Home                                                                                                 UPDATE 27 AUGUST

From Norseman I headed north to Kalgoorlie. I met up with Graeme and Pat Umlauf at Kambalda about halfway between Norseman and Kalgoorlie. It was good to see some Adelaide friends so far from home. I was lucky to find them because Kambalda turned out to be much larger than any of us expected.

Kalgoorlie is an interesting town of about 30,000 people and is full of history and historic buildings. After exploring the area I doubled back through Norseman and went down to the southern coast at Esperance. This is a very pretty town with lots of islands offshore and lots of interesting coastal scenery. It was not as cold overnight closer to the coast thank goodness. The next day I headed off to Albany. There was not much traffic around and it was a very pleasant drive passing through some nice countryside. It was another wet night and a wet pack up. I was becoming used to it by now. I covered about 100km checking out the sights around the local area.  

I also checked the Light Horse Memorial. Most of the soldiers heading overseas during the first World War left from Albany Harbour.

After leaving Albany I went to Denmark and met a soon to be clubman owner who I had met through the clubman chat line. ( www.ozclubbies.com ). Peter and his wife Ronnie made me very welcome and we spent the evening talking clubman cars. Peter is taking delivery of an English Westfield in a couple of weeks.

After leaving Denmark I went to Walpole and visited the Valley of the giants. This is an area of huge native trees and a series of platforms have been built so that you can walk on top of the trees.

From Walpole I traveled to the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse the most southwesterly point of Australia. It was blowing a gale while I was there.

I spent the night at Augusta where it was very windy all night. The best drive of the trip so far was from Augusta to Busselton along the caves road. I then spent 2 days at Mandurah with friends who live on a canal estate. Mandurah is developing at a phenomenal rate and seems similar to the Gold Coast in many ways but so far without the high rise buildings.

On the Saturday I drove up to Perth with instructions to arrive at a friends place before the football started as the household are all avid Adelaide Crows supporters and this was to be the last match of the home and away season. Being a Port Power supporter I was pleased to see them win as well to make the finals.