8 May - 16 June: Esperance, Hopetoun, Albany, Cowaramup, Fremantle, Rottnest, New Norcia, Jurien Bay, Geraldton, Kalbarri, Monkey Mia, Whalebone Bay & Goulet Bluff

After crossing the Nullarbor we spent one very quick night in Norseman. This was a tiny town named after the horse, 'Norseman', who is claimed to have stomped the ground with his hoof while his owner sank a few beers in the pub, only to uncover a large nugget of gold, turning him into a very rich man! Bella tried the same trick, but had to settle for the $2 coin she later found at the Pinnacles to satisfy her constant quest for wealth!! We headed south for the southern area of the western Australian coast - to Esperance. We arrived to a beautiful balmy day and immediately had some fresh seafood and a glass of wine- it was a relief to be coastal and to have access to fresh food again. We spent about 4 nights here, riding bikes into the markets and had a leisurely Mother's day morning on the shoreline with the locals and their serious coffee van. We had brekky here and were delighted by "Sammy the sea lion", who lives by the jetty catching the free discards from the local fishermen filleting their fish. We met some other young traveling families and have been bumping into them all now and again as we all head in the same direction. We had some very fun nights with the Campbell Family (John, Kerrie, Charlie and Jack) who are traveling in their HUGE Winnebago. We now have "push out couch" envy!!..and to think we had it all with our "pop out" master suite!!  The weather got very cold and Dan also got a bout of gastro (poor Kenny!) so we moved on in search of the warmth.

More Esperance photos

Hopetoun was another tiny hick town with a little caravan park literally on the beach behind some sand dunes. The water was so beautiful and the girls found a cubby house/hammock made from old fishermen's nets and loved hanging out here. We let them walk over the dunes (with a walkie-talkie) so we could check in.....the ever responsible Sas was diligently radioing in every 5 minutes! We ventured into the Fitzgerald National Park with a picnic lunch and found an enormous whale skull washed up on the beach. Amazing, clear, stunning water, but very exposed coastline and we were nearly blown away at times with huge gusts of wind. David and Bella found a huge car and caravan wash just out of town and so Walt and Tilly had a well-deserved rinse to remove all the red Nullarbor dust.

More Hopetoun photos

We moved on to Albany stopping at the English soft toffee factory where we met a paddle of ducks and later, spotted another of our 'Bigs' - the Big Marron. We rendezvoused with the Campbell family again and David and John spent a marathon evening at the Albany pub watching the Waratah Super 14s rugby and other games. Let's just say that neither of them were in great form the next morning. 'Shackers' really took a hit and was pretty useless for the next 2 days. Dan and the girls found a fabulous farmer's market - voted one of the best in Australia and bought some beautiful fresh local fruit, veges, eggs and meat. They bought David some hangover food - a goat's meat sausage roll. David is not known for his broad palate, so they didn't tell him it was goat until after it had been consumed......some sweet revenge for over doing it the night before!

Albany was quite a quaint historic town with a history of whaling. We did a great bike ride along the coastline and also visited a wind farm. It was amazing to learn about the energy production and to be up so close to these huge fans. We were able to walk right down to the edge of the coastline along the boardwalks which were dotted with plaques with some great little mottos -
“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it’s a matter of choice. It’s not a thing to be waited for – it’s a thing to be achieved”. David is into his sayings on this journey.......he pulls out this one on long bike rides, when Bella is starting to fade....Shackleton’s family motto “Fortitudine Vincimus“ meaning ‘by endurance we conquer’.

More Albany photos

In the beautiful region of the Margaret River wine country we stayed at Taunton Farm in Cowaramup (have a go at pronouncing that!!) – the least likely caravan park. It was an oasis of open spaces for the mind and a farm full of animals for the kids to feed (2 donkeys – Tara & Eddie, a draft Horse – Louis, 3 cows – baby Panda, Peanut & T-Bone, 2 goats – Thelma & Louise & 3 sheep – no names). David enjoyed his 42nd birthday here, with a beautiful caravan baked lemon and poppy seed cake. David’s Dad and Bronwyn joined us for a birthday dinner. After a beautiful lunch with Michael & Bronwyn at the Knee Deep winery, we all toured the amazing Lake Cave – an underworld of stalactites and stalagmites in an active cave over 350 steps underground. The guide was very well informed and Sas & Bella soaked up the knowledge and the magic of the crystals.  We were later joined by the Campbell’s at Taunton Farm who kindly entertained Saskia & Bella while we dashed off for some wine tasting and purchasing, hardly touching the surface – our first child free time in two months!! Saskia & Bella had a time in front of the camera, center stage during a skype internet call to Northbridge Primary’s 2P & 3O classes. It’s great for them to keep in touch – we look forward to doing the same with 5R. The cows you see in the photos are part of the ‘CowParade’ artwork display, there are 85 ‘cows’ around the region that will all be sold off at charity auction.


