TripRoundUnder

Hello, I know I promised more blog posts following our last post summarising our time in Margaret River and I apologise for the delay, I promise that it will probably happen again!

Both many things and few things have happened since we last spoke. The last couple of months has involved a lot of work for Lauren which we are very appreciative for. Firstly, we spent about a month in and around Perth while Lauren worked at various hospitals doing single day nursing agency contracts. I (Steve) am very impressed about how well she is able to adapt when visiting and working at a totally new hospital, sometimes a new one every day and managing to put nerves behind her and get the job done. I think it is a great compliment that several of the anaesthetists have offered her jobs during our time in Perth!

We spent most of our time living in Midland Caravan Park near the Swan Valley on the outskirts of Perth. For a suburb with a less than amazing reputation, we actually enjoyed our time here and the park had the best camp kitchen we have experienced in Australia so far! We even found a cool running track that went around the Swan River and Steve even managed to run a few mobility classes with the workers of the park.

Alf was definitely a fan of the local dog library!

If you know us, you know we love our food, so we jumped at an opportunity to attend Big Dons, probably the best smoked meat restaurant in Australia. We were lucky Lauren managed to get a place, as they only serve food one day a week and it sold out within 3 minutes! We made a weekend of it and booked a cabin Fremantle caravan park as a cyclone was bearing down on Perth and it was luxury to sleep in a bed and even Alfie was allowed indoors!

Big Dons definitely delivered more than we anticipated, look at how much food there was!

Over Easter (you can see how delayed this post is), we decided to have a getaway up the coast to one of our favourite camps that likely featured in a previous blog from our last trip, Lucky Bay Kalbarri. We were meeting up with our friends Nathan and Chloe who we had met in Esperance and had been forced back down the coast by the recent cyclone. It was awesome to hang out with them and we managed to secure a great campsite just behind the dunes. Alf was even more excited as we were actually living on the beach and with friends who gave unlimited pats, sounds pretty good to me!

It was great to be back properly camping after our time in the suburban caravan park and although as usual sand managed to get everywhere, we took advantage and even did some makeshift sandboarding!

I was very excited about the fishing prospects of our stay as we knew that last time we saw a large number of lobsters and bringing a boat this time would surely make things easier! Steve managed to get 6 for the weekend and after cooking them multiple ways, we decided that we liked ‘popcorn crayfish’ the best, dusting them in flour, salt, pepper and paprika and shallow frying them.

It was time to say goodbye to Nathan and Chloe as they headed north and we were heading back to Perth, we will definitely make a point to meet up with them again in the future.

This little adventure made it a little harder to be motivated to head back to Perth, but adventures unfortunately do cost money, so back we went.

We managed to add a little adventure to our time in Perth by getting out of town on the weekends and exploring some of the countryside inland. We decided to visit some places we had never ventured to before and to tick off some new letters for our Parkrun Australia challenge! One of the towns we loved was Toodyay, a beautiful old town that had managed to maintain its traditional old time feel without becoming a ghost town. They even had the biggest Christmas shop we have ever seen! We even managed to find a free camp on the river and a free shower at the local swimming pool. Steve even has put his toe in triathlon training by going for a swim and quickly learned that swimming is a million times harder than running. I think Lauren quietly or not so quietly enjoyed overtaking him multiple times in the pool!

Another amazing stay was Peaceful Valley Farm, a Hipcamp inland of Perth where you can camp on a farm but still have the luxury of a shower and toilet. We also had some of the best stars we’ve ever seen while here and Steve did his best to capture it with his Japanese camera!

We are not sure Alf was too impressed being surrounded by cows though!

Another little town south east of Perth was Jarrahdale, once the heart of the Jarrah wood timber industry and now an old heritage town, like Toodyay, the locals has done a great job of maintaining the heritage of the town. If you are a wood lover like Lauren’s Dad, you would love the pub, full of old polished timber and a very traditional feel to it.

We also loved that it had a free RV campground in the middle of town. We think that more towns should do this, we always make sure to spend some money in every town that we stay in and I think it would be great for the economy of most towns. We ventured down the heritage trail which winded through the back of the town and it was nice to see a little bit of greenery and the colours of the leaves changing was a nice change from the brown of a hot summer.

Our future plans were also becoming a little more concrete, Lauren had been accepted to do a 5 week nursing contract in Albany and we were given a chance to get a head start in learning about the hospital and the town when she was offered a weeks contract starting the next day. We decided to take them up on the offer and left within 30 minutes. Definitely shows that life can move quickly sometimes!

Although we had already spent some time in Albany, it was a different experience to be there for work and we thoroughly enjoyed the week. Steve even managed to get on the end of the Australian Salmon that he had been after at our favourite beach Lowlands!

Lauren also found time to show off to the kids at the caravan parks bouncy cushions, she definitely still has it!

Back to Perth and Midland caravan park for a final weeks work, we managed to make a new friend in Theo, a mortgage broker working on the road and travelling Australia with his wife and golden retriever. It was nice to have a friend in the park and we even took up his offer to try out his electric bike and skateboard and go for a cruise around Perth. Although Lauren had a nice little stack on the skateboard, I think we made a good decision to put Steve on the bike, who knows what incidents he could have gotten himself into on the board! This adventure was also our introduction into Chinese hotpot and after Steve almost passed out during his lunch, I think it might have been the first and last!

It was now for a quick trip back to Adelaide for Steve’s friend Angus’ wedding and a rare night out dressed up for us! It was a lovely ceremony in the Barossa and a special moment to see people very close to us have their special moment. It was also nice to see Angus not pass out at a wedding but thats a story for another time.

It was now back to WA and on to Albany for our next adventure and hopefully the last time Lauren will have to work for a while!