World leadership

Tell you how I know the Chinese will take over and rule the world, no war or violence necessary, not at least like that of the current leader’s adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. During a life spent mostly in the lower echelons of the building industry and more recently at the gate at Bunnings I have had ample opportunity to observe men behaving badly, substitute stupidly, when faced with the challenge of accommodating their newly acquired goods in their ill accommodating vehicles. I’ve seen lads steer with one arm out the window clasped around the end of a plank while his mate supports the other end from the seat behind him. I’ve seen all manner of overloads and incompetently secured loads. I myself have been guilty of overloading roof racks till gutters broke and rain poured in. I once overloaded my roof so badly that it sunk in till I needed to crouch and then ingeniously had my friend lift the sag out with his fork lift.

Never before though did I witness, as I did on last Friday, the fantastic ingenuity of a Chinese family faced with the test of transporting the lengths of Dexion angle they had purchased to construct the cheap, sturdy frame for auntie’s sewing table where junior could have his computer work station at the other end, in the Barina, whatever (read very small car). They slung their load under the car suspended from what we now euphemistically call bumper bars. God I hope they didn’t need to go over any speed humps on their way. They weren’t the typical young larrikins I’d learnt to expect such stunts from either. Aunty and uncle took counsel from grandma Lee as she checked the knots.

Reflecting on their ingenuity that would easily be branded as foolhardiness by today’s standards of safety I began to think how my dad would have approved, at least to the physics of this design. He taught me that the lower a vehicle stored its load the more stable and energy efficient it was. Whether he would have agreed with me that these were the people about to remove us Anglos from our place of supremacy in this world is arguable though I’m confident this evidence could have influenced him. It is in my opinion a perfect example of building a better mouse trap and tends to cast all those photos we email one another of a family of six on a Honda and like in a light not of mockery. Isn’t it after all, really about what can be done.

These thoughts of my dad have inspired a re-reading of his memoirs, musings not unlike my own and which like mine are easily forgotten. They’re really very good and for the benefit of those in the next generation who may not have their own copies, and indeed for those who do I have decided here to serialise the same. Impetuous sod that I am I can’t preform this task without comment and have included these, yes there shall be more than one, in italics.

Memoirs
J. P. O’Keefe 1900 – 1981

Born in Goolmangar twentieth day of January 1900.
To begin it might be interesting to recall a little of the history of my father.
He was born in Gerringong in 1864. His parents both died in 1874 when he was 10 years old. He was reared by people by the name of Taylor. He came to Lismore in the early 1880s and worked for a time for a surveyor. He later moved to Goolmangar and worked on a farm for a man named Beverage. Prophetic don’t you think. He selected fifty acres of standing scrub adjoining the Beverage holding. This was the beginning of the farm where I was born and raised as were all the other members of my family. He cleared this land in his spare time while still working for Beverage. Built a house and bails and commenced farming, In about 1890 he married my mother nee Emily Boyle. Like him she too lost her mother when she was only seven years old and was reared by her aunt Mrs. Tom McIntyre nee Grace Boyle at that time living in Kiama. They later bought land and moved to Goolmangar.
My parents were married in the McIntyre home and I believe they left the scene of the wedding on horse back.
They bought adjoining property as time went on and so built up a self supporting farm of two hundred acres. In 1900 they built a new house which still stands. The old house they moved and it became the kitchen of the new house now long since demolished.
This is where I arrived on the scene although I was born in the old house on the side of the hill under the big fig tree.

