Howdy from the Gold Fields

8/1/2007

Hi family and friends,

After a terrific time in Perth we finally packed up our little site at Scarborough this morning and set off.
Just a quick update on our last few days in Perth: As you know, we had a great day at Rottnest Island on Saturday. On Friday we had an interesting tour through old Fremantle Gaol, a haunting place, followed by a coffee at one of the trendy cafes down there. That afternoon we went windsurfing at Safety Bay- good fun!
Yesterday, Sunday, it was lovely and sunny for our final day in Perth. I did my usual morning walk then went to the beach. It was perfect, with just a light offshore breeze and the usual sparkling water. We had some lunch back at the caravan and then the seabreeze started so we drove down to Safety Bay again for a final afternoon windsurfing. It was good fun- I sailed Adam’s new board which is the smallest board I have tried. It feels so rewarding to try and master new skills and to be sailing that board and going fast! I’m really pleased with how far I’ve come since my first days windsurfing in Geraldton, and so is Adam. We were out on the water for a couple of hours before we packed up and headed back to the van. We quickly showered and went over to Marcus’ place for pizza with him and Tarni and Beau, for our final night in Perth, which was nice (plus we were starving after all the windsurfing). It’s been terrific having the time over here to spend with them and we already have begun discussing future trips west- I’d love to come back with Mum and Dad also to explore with them some of the terrific places we have seen.

Anyway, today we had to make a decision on where to head next, as the recent severe storm in Esperance has left the main highway heading east from Bremmer Bay closed, due to a washed out bridge. Bremmer Bay was to be our next stop, then Esperance. We did not however, want to get stuck in Bremmer Bay and have to backtrack hundreds of kilometres. I rang this morning to check on the state of the road and was told it would not open this week, therefore we decided we would sadly have to skip Bremmer Bay. Instead, we today headed directly east on a huge drive to Kalgoorlie. We got here about 8pm and we are now exhausted (it’s about 11pm). It wasn’t a place we expected to see on this trip, but it will be interested exploring this goldfields area tomorrow and we are looking forward to it…lots of heritage buildings and old ghost towns from the gold rush days, plus there is a viewing platform into the pit of Australia’s largest operating gold mine. It’s very hot again- to be expected, we are in Kalgoorlie in January after all! It’s even hot now (it was still 30 degrees at 8pm). We’ll stop here a couple of nights, then head south to Norseman. We then have to decide whether to head south to Esperance or turn and head east. I think at this stage we’ll still try and head down to the coast as it’s supposed to be beautiful (hopefully the storm won’t have caused too much damage to the national parks etc. and the water isn’t too murky etc), and we’ll then have to backtrack the 200kms or so to Norseman to then head east. Esperance has suffered a lot of damage and has qualified for Disaster Relief- we feel for the people there and the farmers who have lost a lot of stock.

I think now it’s definitely bed time. Love, Emma & Adam xx