And we're on the road

We set off from Balingup, following a weekend on the farm with my parents. This included a day of bowls in a team with Liz, Dad and my niece Amber, a fun day for predominantly non-bowlers that attracted 22 teams of 4 from as far afield as Eaton, once again showing the ability of Balingup to successfully put on unusual events very successfully.

We headed for Ongerup, but only made is as far as Broomehill, after making a late decision to take the kids through the Kodja Place in Kojonup as they were too young to remember the last time they had seen it. This is a wonderful example of a small area making the most of their history and presenting it in a manner interesting to people of all ages.

The Broomehill Caravan Park was a great little site. Only $20 a night, very clean, modern facilities with a lovely outlook. The positioning was a little strange however as it didn’t relate to the town at all.Whereas i would have been trying to locate is at close as possible to the pub and shop in order to take advantage of people stopping, it appeared a decision had been made to locater it in the most convenient place possible for people passing through, which while fantastic for us, meant that the township received no benefits what-so-ever from us being there other than the park fee.

We moved on from there to Ravensthorpe, however did drop into Ongerup for fuel and some groceries. It was lucky for us that we did stop too, as it turned out that the general store was run by Wes and Rachael Sawyer, who I had grown up in the same area as I had. In fact Rachael was good friends with my sister and had spent several nights staying with us over the years.

Ravensthorpe Caravan Park, when we got there, was certainly different. The lady running it has a real dislike of Barbie Dolls and has decided to make her personal aversion into a very public display at the entrance to the park office. The kids were also very taken with the toilets being used as planter boxes.

From Ravensthorpe we headed into Esperance, with a short stop at Munglinup, and caught up with a school friend of Liz’s. He and his family were lovely and we are already talking about heading back down there for a week or more in the next couple of years. Esperance had a really nice feel about it in general and certainly made a significant marker between travelling around rural WA and moving into genuine remote areas.

Munglinup was interesting, as it is only a small community, with the highway now passing it by, however they have built a reasonably sized playground opposite the roadhouse, just visible from the highway, which the kids really enjoyed. Good facilities like this for the kids are under-rated when travelling long, sparsely populated roads and towns that make the effort to provide them really need to advertise them well before you arrive at them in order to give people enough time to decide to stop. Opportunities for the kids to let off some steam after sitting in the car for a couple of hours are also very welcome.