I guess I lived a uneventful life for the (first) six years then I started school.
This is when life for me really began. My first teacher was a man called Peard. I don’t remember much about him except that he was a nice bloke. He boarded with my parents as did most of the teachers to follow. The school at that time was on the hill where Mrs. Bert McNamara now lives. It was later moved to its present site to make room for Berts house. Following Peard my next teacher was Charlie Moffit. He was a real tyrant and ruled the school with the stick. If you got your sums wrong you got the stick. Subject, grammar known these days as English would come along and he’d say, “now I’m going to make the stick fly”. We were all pretty dumb. He also had favourites and referred to Ethel Mellare as the pet lamb. We lads were all given names of the boxers of the day. Johnson, Burns, Lang, Gerome and so on. The Johnson Burns world title fight was held during his term in 1908 and he and my dad journeyed to Sydney to see it. After Moffit came Pinchin. He lived with his people up Pinchins lane and rode a horse over the hill to our school. He was a rather insignificant little and caned around the legs. I recall one day Wally a big hefty lad was called out for punishment. Wally put his hand on Pinchin’s shoulder and said “Sir your not supposed to cane around the legs” so Pinchin sent him back to his seat

Charlie Shaefer was our next teacher, he was fun, played a tin whistle, loved music. We had a concert each Friday afternoon. Did part singing and a bit of solo work. The girls were pretty good but I was the only boy to attempt a solo. Not that I was any better than anyone else, but I probably thought I was. I sang comic songs and the teacher would be in stitches. Looking back it was no wonder. Some of the songs for instance. “oh where is my little dog gone”. Some of the words. “I took my girl for a walk one day. As we strolled along by the sea. She sat down on a mossy bank. But I sat down on a bee”.
Charlie boarded with us but each week end he rode his push bike to Lismore. He’d return again on Monday morning but generally didn’t arrive till about ten o’clock. We kids would chase wallabies around the hill opposite until we saw him coming up the road. On wet days he would have to clean the mud off the wheels of his bike every hundred yards or so, so that they would go around. In wet wether my two older sisters Mary and Emily would ride to school together with me and some times the teacher would get up behind us. Sometimes too Renee and Percy Hall, who’s parents farmed the next farm, would climb aboard also. (see that’s where those Asian Honda riders got the idea,) Emily is a nice name don’t you think though I don’t think I’d like to go through life as Percy.) Making it six in all. Dad would tie a knot in Toms tail to, as he said, save the last one slipping over. Tom by the way was a big draught horse.

After Shafer came George Notley. He was a really good teacher. He had four or five lads including me, sit for the Qualifying Certificate Exam now known as the Entrance to High School. We all passed but none of us went on to high school. He formed a debating society. Had the government and opposition and we debated various subjects and held elections, mock trials, farewells and had to make the relevant speeches. (Better than my education) This I consider was a really worthwhile exercise. I know later as a young man around town I felt the benefit. If called on at any time to put a few words together I was never at a loss, and as the war was raging at the time and every week, more or less, we were farewelling one of our mates, who had enlisted I was called on to make the pretty little farewell speech.
Notley boarded with my parents and when the school was moved to its present position, he drove to school in a pony and sulky. I rode to school and my younger sister Eileen rode behind me. Later when I was not going she would go with Notley in the sulky. He had to cross Dickies crossing. This road was well patronised in those days. Sometimes after we had had rain the creek would have a fresh in it. Notley would stand on the seat to keep dry. Eilie would stand beside him and hold onto his leg. Rowdy the pony might be more or less swimming. When my mother heard about this you can imagine her reaction.

During my school days, weekends, holidays etc. I had a mate, Jack Barratt. Jack lived with his parents over the other side of the creek. We would meet at the creek and have fun. One favourite pastime was annoying carpet snakes. When we came across an old carpet we would poke it with sticks and get it really mad. It would stand up on its tail and strike at us. We kept well out of range of course. Black snakes were the most plentiful and of course the most venomous. One day I came across a blackie and whilst looking for something to dispatch it with it started down a hole in the ground. I pulled it back by the tail and tossed it away. It was on its way again so I pulled and tossed once more. Down it started the third time but would you believe it, this time it was going down backwards.

