Onwards and southwards

Tonight we reached Albany (a suburb called Kalgan on the Kalgan River). We have been out of phone and wifi range so I have just posted some pictures from yesterday. Today it rained but it wasn’t quite as windy. 

When I booked this place and yesterday I did it by email but that wasn’t what I was supposed to do. The first place said it didn’t matter and I paid up when we arrived, he was a bit grumpy. I was supposed to book online. Stupid me thought that meant by email. No I was supposed to go to the website and pay. Oh well, I’ll get over that. When we drove onto this town my emails all came in at once which a reply from this park. I was supposed to pay first and could arrive after midday and see if they had room. It was 11.30 so we pulled up outside the office in the pouring rain and waited. Not a problem as I have a book and Bob checked his emails. Anyway I was beckoned in and reprimanded severely for parking in the WRONG place and it wasn’t yet midday. Well sorry! I didn’t see any signs as it was pouring with rain and I didn’t know we could not come because I couldn’t get my emails. I apologised and was very polite and finally made the lady realise we hadn’t meant to be so naughty. 

It turns out a child had almost been run over here last week and the police were asking them to get people to park outside the gate. I could see the lady was very upset about that and after awhile found out her father used to run the car races in Bathurst. I think we left on reasonable terms. But they need to review their signs to make it clear for customers what they want. 

So the last two days have now passed and we look forward to exploring Albany tomorrow. The Noongar people called this place Kinjarling which means “place of rain”. Blimey. We did visit this town back in 2001 on a bus trip but we don’t have a lot of memories to be honest except a spectacular view of the harbour. 

The main was an unexpected find at a remote village called Wellstead. There were some good review of a community cafe. It was morning tea time so we stopped for a break and went in. There is a community run complex with volunteer workers. The lady was SO friendly and made us a cuppa. We had home made melting moment biscuits and left with some honey from the gift shop plus 2 books, some bookmarks, maps and 2 RAT tests for free. This diorama was in the library and was museum quality showing local flora and fauna from this area. It was really well done. I’ll try and upload a collage of the views we had along the way. It’s a pretty place.