We awoke with sunlight flooding our caravans and apart from a niggly wind it was perfect weather for Christmas Day. Saxon, Paul and Harley, all wearing jelly-bean Christmas hats, came to rout us from our bed for present opening and breakfast in the annexe of their caravan. So began a time of feasting and family togetherness that rolled on for the rest of the week – walking and driving some of the length of Cheyne’s Beach (which we discovered originally housed a whaling station here financed by George Cheyne, hence given his name), fishing in the Waychinicup Inlet (unsuccessfully as usual) and exercising Harley in our new surrounds. Strangely, during our Christmas day walk on the beach we found many sea and wind crafted balls made from detritus and since we weren’t in England with snow balls we dubbed these sun-balls. Naturally, a good fight ensued on the beach with Harley well in the fray.
Sun-ball fight
Doctor Ferret earned an awesome reputation for sweet talking pregnant ladies into prostrating themselves on the floor for the “ring test” diagnosis of the baby’s sex during his Kariba days. Saxon and Paul were keen to maintain this history and made an appointment for Christmas day. Verdict: the consistent pendulum swing back and forth suggested a boy. Time will tell. Another of Doc Ferret’s star turns from the annals of family history is HIS CAKE! Saxon had brought all the ingredients from the South African shop in Perth, Cape to Cairo, and her Dad was on orders to make it on Christmas Day. For nightly entertainment a mighty Scrabble tournament, interspersed by “Balderdash”, took place over the week with Paul becoming the overall Scrabble champion and Saxon the best bull-duster. The heat of Boxing Day brought the locust plague to the campground and provided many children stroke practise with their tennis racquets and cricket bats.
Chicken Land! In the lead up to moving to Mt Barker Paul led us to believe that this was the heart of chicken land as a result of adverts on TV pushing free range chickens that roam the village and have to be sent home at pub closing time. No sooner had we set up in our new park, where sites were well spaced in a large circle around a grassed area with an ablution block in the centre, than a group of chickens arrived scratching away amongst the leaf litter. Turned out they were the owner’s chickens and we have yet to spot a free range farm. No prize for guessing who is a sucker for TV adverts!
Paul and Lea popped in to the Mt Barker History Museum next door to the caravan park. “Popped in” did we say … they were there for hours and returned quite weak with heat fatigue. But who were they to complain when their guide, well into her eighties, was on her third non-stop round with the next set of visitors when they left. Paul had brought his guitar and bongos and the two “musos” had a “jam session” as the spaciousness of this campsite allowed for a degree of caterwauling to go un-noticed.
The Heritage Trail took us to the summit of Mt Barker Hill affording views north to the Stirling Range, an area that we will be visiting next week, and south to Albany with a patchwork of tree farms, vineyards and wheat fields in between. St Werburgh’s Chapel built in 1872 on a private estate to serve the pioneers in the district interested us as it is one of 32 religious buildings dedicated to Saint Werburgh around the world, one of which is in Zimbabwe. Vineyards equal at least one visit to a winery and we chose Duke’s vineyard with his “Blue Shed” cellar outlet and his wife’s studio gallery with Gibraltar Rock in the Porongurup National Park as a backdrop. Saxon, outside with Harley, was visibly daunted by a flock of guinea fowl. Observing from the “Blue Shed” Duke explained the guinea fowl formation ominously advancing upon Harley was due to mistaken identity as a fox.
After bidding farewell to Saxon and Paul, returning to spend New Year in Perth, we found the emptiness unbearable and “took to the hills” that afternoon. Harley dog had prevented us from visiting Porongurup National Park a nearby, fairly small reserve where the brochure we had us believe that “easy walking tracks lead to most of the peaks”. Far from it! The five km long Nancy Peak circuit that took us through tall karri forests to a couple of the granite peaks that dominate the park had Lea’s heart thumping far too fast for her liking on the steep inclines. How many Christmas pounds she’d lose was the saving grace!
Porongurup National Park
In the pleasant setting of Mt Barker Caravan Park with its strong essence of Australia, large native trees and abundance of magpies, parrots and kookaburras, we have been glued to the TV watching the Hopman Cup tennis. It was a good excuse to keep out of the hot sun. As the Old Year departed we enjoyed a quiet dinner together until the kookaburras gave us the finest rendition of hoots, cackles, chuckles and giggles that we have ever heard. As Helen Keller said “the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”. How lucky are we? In reality it isn’t luck, it’s just being brave enough to take a chance and what we achieved this year reinforces this all the more.
We can but hope that 2007 unfolds with as many blessings as the last.
Happy New Year!
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