Christmas eve

As every other year our family comes together to celebrate Jesus' birth on Christmas-eve. The nativity scene has been set up with the annual addition of more angels. The Christmas-tree all done up. We are waiting for 16 people to arrive: our children and grandchildren and Amrit, our daughter in laws family visiting from Singapore. Vicki has been preparing enough food for at least 50 people, just hoping that everyone is very hungry.
After the meal it is present giving time. The adults do the kris kringel way of giving but the children will get something from each family, it took appr. 2 hours to unwrap all the presents from under the Christmas-tree.
All the presents are unwrapped seperately and here is Kiran the centre of attention watched by Anjali her sister, Tim her dad and cousin Rachel.
Among the presents were also some new outfits, which had to be modelled, of course.
We all had a lovely evening and at the end of it we had enough food left to feed another 20 people at least.

Family dinner at Annemarie and Otto's

Our brothers and sisters get together for a meal once every 3 months. We went to Leongatha this time and enjoyed an afternoon together. From l.to r.:Frank, Ellie, Annemarie, Anne. Hank, Wilma, Chris and John. The others are strolling in Annemarie's beautiful cottage garden.
Anne and Ellie discussing all the different vegies and flowers growing together in the garden.
The true gardeners of the Dubbeld clan :Wilma Bill and Annemarie.

Time with Michelle and Jenna

Jenna and Michelle spent 2 nights with us during the school holidays. It was great to have them and we went to the playground at Lilydale lake. Michelle gave us a bit of a dramatic display. The ducks and waterhens are always after a feed. Jenna attracted them even with nothing in her hands.
Opa was kept on his toes
Jenna is growing up - she will be going to kindergarten next year. Isn't she a picture!

Port Fairy

Of course you will find warning signs along the road to protect the wildlife. So at first you drive very carefully to miss all those kangaroos, emus, camels and koala's. Alas too late for many as you'll see many dead ones lying on the roadside most likely hit when dark. What we did see a lot of were snakes, bluetongue-lizards and.....cattle, which seem to have right of way as there are no fences.

At last we entered our homestate of Victoria, almost home. We stayed at Port Fairy, a historic town close to the start of the Great Ocean road. A very nice settlement, but the weather started to cool off. To keep warm we did quite a bit of walking.
Walking around Griffith Island, a sanctuary for the Muttonbird, had a look at the lighthouse and then back to the warm caravan.
Another look at the small fishing-harbor with mainly pleasure yachts, and tomorrow off to SILVAN, that beautiful spot on the edge of the Dandenongs, which happens to be our home. We live in a beautiful country of which we were able to see just another small area. So we are home now after having driven 15000 kms. Thank you for following us on our trip and for your comments.

Every now and then we shall add some news on this blogspot. Until then may it go well with thee. Vicki and Hank.

Adelaide

So from WA. back home across the Nullabor again. We stayed at the Flinders'Range overnight, a station with thousands of sheep on a property of appr.160 by 80 kms. We also stopped at the Head of Bight, a bay where we counted between 25 and 30 whales some with calves, always a great experience.
We had a tailwind this time and so we sailed nicely across the Nullabor getting 7.5 kms. to the litre of petrol. So we arrived in Adelaide the capital of SouthAustralia, built along a creek of appr. 2 metres wide called the Torrens River. Adelaide is a city with still some country-atmosphere. They have some interesting artwork in the shopping mall in Adelaide. These pigs don't seem to attract much attention but they do add something special to the place. These grass trees are doing well in the middle of the city.They are on the square outside the Festival complex.

We travelled around the city on public transport so neither of us got stressed and we could have a good look around.A fellow traveller took this shot for us while we were on the tram.
This bus is going along the "Obahn" -a specially constructed track on which busses travel very fast.There were lots of people using it because you can get to the city from the suburbs in about 15 minutes.

Esperance -Cape le Grande

Our next stop was Cape le Grande National Park or a replica of the Garden of Eden. It is appr. 50 kms east of Esperance. The water is absolutely blue, no matter whether the sky is blue or grey and the sand on the beach is white. The wildflowers are every where and the weather perfect appr.30 degr.
You just cannot believe your eyes when you see the beauty of this place. We did lots of walking from one bay to the other.
Narrow tracks with snakes sunbaking here and there, we just loved this place. When visiting WA. make sure to visit this beautiful park with great facilities.

Wave Rock

We made a detour of 300 km to see this place and really enjoyed it. You might have seen tourist photos of the actual Wave Rock and been suitably impressed but we climbed onto the rock and found more interesting formations.





Here I am trying to look like I'm surfing -it was quite hard to stay on the slippery granite!

