All the trees of the field shall clap their hands
I’ve been busy planning an American road trip with the help of my trusty highschool atlas (online maps just don’t cut it for me). I really can’t believe it’s true, but the time has nearly come for us to depart – we’re so excited! (And so thankful for relatives who stay behind to look after our home and dog). I’ll be back to blogging on my return with some stories from the road!
Have you ever done a road trip in the States? How did you find it?
While we were away we embarked on a 200 km round day trip from Holland’s Track Farm to Hyden, home of Wave Rock, (shown above). It was an exciting day of exploring for us all. Wave Rock is a large natural rock formation shaped like a breaking ocean wave which attracts a large number of Australian and International tourists each year. It was always an exciting place to visit growing up, so it was fun to take my own kids back there. There has been a lot of development around the site since I visited as a kid, almost requiring two days to experience it all.
The visitor centre contains a really well laid out wildlife park, complete with many Australian animals. The workers are generous with their time and happy to let you stroke the koalas or feed some of the other animals for no extra charge. Also of interest is the lace place (a well curated lace collection, including wedding dresses), as well as a miniature soldier museum which my boys loved.
There are a number of other interesting places to explore around Wave Rock, including Hippo’s Yawn (above) where you can climb right through the Hippo’s mouth (past his tonsils) and out the other side. The Humps is also another great place to visit nearby (I remember catching tadpoles there in the stream as a child).
At the Humps is Mulka’s cave, a site of special significance for the local Aboriginal people. The cave (pictured above), contains a large number of Aboriginal handprint stencils. There are also a couple of gnamma holes that you can visit. Last, but not least we visited the Resort to swim in their newly constructed salt lake pool (free of charge). This was a really fun experience as the high salt content of the water means it is incredibly buoyant (it is hard to push your legs under enough to successfully swim). Of course like in the Dead Sea, you can always read a book, if the fancy takes you!
Have you visited the Wave Rock area? What was your favourite experience?
We spent a week in the school holidays just passed staying on my family’s farm in Newdegate. It’s a long drive from Geraldton, but always filled with the anticipation of seeing family, exploring, building cubbies, shooting, making things at the shed with Papa and having lots of space to ride bikes and roam. It’s a lovely drive (rather dry this year after very little summer rain), which is made much more interesting by passing through the Tin Horse Highway near Kulin. The kids love seeing the roadside art and pointing out their favourites.
These are just a few of the horses you can see along the Gorge Rock – Lake Grace Road. As you will notice, some of the photos are from a few years back when our kids were a lot smaller. The tin horses were made by locals to promote the Kulin Bush Races and are very quirky and imaginative. The first horse was made in 1995 and many more have been added since that time. You never know what you will find, as new ones are constantly being added by the community. I’m sure each horse has its own fascinating story to tell!
While we were staying in Newdegate we also made a trip to the coast at Pallinup, which is approximately two hours away. My husband has very special family memories of spending Christmases here with extended family, camped in a salmon fisherman’s shack. It is a beautiful place only accessible by a rugged four-wheel drive track. We jagged one of those lovely warm mid Autumn days when it was warm enough to swim (somewhat rare on the south coast)! The kids loved seeing all the places my husband swam, hunted for shells and the areas of interest he had named as a boy. Another highlight was having the entire bay to ourselves for most of the day.
Well, holidays have been over for sometime now and I haven’t updated the blog for a while, as I’ve been caught up in the excited frenzy of planning a family trip to America in the middle of the year! Before then I have the rest of this wheatbelt trip to post, as well as the details of my son’s mad scientist birthday party held last weekend. See you soon!
Well maybe not 500, 37 miles or 60 kilometres over two days was enough to give me serious blisters and make me hobble around afterwards for days! I’m just returned from the Camino San Francisco organised by the Catholic Diocese of Geraldton. The following is taken from the Camino website and explains the purpose of the journey:
Caminos date back many centuries and are layered with meaning. For some, a camino might simply be about physical exercise and adventure. For others it might be about the journey within, a spiritual journey.
For others it might be about meeting people and making new friends. The reasons are many and all to be respected.
The Camino San Francisco is modeled on the world famous Spanish Camino de Santiago and incorporates many of its features.
The Camino San Francisco is so named because it seeks to elicit in participants an experience of the spirit that inspired Monsignor Hawes in his life and architectural works, namely the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi that honours and respects the natural environment and our place within it.
It was an inspiring, challenging and rewarding adventure, soaking up the heritage of the region and pushing myself to my physical limits. Approximately 30kms of walking per day is no mean feat with zero physical preparation or training! Whilst walking it was fascinating to hear the life stories of an eclectic bunch of people from all walks of life. I’ve also learnt the success to living well into old age : stay lean and keep moving!
Along the way we visited four of the churches designed and built by Monsignor Hawes. I’ve always considered him to be an intriguing character and love his architecture. Hawes was ordained a Catholic Priest in Rome in 1915 and subsequently sent to Geraldton. He was well able to relate to people and widely loved and respected. Hawe’s life left a profound legacy throughout the Midwest region, as he designed at least fifteen buildings in the area.
