I’ve recently been made permanent at my current place of employment and I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of hiking (most Saturdays and Sundays in the Swan Valley – I’ve lost around 8kg in the past 3 months).

I’ve got a bit of new hiking gear to take photos of and do some reviews so with the weather improving I’m hoping that will be done sooner rather than later.

Cheers,

Jason.

We got to the property, took a drive up a couple of tracks and came across a french bloke stuck in the sand on a track heading on to the beach.  Being the nice people that we are, we offered to help him out and started to get the recovery gear out of rufn it.  Just as I’m about to snatch him, his mate rocks up in an 80 series.  Neither of them had any recovery gear.

We pulled him out with no problems and started having a chat with the two blokes.  They asked how we knew about the campsite and I told them about my mate knowing the owner, only to be told that the owner doesn’t let people camp on the property, but that so many people know about it and they just “turn up”.

We said we’d head elsewhere as we didn’t want to cause a problem, only to be offered by the french bloke’s mate to camp on his property, which was next door and was about 1500 acres!  We were also invited to share dinner with these guys and their families for helping pull John-Pierre out (I hope I’ve spelt that right!).

We took a drive for about 15 minutes, through some locked gates (they had the keys) and came to a limestone graded road.  Gerard (John-Pierre’s mate in the 80 series) told us to head down to a cleared limestone opening, camp where ever we want and to head to their dongas around 5 which were about 5 minutes north of where we were camped.

We set up camp (pictures below) and headed off to a lovely dinner where we met Gerard’s wife Lina and daughter (whose name unfortunately escapes me!), her husband and their children Torey and Vinnie.  John-Pierre, his wife and another couple were also there.  Dinner was smoked salmon and salad with some Mauritian salsas and chutneys which were absolutely delicious!!

We had a few drinks and enjoyed the company and after telling them that the inflatable mattress we had bought with us was missing the plug (thanks dad!! ;)), they told us to take a couple of foam mattresses from their caravan to sleep on .  We were so in awe of the kindness shown to us by these lovely people.

We made our way back to our camp and spent the remaining 2 and a half days relaxing, drinking gin and tonic, eating delicious camp foods (risotto, blue cheeses and bbqs!!) and enjoying the million dollar views we were blessed with.  The weather wasn’t the best, with spots of drizzle occasionally over all days, ending with a fair amount of rain on the Sunday night / Monday morning, but the new OzTent held up well with no leaking and was dry within an hour of the sun rising.

Fingers crossed we get invited to camp there again! :)

Will hopefully try it out over Easter.

We spent a week over Christmas at Sandy Cape just north of Jurien Bay and unfortunately our adorable chocolate labrador, Lucy, decided she no longer likes sleeping in the car and woke us up every morning at 5am to tell us how annoyed she was.  On the last day she woke us up at 1am and foolishly I crumbled to her demands and slept in the car for 4 hours to stop her whining.

Yes, she needs to toughen up and we need to stop treating her like a princess! ;)

So, with the Perth Caravan and Camping show this weekend, if we can find a good deal, we’ve decided to fork out for an Oztent RV-4.  Once we’ve picked it up I’ll post some details / photos.

Avril arrived ex-Kununurra from a work trip at around 9:30 and I flew from Perth and got in around 13:30. We were both a little disappointed we didn’t drive up, but the opportunity to get me here on the cheap via Avril’s frequent flier points was just something we couldn’t pass up!

We had decided earlier to treat ourselves to a bit of luxury on this trip and had booked a deluxe villa at The Bali Hai Resort. The high, wood lined ceilings, four post bed, massive two person bath and outdoor shower really make this place feel luxurious.

As the villa has a fully equipped kitchen as well as a bbq, we went shopping and bought supplies for a number of meals we plan to cook here, including my famous (to us at least!) bbq tamarind, lemongrass, chilli and ginger salmon with pickled papaya salad.

We decided to eat out the first night at our favourite restaurant in Broome, Zanders, where we had enjoyed many meals together whilst on our honeymoon two years ago.

Avril had the trawler’s catch which included scallops, fish, prawns and calamari. I had the threadfin salmon with lime and coconut sauce on asparagus and rice. Both meals were delicious!

Here are a couple of shots taken with my iPhone. Better photos to come later :)

the good news, only 21 days until we’re back in broome! unfortunately we’re not driving, but flying, and spending 5 lovely nights at the bali hai. we’ve got a jeep wrangler booked and will be taking a day trip out to Barred Creek, my all-time favourite place to get away from everyone whilst up in Broome. the photo at the top of the blog was taken at Barred Creek where we spent 3 lovely days without seeing / hearing any other people and were able to watch pods of whales about 1km off shore jumping out of the water.

as I said in one of my previous entries, I keep neglecting the blog, which I hate doing. now with winter behind us, and with the patrol on the mend, hopefully we’ll be about to get out there and explore again soon and keep the updates coming!

i’m also in the process of adding a series of  “delayed” entries detailing our honeymoon trip to the kimberley in 2007.  lots of photos and lots of stories, so keep an eye out.

cheers,

jason.

Here’s the video!

Ultimately I’d like to get another one or two of these babies so you can see a view from inside, a view near a wheel and the view you see in the video above.

I took the audio out of the video because as the camera is so close to the engine, you couldn’t hear much but a very grinding noise :)

This is what I plan on reviewing:

roof top tent
awning
engel
titanium cutlery
solar panel
leatherman skeletool

cheers,

jason.

Cleaverville is north of Karratha and from what I’ve been able to find online is quite a nice place!

I’ll update the blog with more info a bit later…

I took a drive out to Shothole and Charles Knife canyons and took a look around.  Very scenic.

Here’s a photo of RUFN IT at Shothole Canyon and another photo of a kangaroo I took yesterday near North Mandu.

RUFN IT @ Shothole Canyon

Striking a pose