Clarrie Parmenter lived close to Jack and sometimes he would join us. One Sunday morning in 1915 Jack and Clarrie arrived at my place each riding a brand new push bike. I admired them with longing eyes and no doubt had a ride. Little was said, but on Monday dad took me to town with him and I rode home on a brand new shiny bike. He was a great dad. I had my first lesson in business early in my youth. I guess I was about ten years old. I went to town with dad. He had things to do and maybe wanted to have a beer with his friends and so didn’t want me trailing after him. He gave me some money and left me to meet him back at a certain place at a certain time. I browsed around looking in the shop windows, but my boots were hurting as I didn’t normally wear boots, so I went into Spink’s Park and sat on a seat. Soon a chap (came) along and sat beside me. He asked my name and were I lived and made himself real friendly. Yes he knew the Lees, George and Mary. They lived at Goolmangar and were well known to me. They had show horses and he rode their horses in the show. His name was George Paxton. Then suddenly he saw someone he knew. He asked if I had a zac. I didn’t know what he meant by a zac. He told me it was sixpence. Anyway I didn’t have sixpence. He said a shilling would do, so I gave him a shilling and off I went. He was soon back and miraculously saw someone else he had to see. He borrowed another shilling and off again. Back once more. By now the penny was beginning to drop. I was beginning to realise I was being got at. So I said I’d have to go and meet my father now so can I have my money back. “O yes sure I’ll go get it for you.” I said “I’ll go with you” which I did. We stopped in front of the pub. He said “you wait here and I’ll go and get it”. Kids of course couldn’t go into pubs. Well I waited and waited but he didn’t come back. I didn’t tell my dad what had gone on, nor did I tell anyone else for years. Later when I went to live in Murwillumbah as a young man I met up with a chap called Harry Paxton. He was George’s brother. He told me George lived on a farm outside of Murwillumbah so I arranged for him to bring George to see me some time when he was in town. But George died soon after that and I never got to thank him for robbing the kid in Spink’s Park.

As a teenager I was a rough Violinist. My sister Mary was just (?) as a pianist. Together we knocked out some rough music. We hadn’t much time for sheet music but anything that we could whistle we could play. At night when dad and mum and the rest of the family were playing cards in front of the kitchen fire. Mary and I would be belting it out in the parlour as we called the front room. At times we would provide the music for a do at the Coffee Camp Hall. We never got any money for it. I guess the dos were mostly in the nature of a send off or some such where nobody pays.

After leaving school I worked for a couple of years on the farm. This involved handling stock, clearing land and ploughing etc. We used a single furrow moll (?) board plough drawn by four bullocks.
In 1915, the war raging, compulsory training for 15 to 18 years living within a certain distance of a training centre was introduced. At that time I was outside the area. Later when I moved to Lismore to attend school (as you will hear later) I had to report for a medical. I was given an exemption due to a heart condition. I guess the majority of the lads who attended with me that day, and passed as fit, are long since dead.
Then when I was sixteen I remember dad and mum sitting me down for a talk. They inferred that there wasn’t really room for me on the farm. To be continued…
Phew! That’s to the end of the third page of a seventeen page monologue and it’s arduous. I’m certainly not about to launch a career typing students papers for them though I suppose the computer has done for that old profession. It’s rewarding though and the most difficult part is holding back from making comments that would spoil a flow that I at least regard as being of merit. What about the sort of talk mum and dad gathered you for at sixteen in those days eh. Anyway Time and cognisance permitting I shall publish some more next week. Meanwhile Aster la vista babies.

In Praise of Tarts

I LIKE PORTUGUESE TARTS; DO YOU?
Screaming at capacity from his stroller, surely in fear of the devil herself, in isle three yesterday, I made a lame attempt to console the toddler with some recognition. Something along the lines of “What’s happening man” or “be cool fool” or “chill child” I dunn’o. His dad helpfully provided that “he dropped his sausage” while he rudely ignored me. In adult terms his boisterous reaction to the loss of a half eaten snag would need to be set in a Changi prison camp late 1944. Here at Bunnings the adult reaction varies between embarrassment (a real pain the toddler knows nothing of yet) that we’ve created a grease slick someone will slip on, through to another day another sausage, to thank god it was beginning to make me feel sick anyway. Of course to the toddler who was still unsure that there would be another day, this first, was the only sausage and this was a real disaster that deserved be wailed over. Little did he know that far greater pains like the afore mentioned embarrassment, some of which his parents were now experiencing, would soon have to be endured in silence and with the greatest effort to show no sign at all.

