidents happen and bowls get broken, I love that it is a legitimate family outing to pop into an op shop and find replacements.

The down side of living in a caravan is the fact that space is limited. I know the more we buy, the less space we have for living. So we have learnt to be selective and that's probably a good thing anyway.

One of our road trip friends recently remarked on how patient farmer Bren must be. On how she marvels at the fact that she sees our car on the road outside junk shops all over the place. I was surprised for a second when she said that. I forget that not everyone lives like we live. That not everyone googles the op shops in every town they arrive in and includes visiting all the shops on our list as legitimate tourist outings right up there with the museums and geographical sights.

I do love that my kids love op shopping too. That they know to turn a plate upside down to check where it was made and if it is a Johnson. That they understand and embrace our recycling ideology. That they know that Mum loves florals, little jugs, pale blue and is not so interested in the little saucers or in the made in China.

I have little stashes of newspaper wrapped plates and jugs and bowls stashed all over the caravan that I look forward to unwrapping when we get home. Others buy tea-towels, snow globes, Indigenous art pieces or jewellery to remember their trips. My souvenirs are my op shopped treasures. I can't wait to put them to use and display them when we get home.

So do you op shop? Do you love the thrill of entering the world of an unknown op shop and the unknown treasure that awaits? And what section do you make a bee line for - the manchester, the clothing, the brick-a-brack, the books? And most importantly, have you found any wonderful treasures lately?

Happy treasure hunting. xx

Loops and knots.

Thanks Marieke Hardy for making me question my blog and my need to document this trip in pictures, words, thoughts and stories.

This morning I sat down and loaded some photos onto my blog. I was going to show and tell you the story of the surfing lessons at Bunker Bunker, the 61 meter tree climb in Pemberton and one of the most magnificent beaches I have ever seen at Green's Point.

While the pictures were loading I sat down and read a couple of pages of Marieke's book You'll be sorry when I'm dead . In the bit I was reading she was talking about traveling with her parents and then later partners and how she documented all her trips in scrap books. On page 99 I found this '...Amanda Palmer once bemoaned, "It's a tragedy that my reaction to seeing something interesting is turning away to grab my camera. The first thought is that it will be meaningless if I don't share it. Those are frightening moments."'

Touche!

I'm not sure if I am as desperate to share the moments as I am to capture them though. I have a great and powerful need to have a record of everything on this trip. Every detail great and small. The places, the landmarks, the friends, caravan life, what we've eaten, what I've read and made, how we've felt and how it's changed and changing...

I have thousands and thousands of photos from this trip sitting in iphoto. I guess my blog and instagram help me organise and categorise and put them in a context. Words with pictures. Order.

Would I still blog if no one were reading? I don't know.

Would you?

While I'm in the middle of this thought process and wondering about the living in the moment versus the capturing of the living in the moment I think I'll leave this morning's half written blog in drafts. We surfed and climbed and swam. It happened and I took photos of it happening. It exists.

Right now, this moment in time is different though. It's an ordinary moment not necessarily worthy of photos or documenting but a moment of our trip.

Yesterday we left Albany and were on our way to Esperance when we had caravan tyre issues and had to turn back.

Yesterday at the caravan park institution that is the jumping pillow, (an enormous piece of rubber filled with air - kind of like a cross between a trampoline and a jumping castle), there was an incident that ended in a dislocated elbow and a trip to Albany accident and emergency. There were lots of tears, there were x-rays, there was a great doctor and a quick readjust and a sling.

Today we are nursing Miss Pepper, our patient and taking it very easy. Today we are hoping that when the mechanic arrives he will laugh at the simplicity of our caravan tyre problem and fix it and we'll be on our way tomorrow.

The girls are watching Beauty and the Beast in the caravan.

We are drinking lots of tea.

Enjoying the serenity.

And I'm crocheting circles in squares.

Hooking around and around, adding to the pile and enjoying this pattern that I now know so well and can let my fingers do the work while my mind drifts and tries to answer questions and in the process comes up with more.

I'm being a good girl and darning in some ends as I go.

And I'm thinking about the smells and sounds and stories of the south west captured in their loops and knots. 

That's what's going on right now. Our moment. It is not a spectacular moment but a moment none the less. And you know what? I'm kinda glad I have this blog to capture it in its unspectacularness.

So how about you? Do you always have your camera on hand just in case? Do you live to capture the moments? Does something mean more to you if its shared? What have you been making?

I wonder.

I'm going to check back on my little patient and then get back to my squares. 

Happy travels my friends. xx