Down South

Yes it has been almost a fortnight since the last blog post but I have a great excuse.  I’ve been fishing down south with Ken.  He suggested we travel south to Peaceful Bay on the coast of the Great Southern Ocean and fish for Australian Salmon.  This isn’t the type of salmon found elsewhere in the world.  Actually it’s not related in any way to salmon.  In New Zealand it is known as kahawai.  Around this time of the year the Australian Salmon start migrating north and I wanted to catch some.

Peaceful Bay is almost 500km south of Perth.  We booked two nights in the local caravan park.

The router south took us through a number of small rural towns.  They would probably be known as villages in the UK.  Much of the latter half of the route takes you through forests.  These are mostly Eucalyptus forest which are man made.  The original trees would have been hardwood Jarrah and Karri.  Most of this hardwood was felled and milled a century ago.  Vast quantities were shipped to England where it was used for floorboard.

The first european settlers initially built homes in the english style before quickly realising the design was inappropriate for the Australian climate.  They adopted the principle of thick wall and small windows with a steep pitched roof and a wide veranda around the exterior.  

A combined service station and pub

It took us 5½ hours to reach Peaceful Bay and the first task was to establish camp.

Ken had decided he didn’t want to share the rooftop tent with me opting instead for his red gazebo.  I hadn’t booked a powered campsite anticipating we could use the solar panels to keep the battery charged.

In the early evening we decided to check out the local beach.  It’s very long and the firm sand made driving relatively easy.

 

Two things happened that night.  The first was I discovered the “firm” mattress in the rooftop tent was like sleeping on a steel plate……. even with the 30mm foam topper pad.  The mattress also stank of new rubber.  The second was a major storm, which created quite a flood through the campsite.  It didn’t affect me as I was two metres above the ground.  However Ken had to get up during the night as his bed was almost in the middle of a small stream.  Neither of us got much sleep.  However it was a good test of the rooftop tent’s water resistance.

More in the next post.