It struck me then that our attitude to loss matures as we do from a point where no cost of replacement would be too great to a point where any cost would be too much and loss would in fact be welcome. A growing number of folk in fact are now prepared to invest in loss as evidenced by Phillip Nitschke’s ability to occupy media space and that he prowls in an admittedly small hatch back with his name and website address emblazoned boldly as I witnessed in London Street recently. Yes according to my observation he does house calls.

This maturation of attitude to loss (MAT2L in text speak) is enormously influential on our lives especially our commercial lives, a fact which has not escaped the insurance industry but I’m not here to bore you with a lesson in economics or to sell you insurance. It’s the fate of the humble Portuguese tart that I wish to address. If there is to be a continuing market for Portuguese tarts (you remember $2.00ea) bakers are going to have to modify if not revolutionise their marketing techniques. As it now stands a family size Cadbury hazelnut chocolate block costs $4.81 or 2.405 Portuguese tarts. A Good (according to my receipt) mango costs $2.49 or 1.245 Portuguese Tarts. Line up the three products, one family size Cadbury hazelnut block, 1.931 Mangoes and 2.4 Portuguese tarts and to the self funded mature punter the chock block is the obvious outright winner. Lets face it, to those in this category one of these can be the price of good, well adequate sex. Health fanatics may choose the 1.931 mangoes but no one faced with the purely economic choice is going to choose the tarts and I can’t imagine what sex you’d get for,no not with, 2.4 Portuguese tarts. As I see it the baker has only three options. One: Start marketing their tarts to those such as my toddler who are not yet equipped to be rational but have screaming clout. Two: market their product by weight at a variable daily rate thus tricking codgers like me who don’t do the math or check their change. Three: Invent and spread the rumour that Portuguese tarts have a secret ingredient that (a) increases libido (b) extends life or (c) both.

I raise these matters in the hope that those bakers of tarts might survive without resorting to that popular survival ploy of substituting or reducing ingredients to cut costs, a sort of “get it made in China” phenomena the end result of which is a product that looks sort of like a Portuguese tart but by the miracle of artificial colour flavouring and preservative turns into a homogenous Mars Bar like gum relating to the original product is in name and vague memory only.

Well dignity I suppose

I have written the following in the hope that Jack might find it a worthwhile tool to promote my useful qualities, or his useful connections, to the union movement for whom he has recently gone to work. I have purposely written it in the first person, identifying thus with those who I wish to influence rather than as the despised underclass I represent. Wadd’ya think How-am-I-goin.

Don’t you feel that it is time, now well into the second half of the post war decade, that the haves began to pay respect to those have nots to whom they owe such a great debt. Just as surely as the law enforcement industry from the judges through lawyers, police , sheriffs, warders and all their attendant staff and institution are dependant on crime and practising criminals, their crop, their stock in trade so to speak, so are the well to do dependant on the vast majority of nere-do-wells for their privileged status.

At the end of the Great (WW2) War as shell shocked nations began the mighty task of rebuilding, it seems to one such as I, born in that year, that there was great dignity in the efforts of individuals working to build homes families and workplaces, a dignity from which was born the myth of the battler. Of course there were also those of great wealth many of whom had profited from war but vast respect was apportioned not to them but to the many who struggled as best the could to rebuild society. Nowadays, and for some decades sadly, a cult of riches has dominated not just here in Sydney Australia, but across the globe. A cult that has no time for the poor, that belittles their value and indeed does all in its power to make them feel guilt for their state in life. The philosophy of Marx and its implementation by and Lenin, Engles and Trotsky raised a revolution that failed a decade or two ago and this failure was embraced by the rich as justification for their mantra as proclaimed by Hollywood’s Gordon Gecko that Greed is good and by default, lack thereof (read poor) is bad.