We found lots of wildflowers in this area.I tried to take photos of little orchids but haven't mastered that well enough to share. This creeper is very pretty don't you think?

Back with Dave and Sara

We are on our way home again. We have travelled 10.500 kms sofar, had 2 blow-out tyres on the caravan, a broken window, paid up to $1.796 per litre petrol. Now back back in Mandurah where the price is back to $1.18. On the way we also bought our fruit and vegies by the piece e.g. $ 1.10 per one small tomato, 80c for one potato, 55c. for one onion, $1,25 per orange or apple etc., no wonder wages are high, they have to be. But here down south everything is back to normal, thank goodness.
Megan is a real joy.Feeds well and lets her mother get a good sleep most nights.She loves a little chat and gives us lots of smiles.
We went to the zoo on Sunday. Aiden covered 3 times the distance we did. He ran everywhere ! Megan looked around and enjoyed the trees. Perth's Zoo is in a very beautiful setting with giant Bamboo and lots of palmtrees. Lots of displays are in junglestyle, very much worth a visit.
Opa on baby duty.
After a couple of drizzly days, Perth put on a glorious day with warm sunshine. Lots of people about, but plenty of room in this zoo, we all had a great day and enjoyed the nights' rest afterwards.

Quobba

This is the look when you're in country where there are cattle - the flies get into your eyes ears nose and mouth.
Quobba Station is south of Coral Bay with a very rugged coastline in between .We camped near the blowhole. Here the sea is very calm - on the day we left you couldn't get near this outcrop and the water was spoutting up to 20 metres high.

I thought the sea was rough but the waves wash right over these rocks.People have lost their life when fishing here. It's the Indian Ocean and king waves can come up at any time.

The sanddunes were covered with wild flowers. They have had quite a bit of rain so these come up and bloom very quickly.The lighthouse in the middle was the only light at night -except for the stars.

Karijini National Park

Thanks to Annemieke we visited this amazing park - lots of gorges which had pools and streams at the bottom.Hank went for a swim in the cool water.As you can see it was crystal clear.
We went for beautiful walks.The hardest bit was to get down into the gorge.
The river at the base of this gorge is down about 700 metres.Quite often our legs were shaking just looking down over the edge.

This is Knox Gorge - our favourite walk - and we didn't meet anyone.We had a really good time,the weather has been warm and sunny ,except for a shower to settle the dust.We were covered in red dust and really needed a shower after 5 days.

Tom Price -the iron ore mine

On the 26th of July after many hours of driving we arrived at a small oasis. It is the town of Tom Price,where all the inhabitants are somehow connected with the iron ore mine. Vicki wants to take this monster for a ride, but there seems a bit of trouble.....
a loose nut
and a flat tyre and just when we left the jack at home. The machines here are enormous but in the inside of the open-cut mines they seem to be just little Tonka trucks
See if you can find Vicki driving the Tonka dump truck. Anyway the whole tour we did through the mine was very impressive. We also visited our friends Stephen and Barbara and their 2 sons who have establised themselves in this very interesting town.

Coral Bay or Paradise

What a life, but I suppose someone has to do it. This is at Coral Bay Beach. The coral reef comes right to the shore. It is very different from the Great Barrier Reef as the coral is all hard, but still very impressive.
Out of the wind and in the sun and crystal clear water. As soon as you go into the water, little fish will swim around your feet.
Off on a trip with a glass-bottom boat to see the coral and all the different fish swimming underneath the glass. We also dived into the water and did some snorkeling. The fish were being fed at the same time and they were swimming along side our bodies, some were up to a metre long, we also saw a turtle.
The sunsets here are spectecular, the evenings are very balmy. The temperature during the day is appr. 26 degr. Vicki got a new camera for her 60th birthday from the children and as you notice she is making good use of it. Thank you to you who put some comments on our blog. Until next time....

Into the tropics

In Monkey Mia where the dolphins come near the shore to be fed. We saw two dolphins appr. 50 cms from the wateredge. You can also make a 10 minute-safari on camels along the beach. Just about everything is a rip-off.

The pelicans are also hungry and want to be fed as well by the tourists. Monkey Mia: a nice spot.

We also had a look at Shelly-Beach, where there is no sand, just tiny little shells up to 5 metres thick. Although they mine this, for some unknown reason the little shells just keep accumulating.

In Carnarvon we walked along the 1.8 km. jetty, saw some dolphins play at the end of it and schools of tuna, they did not ask for money.

Rocky-Pool, part of the Mighty Gascoyne River. Here we met an english couple, who were camping there for more than a year. They have a house in Spain and a caravan in Australia and they divide their time between the 2 countries. We spent some time with them which was most enjoyable. In the meantime the midgies had a feast on our legs and arms, little pests they are.