Week 44 (22nd - 28th January)

After four days of bush camping we needed to refill our water tanks and have a decent shower. Mandurah provided us with a site in a very pleasant, informally laid out caravan park set amongst big trees and an easy five minute walk into the town centre. The last place you’d think the Beggs would choose. However, with Mandurah situated alongside the Peel Inlet the town is a most attractive place. Actually it is hardly a town any longer, more like a mini-city. We were amazed at the development that has occurred over the last ten years and still ongoing around Mandurah. When we first arrived in Australia there had been a job prospect for George here, with Water & Rivers Commission. How tempted we had been to buy land overlooking the Peel-Harvey estuary. Not much point in thinking about “what could have been” … but it may have been a smart move.
Zigzagging again we left the coastal plains and headed inland into the Darling Range. Noticing a turn off to Waroona Dam we pulled in there, liked what we saw of the bush camp in the forest and stayed. The dam is very popular for water skiing and a large gang of teenagers under the supervision of adults arrived at the same time as us and for the rest of the day the sound of motorboats towing kids around on tubes and aquaplanes, together with their laughter, filled the campground.
Close to our campsite was a tiny memorial garden to a little boy, Taylor Jamie Price, “tragically taken at this site” in 2005. Most poignant, were his soft toys, pistol and swords and a message reading “Campers, if you have the time, please water this garden of mine”.

Watering Pricey's garden - Waroona dam

With first names to match the Jamie Taylor we’d had in our lives we felt an affinity for the four year old and gladly watered his garden. On leaving Waroona Dam Lea popped into the office and asked about “Pricey”. This small boy had died at that spot in a freak accident when a branch had crashed down on him. In Africa we’d have considered it a freak accident but here, in Australia we are not so sure. Here, trees regularly shed their branches and you may recall while we were in Darwin a nine year old school boy eating his lunch in the playground died as a result of a branch falling on him. With night falling late due to daylight saving in WA, the mob of youngsters only stopped their water activities at last light. When we went to bed they were only preparing their swags and eating dinner. Later bloodcurdling screams rent the air, followed by nervous girlish giggles. A girl obviously liked the sound of her own scream and kept interspersing the first part of the night with it.

We moved on to Lane Poole Reserve, also in the Darling Range, to check out Nanga Mill camp where we had intended spending last night. We arrived in “Murray Country WA” and discovered a suite of six campgrounds spread along the course of the Murray River. George had no idea the upper reaches of the Murray River were so inviting with huge pools, rocky water slides and stretches of ideal canoeing country not to mention white water rafting come winter, otherwise we’d have come here during our Perth years. We earmarked a future stay at this outward bound haven, two hours from Perth. Fate was on our side, next day bush fires swept through this area.

Murray River

It was too early in the morning to stay plus we were keen to see things around Dwellingup. Our first stop was right up George’s street. The Forest Heritage Centre built of rammed earth in a three gum-leaf design. One leaf housed a Gallery of fine wood pieces. The middle leaf is the Australian School of Fine Wood, WA’s only training facility. Sadly no students or artisans were at work when we visited. The third leaf was the Interpretive Centre with the most interesting information on the history of the timber industry within these jarrah forests. Following on from the railway logger’s “running guard” we learnt about in Shannon National Park we were no less intrigued by the “sleeper getters” of Dwellingup. In rough and difficult living conditions these men were skilled elite craftsmen responsible for cutting railway sleepers in the jarrah forests each providing seven sleepers a day. These became WA’s earliest export (1836) supplying India, South Africa and the London Underground! When a Royal Commission recommended hewing of timber cease in 1903 the sleeper getters took matters into their own hands, and calling themselves “Teddy Bears”, formed the first “socialist” (worker-owned) mill operators in the world! When WW1 broke out the sleeper getters were among the first to enlist. Of the seven Western Australians to receive a Victoria Cross, two were sleeper getters. Outside we took the Timber Getters Trail to a reconstructed camp which gave us a good idea of their bush life (circa 1910) and later a Jarrah Forest Foray included a short canopy walk with a good view of the Centre’s unique leaf form.

We lunched in a park proclaiming Dwellingup as the “heart of steam engine country” before moving a few kilometres down the road to the Marrinup POW Camp. Who and why did the Australians need to incarcerate was our query and interest in coming here. Following a dirt road into forest and then a pathway, we found the “Cage in the Bush” which during 1943-1946 held 1 200 Italian and German soldiers captured in the Middle East. In response to a severe labour shortage in WA they were brought here to assist in rural primary industries. Most of the prisoners worked as woodcutters supplying 2 500 tons of firewood each week to Perth. The Italians arrived first and had to build their place of incarceration. With the intense love Italians have for their trades, they readily produced buildings of a high standard. Other than a few foundations, a sawn off tree used as a watch tower and a little stonemasonry work are all that remain as testament to those times. Unfortunately what were clear explanatory boards have faded, warped and cracked with exposure to the elements, a pity on a site of such historical significance. We gained much from our visit and sixty years down the line understood how isolated and foreign this environment must have been in comparison to the wet, fertile lands of Europe for these blokes. Most of the escapees were recaptured having a beer in the Dwellingup Hotel! Although one soldier succeeded in returning to Italy, obtained his discharge papers and immediately migrated back to Australia only to apprehended working in a Perth night club in 1951.

Marrinup POW camp - Dwellingup

Late that afternoon we pulled into a rest area opposite the cemetery in Pinjarra for our last night on the road. In his book “Outback on a Budget” Brian Sheedy (1987) wrote “reaching the end of a long journey is like finishing a good book. It is a relief to be there, but it hurts to let go”. After eight months on the road we will miss the constantly changing landscapes and campsites we’ve been accustomed to yet, at the same time, welcome the luxuries of life in Saxon and Paul’s modern home.

We drove through to Perth the next day, unpacked Getaway, now in need of a major service, and with the weather having turned unpleasantly hot again, were easily persuaded to christen the spa pool on S & P’s patio. With the residents of Perth all running air conditioners the local demand for electricity rose to the extent that the wiring in a box on one of electricity poles near the house burst into flame. The falling sparks generated a grass fire on the street verge that Paul and George had to put out and during the black out that followed we sat on the balcony watching the Western Power team swing into action and fix the problem. The fire brigade arrived the next day …. for what purpose we still don’t know!

In the spa pool

The scorching hot weather (42°C) persisted all weekend. Australia Day – 26th was far too hot to consider joining the throngs alongside the Swan River for the day. Instead, we drove to a nearby vantage point to watch the fireworks at 9 o’clock that night. A combination of lightning strikes and thunder behind the city added to the spectacle. We are taking a “holiday” for family business now. It began with a weekend of birthday celebrations for Saxon and Lea and the countdown to the arrival of Baby Gee follows.