Now it does not take very great intelligence to see and recognise that vast wealth is absolutely dependent on a large, extra large, pool of poor. Take Australia today as an easy example. Continuously wealthy and able to cruise through the speed humps of the Asian meltdown the Dot-com bust and even it seems the current sub prime mortgage crisis decimating world markets. How? By selling filthy coal, iron ore and other minerals, not to mention gas, to upwardly mobile China whose population outnumbering us 250,000 to 1 must wait at least two more generations to come close to our standard of living. Do we as an affluent nation owe these 250,000 to one people a debt of gratitude? I think so. Let’s look at a scale not so grand. The average Australian wage is in the vicinity of $55,000 per year. Ignoring spikes by the C.E.O. of Macquarie Bank and like this still leaves a great number of folk on over $100,000 PA a great deal wealthier than the vast majority of their peers on less than $25,000. Who you say are these less than $25K earners. Well students serving you your meal and coffee, the single parent minding your kids, the recent migrant washing your clothes, the apprentice repairing your car, the backpacker picking your fruit and the senior in fluorescent vest herding you at Town Hall Station. Imagine if you can a nation, no town, where everyone earned as you do $100K+. You’d be fixing your own car, minding your own kids and I don’t see how you’d get your dry cleaning done. Earning $100K wouldn’t seem so flash anymore would it.

Would it be so hard to appoint to these, not so fortunate as us, a degree of dignity? Could we possibly ignore their dollar value and approach them as equals? Do we have to repeat past mistakes, to re-invent aristocracies because the simple pleasures of wealth, a beautiful home and good food on the table, are not enough? Must we elevate ourselves by imagining an underclass and transpose to them the blame for their own miserable existence so that we might feel that much better? I think we could rise above such base desire and with our $100G+ per anum embrace loftier philosophies like Libertie, Egalite, Fraternitie, those of that earlier revolution, with which we found little fault.

THE philosopher

Oops!

Stepson?? Lets not start rumours here. Of course, I meant Godson.

Hugh

Birthday wishes

A very happy birthday to SOK (my baby bro and stepson) on this very happy SORRY DAY

Hugh

Hum Drum

OK if you realy want to know heres a little hum drum
Got my little car registered today with a day to spare. It was a bit like that assignment that you worry about but leave to the last moment when it is easily accomplished. Then you wonder if you hadn’t worried would it still have been so easy or was all that worrying necessary to achieve this result. Mmmm?
Spent last weekend, you remember - very wet very gloomy if you were in Sydney at least – with a severe headache worrying about registration, hence no blog. Sorry. There I’ve said it. Back to work Wednesday fit as a fiddle wondering was that headache necessary so that I could now feel so good. Mmmm?

On the lighter side, this morning on my walk I was overtaken by the very essence of a SSNAG, the first S which I have added is for sporty and you know the rest. Wearing sensitively faded baggy tee and similar shorts over some sort of Cathy Freeman type racing suit tights and joggers. With just the right amount of orange flash on his backpack, he was pushing junior in one of those three wheel racing strollers and at the same time reading to him from the pages of an early reader picture book that junior turned in his lap. I didn’t stop him to ask of their destinations but my imagination took flight to green ecological recycling day care centres and stockbroking co-ops that save whales and make a motza in the process.

