A Crashed Space Station, a Mountaintop and Rain in southern WA

We left Cape Arid and the friends we’d made there and headed west to Esperance, to a caravan park, where we ran into the friends from Cape Arid.  (This often happens.)

In Esperance, K and I did home school at the bakery.   Then we visited the museum, which had, among other treasures, the remains of a U.S. space station that NASA lost control of; it crashed to earth in 1979.  Bits of it were found scattered on sheep stations and the like in Esperance and the surrounding Goldfields. 

The museum displayed numerous old things from decades gone by, including a tiny shack set up in the way the “pioneers” lived in the 1800s, complete with bed and billycan and not a lot else.  It reminded me of the way we’re living now, except we don’t have to start a fire to boil the billy; we’ve got gas.  And we have three bikes, two scooters, one unicycle, two boogie boards, two surf boards, a newly purchased purple kayak and a good deal more time for leisure.

After Esperance, we drove west to Fitzgerald River National Park.

K and I climbed Mount Brenner–a steep beautiful walk.  We saw 38 lizards.  At the summit, we scrambled to the very top of the mountain that afforded glorious views in all directions of coast, granite rocks, beaches and mountains.

 

The next day rain came and we packed up a wet tent and drove 232 kilometres to Denmark. 

Denmark is green and blessed with a river, rolling hills, stunning beaches, inlets and a fabulous bookshop.  I could’ve stay forever, except that we were in a large caravan park during school holidays, and parked next to parents drinking too much and yelling at kids and kids being mean.  In the bush, the kids never seem to argue like they do on the jumping pillow at the Big 4.

Tomorrow the rain returns, but we’ll carry on (what can you do?) and go back to the bush, west to Walpole to see the big trees.