We had a day visit to beautiful Busselton – Walt needed a service, Danielle a fix at the Goose. It was a revisit of different head spaces – David, the memories of a place of endurance, Danielle, a place of culinary delights!! We were here in December last year for the 2009 Ironman. We rode (some) of the Ironman track marked by the M-Dot and had a funny afternoon of charades on the grass – simple enjoyment.

More Cowaramup photos

We arrived at Kerrie & Quinten’s in Fremantle on Sunday afternoon. They were all incredibly generous giving up all their bedrooms for us. Our girls were thrilled to be in beautiful beds with patchwork quilts and it was so wonderful to have long hot showers, a bath and flushing toilets!!! It is so funny the things you begin to miss on the road. We were all a bit all over the place; with Q working hard and disappearing early in the morning and Kerrie doing the standard peak hour to get the kids off to school, David dropping the caravan off for a service, Danielle managing Saskia’s NAPLAN tests. Home cooked meals and way too much wine (can you drink too much wine?). We had an exciting, but somewhat frightening visit to Fremantle Prison. As a parent you want to educate your kids and show them the world, but there is a fine balance, both the ‘Big Mother’ display in the Adelaide Art Gallery and the room in Fremantle Prison where they actually hanged many criminals have tested that balance. We are very thankful for the a dinner with Ker, Q and a friend of theirs, Mark Thornley, where we poured over maps of WA and roughly mapped out a journey from Fremantle to Wyndham.
One of the main events in Freo was the long awaited visit to the barber for Shackers. YES! the beard is gone, the dimples have returned and the hair is a little shorter! The girls all watched him emerge from the barber from across the street  and all gasped at how much younger he looked……it felt like watching a different man walk towards them and it took them all a while to readjust to such a clean shaven face!!

More Fremantle photos

We went over to Rottnest Island for a couple of nights and stayed in a little bungalow on Geordie Bay. The day we arrived it was sunny and we rode bikes around exploring. There are old salt lakes that were once mined to supply Perth with all its salt, but are now protected as the Island is a National Park. The island has quite a chequered history as it was once used as an Aboriginal prison so there are little museums telling this history and sacred Aboriginal grave sites. It is a very beautiful island with gorgeous beaches and it was very quiet when we were there as it was low season and out of school holiday times, but I imagine it would be brimming with people in the summer. We did a little Quokka tour with a volunteer ranger who told us all the facts and where to find them.....the girls loved feeding them and most of them were amazingly tame.

It seems the 'Fucarwi tribe' might have some drought breaking powers. Legend has it that wherever they go, the rain soon follows! Cyclone Tracey (the second) hit that afternoon and we were nearly blown back to the mainland for the next 24 hours. Another of "Shacker's" favourite mottos is -   "Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass...it's about learning how to dance in the rain". Well, we certainly did some rain dancing here!!!! Dan is into her sayings as well........" Get me to the warmer weather Shackers or I’m pulling the pin on the lap of this big padock!!” Thankfully, the next morning was sunny and we knocked of some school work at the cafe and rode all around the island on our bikes again.

More Rottnest photos

We farewelled the Hessels in Fremantle and headed East to New Norcia via the Swan Valley where we picked up some more wine. It had been a week since we had slept in Tilli and it was amazing how much we had all missed her! We had had a great time in Freo, but it was also great to be back on the road again as our own little unit. New Norcia was a bizarre, but beautiful old town, owned entirely by the Benedictine Monks. It was full of old Spanish architecture and amazing religious art, as it was originally settled by the Spanish missions to establish an educational centre for Aboriginal children and for local families. It is renowned for its peaceful nature and is famous for its incredible bread!  After having had the water pumps and our tanks serviced and fixed in Perth, we could now free camp in more remote places (no power or water required).  We were able to stay on the football oval opposite the Monastery with nobody around (we plan to get a little more ‘remote’ than the monastic football oval).

More New Norcia photos

We headed North West for the coastal town of Jurien Bay where we spent 3 nights and enjoyed spectacular sunsets over the beach - one of the joys of the west coast. A day trip to the Pinnacles from here was one of our highlights. They are an amazing, mysterious collection of limestone pillars that fascinate scientists who still philosophise about their origins. One theory, is that there was once a forest on the land, destroyed by fire, and the remaining blackened tree stumps were covered in calcite after minerals were dissolved by water and recrystalised, eventually forming limestone cone shaped rocks. Aboriginal stories claim the Pinnacles are the finger nails of young Aboriginal men that were warned not to travel to this land due to its sinking sands. Their fingertips still protrude from the earth in the form of the Pinnacles, in their last efforts to save themselves. Sassy and Bella made an "on location" news video to send to their classes back at school and also for their distance education teacher, Gwen.

More Jurien Bay photos

Geraldton was a quick 2 night stop just restock our provisions and to install a luggage cage in the back of the truck for safety and a fridge/freezer for the truck, then it was on to Kalbarri.

