Harvest Season in WA.

Time for a bit of an update. We have mentioned we organised jobs with CBH ( Co-Operative Bulk Handling) here in WA. Well, the season is on the way and we are here in Arrino working at a grain receival site for a couple of months or how long the harvest season lasts.

We were a bit relieved to leave Grealton as both of us didn't like it much. I'm not a fan of the beach and the jobs we had there turned out to be caustic to our well being. My job at Bolts 'R' Us in Grealdton ended up in a shouting match between the owner, an 80 year old recalcitrant, and I ending in a walkout by me. He was a shit of a man to work for and belittled the staff in front of customers. Three of us were there, none now. Anyway........enough of the pricks in the world.

Trace and I are loving being in the bush again and CBH are a good mob to work for. Trace is doing grain sampling and I am a RPO (Receival Point Operator), receiving the wheat grain into the plant and storing it.

There is no phone reception ( sitting at the pub in Three Springs composing this ) and about 3 houses in Arrino along with the receival site. Doing without the internet is a good thing as we tend to have a bit of a reliance on the internet and SMS.

 This is what we are harvesting.

 Trace at her weigh bridge.

 We only have to drive up the road 8 Klm to get internet and make a phone call on the mobile.

Were having a good time working some good hours and are expected to ramp up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week next week, good money. It's interesting to learn how the wheat farmers are doing their business and how the weather dictates the harvest season. As I sit writing this there are a couple of farmers talking at the pub about their crops and when and when not to harvest. Funny thing is, Trace and I know what they are talking about.

That's it for now. We have a couple of months of hard work up till Christmas and then we will be back on the road again, doing the south of WA.

Failed attempt to go camping.

We decided to get out of town during the week and go camping about 90K out east during the week. We planned to go to Coalseam National Park to get back out into the bush for a couple of days. We loaded up the car and the swag and headed out to the park. Wet all the way out and rain when we got out there, very muddy.

Too wet for the swag on the ground and it turned out you could not have a fire, so cold and wet without a fire did not appeal to us. So we had some lunch and headed back to Geraldton, on the way visiting a wind farm.

The wind farm sits just out the back of Geraldton and consists of 4 different companies and their turbines, 54 in all. Great sight out there in the wind as the blades are massive and make a fair bit of noise as they move through the air.

Trace giving some perspective at the large end of the blade.

Now to wash the car from the buddy adventures in Coalseam National Park.

That's all for now! We should hear confirmation of our employment at CBH this week or next. Getting a bit excited about that and moving away from the coast and getting out bush again.

Geraldton............For Now.

We got to Geraldton and started looking for a bit of work. We have the ambition to work the wheat harvest here in the west and we are in the wheat belt, so good a place as any.

 

Geraldton Port and a bit of town.

We registered for the harvest and got interviews and practically have the job, just waiting for the confirmation email. They love couples working at the remote grain receival sites as many people don't want to go out bush. We want to!!

Geraldton is not to our liking, Trace and I both don't like it much but we have jobs and the harvest starts in a month or two so......... We had a look at the HMAS Sydney monument that is here in town and it's fantastic. The HMAS Sydney sunk off the coast of WA and took 645 men in WWII. There is a seagull in the dome for every man.

Life here revolves around a bit of fishing and a large port for ore and Wheat. I am again working in a hardware shop selling tools, bolts and Nuts. I don't like the job, but it puts money in the bank. Trace is working for the caravan park we are staying in which gives us cheap site fees, water, gas and power.

We are both looking forward to starting to work for CBH Group (Co-Operative Bulk Handling) and heading out bush. The windy wet weather on the coast does not impress either of us. :-)

We are still having a ball though!

Kalbarri National Park.

On the way down the coast we stopped in to see Kalbarri and the national park. Kalbarri is a nice seaside town that is full of character, but the main attraction is the national park there.

The major geographical features of the park include the Murchison River gorge which runs for nearly 80 km on the lower reaches of the Murchison River. 

We had a good time having a look around the park with most of the features a short walk from car parks. This was good for the injured and swollen ankled Trace. The main feature and draw card of the park is a rock formation called "Natures Window". Now we have seen a few of these windows on our travels but this one was cool.

On to Geraldton where we we again look for work.

Floods, Exmouth and Cape Range National Park.

After having Tracey's ankle checked out at Tom Price Hospital we headed for the coast again, looking forward to Exmouth and Cape Range National Park. On our way out there were massive rains and Exmouth was flooded along with half the camp sites in Cape Range. All the pristine snorkeling waters were muddied with the run off from the floods.

We decided to give it a miss and ended up on the coral Coast around the Shark Bay area. Another lovely area on the coast near Monkey Mia.

We got a good campsite on top of a bluff at Whale Bone Bay and enjoyed the sunsets and watching the fish, rays and sharks cruise by us below.

We are now leaving for Kalbarri and the National Park there. Should be good as we have heard a lot of good things about it.

Port Headland No Go......So Off we go!

We spent a fair bit of time in Port Headland to get a job but it seemed you needed to "know someone" to get into the "gang" in Headland. These mine towns are clicky mob's. It's expensive here as well, we paid over $500 for a caravan site for a week, if we were permanent they wanted $2500 bond for a site!!
Not to worry we decided to head off and have a look at Karijini National Park. Awesome! is a word. We have not seen such beauty since the Gibb River Road. We loved it.