Later in the street between Stanmore station and the school I found a most intriguing bauble consisting of a dark tinted plastic case, 21mm x 16mm x 6mm, dimly concealing metallic, I think, wheels and sprogs with a Goth like print inscription “DEATH NOTE” T’s like crosses. Attached by the tiniest ball chain is a thin leather carry type strap imprinted with the following hieroglyph constructed with capital letters from the alphabet starting with a backward E followed by a T which has fallen to its left (our right) and lays on its side. Next come ONH all upright followed by T again on its side and A also on its side so that combined with the T it forms a sort of arrow and seems to give direction. This is followed by an E and a backward D. All is then repeated one more time. I would not be bothering you with all this detail but that feverish imagination has devised a potential Davinci Code like spy network drop and should I be found dead or not found at all in the near future, it seems essential to leave all possible clues. It is my intention to try to open the case though before I do I shall photograph it and Blogspot permitting shall exhibit said photos here.
This brings me to my beef with blogspot. I think I complained quite recently about the clock around the shield on the picture upload stopping at nine, well since then the option to upload has disappeared altogether and I’ve been waiting to see how others were faring. Now I see that Chrisue are having no problem and I promise to try again though if no photos accompany this blog you’ll know I still have a problem and I expect you to sort it.

Now on re reading I suspect you have all given up and gone to myspace or that phenomenally popular face book which is worming every last personal detail of your lives out of you so that in the near future you’ll have no privacy but will instead be a mere cipher available to any cooperation or political; persuasion that sees fit to use and abuse you. In this event I don’t want to hear anyone trying to blame me for boring you into it so I’ll just go now OK.

Nope no pics

Harrumph!

Jacky Orszaczsky's Wake

So you've been missing me eh, please find here at lrast a little of what I've been up to

I use to waste a bit of time at the Harold Park Hotel a number of years ago before a disastrous business deal saw it and the adjacent apartment development closed down for four maybe five years. It was then famous as a stand up comedy venue (I saw Robin Williams preform there) but the majority of the time I spent there was at so called happy hour evenings with a couple of girl friends who lived in a small terrace across the road and other friends. A nice quite pub with easy parking and good pool tables it was very pleasant as long as the trots weren’t on at Harold Park Paceway just across the street, then it was bedlam and chaos and certainly avoided by my friends and I.

So it was with some surprise that I heard the news that the recently departed Jacky Orszaczsky’s wake was to be held there last Sunday evening at four PM. I’d gotten use to its appearance as a demolition site and was most surprised at its re emergence as an entertainment zone, just as it seems it was, to others in the neighbourhood.

Jacky Orszaczsky though not a household name (too difficult to spell and pronounce) was to the musicians of Australia and especially those of Sydney, a very important guide and mentor known as the godfather. His Tuesday night gigs in recent years at The Rose in Erskinville and @ Newtown billed as Jacky Orszaczsky and Friends attracted most musicians free of commitment that night and it was not uncommon to be entertained by up to a fifteen piece orchestra masterfully arranged and conducted by Jacky from his stool ,side stage with his piccolo bass. These were not large venues, especially the Rose, but the audiences were, and the crush and clamour to be front of stage and with a drink, for what I always imagined was the best music you could hear in any part of the world that night, will be a memory I shall forever cherish.

Yes Jacky could pull a crowd and his memorial wake at the Harold Park was no exception. When I arrived at about four forty there were crowds spilling into the street, forty or more patrons in something like cues at each of the three bars, buying as many beers and bottles of sparkling wine their hands could carry to avoid another long wait. Music was provided at this early stage by an all string, I don’t know, bush band like combo but at about five thirty an ensemble of Jacky Orszaczsky and Friends, or friends minus Jacky hit the stage and the ambience of the Rose of old descended on the thrilled crowd. Before they could finish the first signature number though the crowd was further swelled with the arrival of maybe twelve members of the local constabularies, summoned by the outraged neighbour, protesting the behaviour of these middle aged to senior delinquents who dared to disturb his Sunday afternoon snooze.