Kalbarri is quiet seaside town with a beautiful inlet rich in seafood. We were able to buy spangled emperor off the back of the fishermen's boats - such a delicious feed and incredibly cheap. The waters here were teaming with crayfish. We watched the trawlers hauling in crates of live crays, but it has become such a heavily regulated industry they are immediately shipped back to Geraldton for export, by trucks that are literally waiting at the end of the wharf. It was torture not to be able to buy one direct! Our visit coincided with the weekend of the Canoe and Cray carnival - a classic local celebration that was fun to be a part of. One of the most entertaining events was the crazy boat race, where adults and kids decorated themselves and their canoes in 'themed dress-ups' and raced out around a buoy. Most of the race consisted of trying to splash and sink one another. Sas and Boo loved it and after a sugar hit from some blue fairy floss, decided to take part by jumping off the wharf fully clothed and swimming after them! It was a cold bike ride home, then out to dinner at a local gem- "Finlay's seafood BBQ". This place was a classic!! An old tin shed, rattling with old artifacts, it was once a seafood exporting business that supplied to all the markets over Australia, but after the pilots’ strikes in the 80's, it closed down and turned into a local seafood BBQ. The host, Gary, spends the night at the BBQ hot plate, flipping the red emperor. He is as rough and raw as you can possibly imagine. It is BYO wine, beer AND your glasses and the serviettes supplied are rolls of toilet paper........there is an open log camp fire and old timber tables and definitely no room for pretenses or the slightest east coast snobbery! Gary loves a chat and announces when your order is ready over his microphone......"David Shirley, get off your coit and come and pick up your own bloody tea, your wife is sick'a waitin' on ya!"

We also ventured into the beautiful.... National Park to explore the gorges - vast and so beautiful. We spotted some wild billy goats on the steep rocky ledges and had fun taking turns in testing out the echo of our voices.
One day we drove out to the ‘Pink Lake’- such are rare and bizarre sight. It is pink because of the beta-carotene found in the water. It is extracted commercially and used as a natural food colouring. The girls also tested out their driving skills on a dirt track......

More Kalbarri photos

Next it was a journey to the remote peninsula of Cape Peron, home to Monkey Mia and the clear waterways of Shark Bay. We were so over joyed to have such a stunning and WARM arrival and to see such turquoise waters. Despite the bad wrap that Monkey Mia gets for being over commercialised, we spent a fabulous 4 days here and loved just enjoying the beach, paddling in canoes with the dolphins, the sea turtles and learning so much from all the rangers. At the very first dolphin feeding on the beach at 8am, Sassy was selected from over a 100 people to be the first one to feed a dolphin.....such sweet justice for one of the most gentle and patient children on this earth! She has been so receptive to all the nature and wildlife on this trip and has now decided to become a marine biologist (for now, anyway!).

We took a boat cruise out one afternoon and the girls loved identifying the dolphins we saw by the markings on their dorsal fins with the young crew on the boat that were so good to them - they even let them hoist a sail! Another afternoon we went on a sunset cruise with our friends - the Campbells and loved the cheese plate and wine on  board!

We had a great spot 10 metres from the beach and had a pair of crazy wild emus that kept running through the park .......

We bought a little locally handcrafted emu of our own to remind us of our visit and it is now hanging in Tilli.....

More Monkey Mia photos

Our plan was to go into the National Park and camp for 3 nights at Cape Peron. The magical powers of the Fucarwi Tribe struck again and the heavens opened and the rain fell. The locals tell us that they only ever get about 4 inches of rain a year. Over the next 3 days, we got 2 of those 4!! The town was in a flap loving the downpours, but all the sandy dirt roads of the National Park were very quickly closed denying access to all vehicles. We were disappointed to miss out on seeing this part of the world and had to come up with plan B. We scouted out some more remote ‘free camp’ areas, where you can drive into little places off the beaten track often with amazing positions. We stayed one night at Whalebone Bay, just out of Shark Bay overlooking the grey ocean and spent a windy night locked down in Tilli. The next night, the weather had calmed down and we found one of our best spots yet at Goulet Bluff......

The next day we visited the Shark Bay ocean aquarium and we were lead around by incredibly knowledgeable, enthusiastic and spunky young marine biologists, educating us about all sorts of marine life at the park. Some of the most amazing were the stone fish, the squid and feeding the lemon and tiger sharks.
More Whalebone Bay photos

More Goulet Photos


Our plan from here is to spend two nights restocking fresh food from the plantations in Carnarvon, then two nights out at Quobba Station then onto Coral bay and Exmouth - the Stunning Ningaloo Reef.

There are many ups and downs on a trip like this. We had our first pangs of really missing home and friends this week and send our love to our friends Craig and Antonia, as we missed their big wedding party on Friday night. We're also missing a big Hopkins family lunch at Matt and Sarah's with guests of honour Cerentha and Brian. David was recently attacked by midges and is suffering badly with extreme itch with around 100 bites…..let’s see how ‘Shackers’ will endure this one……..

Love to all back home and around the world…..

Over and Out, ‘The Fucarwis’ x