We had a great time walking all the gorges the park had to offer.

On the last day Trace rolled her ankle on a rock. So we headed out and rested up in a free camp for a few days after having the ankle checked out at Tom Price Hospital. All OK just a sprain thank goodness.

Tom Price, Paraburdoo and onto the coast.

The Pilbara, Cape Keraudren

We are making our way slowly down the coast of Western Australia and have reached Port Headland, not before we visited 80 Mile Beach and Cape Keraudren National Park.

                                                                   80 Mile Beach

                                                         

80 Mile Beach was beautiful but we headed down the road a bit to Cape Keraudren because it was going to be a bit cheaper. Tried a bit of fishing to no avail, I hear a quote the other day "Australia's most sustainable fisherman" that's me. :-) We had a good time fishing though and enjoyed the massive sea turtles cruising by us while we fished.

When we got to Cape Keraudren national Park we were glad. We had our choice of camps and $12 for a night for the two of us instead of $41 at 80 Mile. Better views at the cape as well.

As mentioned we are in Port Headland at the moment looking at the job situation as there is a lot of money to be made here is town. Our initial gut feeling though is that we don't like the place as it feels like the town is a massive mine site. I mean everything! Shopping centers, roads and caravan parks. Just a sea of high vis. Might head to Karratha. We'll see.

Broome............Again.

We had an uneventful trip from Kununurra to Broome, free camping along the way and taking it pretty easy. As we approached Broome the weather got hotter and more humid as we got closer, the day we arrived it was high 38 degrees and filthy humidity!

We caught up on some washing, saw a few friends and got a few running repair jobs on the van done, including insulating the poor 12v fridge as in this hot humid weather as it struggles a bit. I encased the fridge in high density refrigeration foam and it seems to have made a difference, free camping will be the tell tale.

We spent the obligatory sunset on Cable Beach one night and had a couple of quiet beers. Always good to see the sun set over the water.

This time we are off down the west coast as we set out to do a couple of years ago, looking at stopping at 80 mile beach to have a look. 80 mile is half way between Broome and Port Headland and the fishing is supposed to be good, we'll see!

Darwin To Kununurra Via Asia.

We finally got to Darwin and lobbed in at my uncles place at Berry Springs. He was good enough to look after the van and car for us when we went overseas.

Set off from Darwin on 12 March for our month long holiday to Asia, starting in Kuala Lumpur for a few days then we caught the train to Penang for a couple of days.  While in KL and Penang we indulged in the awesomeness of the Roti Canai and curry sauce (delicious!).  

                                                                        ROTI

We went to Batu Caves and shopping, which was out of insane as most of the shopping centers were all high end shops like Hugo Boss, Tag, Prada etc but good fun to look. 

BATU CAVES

After leaving Penang we flew to Siem Reap in Cambodia for a week.  Whilst in Siem Reap we went to an army camp and we shot an M16 and an AK47 which was so exhilarating :-)  We also went to Ankor Wat and surrounding temples.

ON THE RANGE!

TEMPLE IN CAMBODIA.

From Cambodia we went to Thailand where we spent the last 2 weeks.  We stayed in a place called Kanchanaburi for the first week and just relaxed and enjoyed how delicious the food is.  The last week we spent in Bangkok exploring and visiting the markets and shopping. In one of the shopping centres they sold Lamborghini's!!!

Now we are on the road again and we have once again left Darwin and are now in Kununurra on our way to Broome where this time we will only be spending a couple of days and then continue our way down the west coast.

Excited that we are now on our west coast journey.

On The Road Again..........

Here we sit in Katherine after taking a few days to get up here. It's hot and humid here but we are getting used to it pretty quickly, reminds me of Broome in the wet season. Thing is, we were so used to the dry heat of Alice Springs it's a bit of a shock!

We hit the road on Monday from Alice and leisurely made our way north, no stress as we did a few hundred K's a day. It's good to be on the move again, having spent the last year in Alice we had itchy feet. The initial idea was to spend some time in the Alice to see if it were a place to forge a new life. Not to be, just didn't "feel" like home I guess.

The road is pretty straight up the Stuart highway, our first camp was at the Devils marbles, we love this place so we set up camp. A couple hours later some kids turned up and made a lot of noise and proceeded to set up camp right near us, complete with a couple of dogs! We left in the morning.

Managed to get some nice photos of  the Devils Marbles at Sunset.

From here we headed to Katherine to stay for a few days, stopped at Mataranka for a while and had a swim at Bitter Springs. The weather was Very hot here, a fine introduction to the wet season up here. 

Bitter Springs

All the way up the Stuart Highway there were flying ants as the wet weather and heat had hatched them. Every time we stopped for fuel we found we had to clean the bugs off the windscreen, radiator and front of the car. Even got a piece of fly screen on the grill to prevent the radiator getting clogged up. Took minutes for the windscreen to become covered in the little critters when back on the move, you had to resist the temptation to use the windscreen wipers as they are so greasy and you couldn't get the screen quite clean.

Pesky Flying Ants

We leave Katherine tomorrow for Darwin where we will be staying with my uncle. We have flights booked for Asia on the 11th February from Darwin. So that is our next move, Asia for a month.