From then till the mid evening close we were to have the comforting security of the police force, all of the Leichhardt and Glebe rosters I imagine, guarding us from the likely attacks of enraged neighbours. The price for their protection was a constant monitoring of noise levels and guerrilla skirmishes between patrons and police for pavement drinking space. The irony of all this is that the complaining neighbours who bought and renovated during the demise of the pub, on the expert recommendation of the real estate agent who swore that it would never re open, (fingers crossed) must on race meeting nights put up with race calls and assorted announcements through a PA system that can be heard two kilometres away in Balmain and huge crowds of drunken yobs drowning their sorrows with what little money they didn’t loose on the neddies.

All told the result was an event of just the chaotic proportions that Jacky revelled in, a fact not missed by the patrons who had a wonderful time remembering just what it was like being in the company of The Godfather.

Farewell Jacky.

Lost

Robert, where are you?

Busselton to Esperence

After spending the last 4 weeks in the south west of WA we are soon to start heading across the Nullabor Plain eastward bound. We have had two weeks in the Busselton – Dunsborough coast of WA during the school holidays so the park was full of families, kids, bikes and afternoon cricket games, a nice change from the usual grey nomad neighbors. We visited the Margaret river area, Augusta, Cape Leeuwin ( most south westerly point in Aus) and Cape Naturalist, enjoying some more beautiful WA coastal scenery. The temperatures have been comfortably cooler than previous, usually in the 16 to 26 range. It has been nice to be in countryside with grass and tall trees instead of the scrubby desert that is the rest of WA. This part of the coast is very popular for the sail boarders and kite surfers as shown in the photos. Busselton is also famous for its jetty which goes 2 klm out to sea, and is a challenging walk on a windy day. Busselton had its annual festival for a week while we were there which provided lots of entertainment for the holiday makers. Dunsborough to WA is a bit like Byron Bay to NSW with lots of million dollar “weekenders” and full of wealthy holiday makers.

Olly had a dose of kennel cough so we had him to the vet and had to keep him away from other dogs for a week. It was not hard as his choking cough sounded terrible, but he was back to normal after a week. We put him in a boarding kennel for a day when we went to Rottnest Island and this is where he caught it.

From Busselton we drove through the Kari and Jarrah forests of the Pemberton area to Denmark on WA’s windy south coast. The caravan park site was about 6 meters from the edge of the water at Wilson Inlet at Denmark, providing a beautiful outlook but very exposed to the wind. We arrived here on the Australia Day long weekend to find out that there was an outdoor concert in the Madfish winery with John Butler Trio and the Waifs so the park was booked out with lots of mainly younger people from all over the south west who had come for the concert. The atmosphere was lots of fun. Pity the tickets were sold out. From Denmark we visited Albany and the tourist attractions there as well as taking the tree top walk near Walpole (see photos).

From Denmark we went to Bremer Bay for two nights which while being 100 klm out of the way was again beautiful and recommended. Then onto Esperence, where we have been for the past week. We spent a half day visiting the Cape Le Grande national park whose bays are fringed with the whitest sand and have the clearest aqua coloured waters imaginable. The day was warm and calm enough for me to have a swim in the Southern Ocean, a first time for me. Another scenic part of the WA south coast.

We plan to leave here tomorrow to head through Norseman and on eastwards. The mornings here have been nice but strong south easterly wind blow each afternoon. While the high pressure systems are in the bight they will create head winds for our trip east, but we will try to get an early start each day before the winds pick up. We are really looking forward to experiencing the Nullabor.

On our first night in Esperence we had a thunder storm with a little rain but it seems we have been in a better place for caravan living this summer as opposed to the east coast. Hope the rain stops over there by the autumn.

That’s all the news for now and we are all well and hope you are too.

Chris, Sue & Olly.


Cape Naturaliste

Enjoying the wind at Margaret River

Busselton from end of jetty

View from van site at Denmark

Tree top Walk 40mtr high

Wind turbine and car at Bremer Bay

Esperence Coast

Hellfire Bay High from Sue

Beautifull Hellfire Bay in Cape Le Grands NP

Floating in the Southern Ocean at Hellfire Bay