The trip was really well organised and included two masses celebrated in the Hawes buildings pictured above. The church on the right is St Mary in Ara Coeli in Northampton where we began our journey. The church on the left is Our Lady of Fatima in Nanson where we joined with some locals for mass on the Sunday morning. It was particularly interesting to see a demonstration of how the pews flip over and convert into school desks, the church doubling as a school in the early days. One of the other walkers had attended the school as a child and is descended from one of the artisans Rosendo Salvado recruited from Spain when he was undertaking his building program in New Norcia. It was a fascinating insight for me into Catholicism (both past and present) and the impact it has had on the Midwest region.
Each Camino participant was given a scallop shell at the beginning of their journey and a passport which was stamped at various locations along the way. The scallop shells have become a symbol of the famous Camino de Santiago as they were originally used by pilgrims as a bowl for food and drink. Another fun touch was the hiding of replica Dominie dogs (Hawes faithful fox terrier companion), for the walkers to find at various locations along the way. It was also a treat to see Father Robert Cross dressed up as Hawes to welcome us to Geraldton.
We were very well fed by the CWA from Bluff Point and also the CWA from Yuna. This really contributed to the community feel of the walk and it was wonderful to see these organisations thriving. There was the chance to sleep out under the magical carpet of stars on the Saturday night, an unforgettable experience.
I guess for me, this journey was symbolic of the path of life. We are all pilgrims on a journey, this is not our home.
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life (From A Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi).
Last weekend we bundled everyone into the car and headed south for Portia to compete in the Country Pennants Swimming Competition in Mandurah. I felt a bit ho-hum about staying in Mandurah, only because I have always viewed it as missing out on the benefits of being situated truly in the country or truly in the city. I’m happy to report that it was a lovely place to spend the weekend. Below are some of the highlights from the things we managed to fit in around the swimming races at the Mandurah Aquatic and Recreation Centre.
Food, glorious food! Where would we be without it? It always figures highly on our agenda (maybe a bit too highly at times!), so we were thrilled to discover an amazing cafe on the foreshore called Flics Kitchen. We had dinner there to celebrate our wedding anniversary on Saturday evening and liked it so much, we returned for breakfast on Monday before we left. The food was contemporary, completely innovative, scrumptious and good value for money. We had the chef’s choice for $50 a person, which consisted of approximately six stand out dishes of beautifully fresh, well seasoned food with some amazing and clever flavour combinations. Our favourite dish was Flic’s roast chicken, dill tots, summer vegetables, smoked bacon butter, wild herbs and chicken crackling. Delicious! Another favourite was Exmouth king prawns, camarelised orange, confit kipler potato, pancetta, heirloom radish and vanilla bean dressing. Worth a visit to Mandurah just to dine here alone!
Another great local business to visit was Paper Planes Co. This shop has a beautifully curated collection of wares, mainly for children, but adults would love this collection too. It has toys and trinkets that I hadn’t previously seen anywhere else and a very patient, tolerant owner who was happy to let the kids experiment with the toys and read the beautiful books on offer. Also popular with the kids, was the Whizzpop Candy Store with its large collection of imported cavity inducing treats. The foreshore is beautiful for a stroll (we saw dolphins jumping out of the water) and the area is enlivened with some beautiful street art.
There is also a very cute little train which does a continuous loop along the foreshore. It was like reliving your childhood!
We spent a very short time in Mandurah and only just scraped the surface of some of it’s attractions, but it was a very pleasant experience and definitely worth a visit or a detour to browse Paper Planes Co or to dine at the delightful Flics Kitchen. We stayed at the Quest apartments (easy walking distance into town) and really enjoyed their swimming pool right on the canal, as well as the lush gardens.
Have you visited Mandurah before? Did you enjoy it?
It’s the summer holidays and many of us will be hitting the road and heading away for a well earned break. When I was growing up we spent most of our holidays camping. This was a great way to get away without breaking the budget, although Dad always said that he couldn’t see why he should spend his holidays as well as his working life in the heat, dust and flies! As a child I also craved life on the other side of the fence – a week or two in a swanky hotel would have done quite nicely. I was, however aware that there were two sides to the divide – some friends escaped their parents hotel to spend some nights camping with us. To them it was an exciting adventure and an experience they had never had the chance to enjoy before.
Fast forward many years (after having had my fill of hotel stays), I have once again returned to camping and have been appreciating all it has to offer. Earlier this year we set off on an adventure to the Kimberley region of Western Australia, a region both beautiful and ruggedly isolated. Camping has much to teach me and my children.
When your everyday is reduced to attempts at survival (food and water needing to be found from sometimes unreliable sources), erecting your own shelter and pitting yourself against the environment (and sometimes it is the environment that wins), other less pressing demands fade into insignificance. Your mind and body by necessity must focus on survival, thus pushing aside other worries that take up so much thought space in your other life. Very cathartic! You gain perspective as you realise that many of the things you focus on and worry about in your everyday world are not the main theme to your life.
You must also push perfectionism aside, and learn to embrace the environment of dirt, dust and insects. It is not worth fighting a battle you will surely lose! You also learn to make do with what you have, as supplies and luxuries (even sometimes neccessities) are not easy to source out here. Put in this environment people become much friendlier – you are united in a common theme of attempted triumph over the elements. Camping is the great social leveller. You also gain a small understanding of the primary producers’ battle against the environment.
Just as adults have much to learn, so too do kids. Some important lessons come from the value of team work to set up and dismantle a camp and the need to conserve resources so readily available at home, but not on tap out here in the wilderness. Adults and kids alike gain appreciation of the vastness of this great country of ours and the magnificence of the Creator.
