The wonderful managers of the Pemberton Caravan Park were so supportive of our fundraising efforts – they refunded our payment for a night at the park as well as providing us with a free bag of ice for the esky in the morning. It is so great when people unexpectedly help us on our journey.

Steve as usual was up early and made breakfast and coffee for us both (he is good like that, I am not much of a morning person and he seems pretty happy to start the day for us both..) and was ready to leave by 9:15 – I saw him off and then drove to Big Brook Dam to get my daily art work done. It was overcast, with rain threatening, but I chanced it and took my chalk pastels down to the picnic tables overlooking the damn. I got in about an hour before some drizzle started, here is the work in progress (meaning I will get back to it with the help of photographic references I try to take each time I do a picture). This time I also remembered to record the sounds of the environment, and collected another sediment sample to hopefully create my own oil paints when we eventually get back to Perth in July 2016.

I am posting my daily art works to Instagram if anyone is interested, @miranda1459…some work better than others, and I am mixing it up with the media I use, but my hope is that I will end up with an interesting record of our journey. I also record the weather, the trip meter in the car, and some impressions of where we are staying and what happened during the day. We are finding it quite intense keeping on top of everything (including making sure we get something down for a blog post) but am sure we will be glad we did once we complete the journey. One thing is for sure, we are not finding it hard to fill in our time!

Once it started raining I set off to find Steve on the road – luckily when I reached him he had stopped for a rest at the turnoff to the South-West Highway where we shared a sandwich and coffee out the back of the Pod (I will do a post on our set up soon so you can get an idea of what it is like living out of a tear drop caravan).

After departing at about 12:30pm the weather became decidedly less enjoyable, rather wet and miserable actually. As I drove into Walpole, one place where we hadn’t pre-booked a place to stay, I felt that I should try to find something on the western side to lessen the journey for Steve. Not much available but settled on Rest Point Caravan Park, which it turns out has a fascinating history related to Olympic rowing, preparing troops for Gallipoli and then there’s the mythical story of the great white shark dragging fisherman through the reef, thereby showing them the way that was formerly unknown.

Lookout near Walpole

On the road to Walpole

Northcliffe

It was a fortunate stop as Trinity College Rowing teams from East Perth were down for their end of year training session, and we were able to give a short presentation to them about what we were doing. What an amazing experience! The boys were polite, interested and supportive – we were very impressed with the behaviour and support provided by the students, staff and parent helpers. Some bought Cure Brain Cancer merchandise while others just made donations – extremely generous in some cases (one young man gave $100 and said, ‘oh, I would just spend it on junk food otherwise’ – wow, cannot say how honoured we felt by such selflessness). Another young man, Alex, used the removable tattoos we have to give to people who make donations to decorate his newly shaved head (a tradition for the camp apparently) – the boys were great fun and a pleasure to meet. Good on you guys!

It was, however, a rather cold and rainy night and we discovered where our little van leaks…luckily Steve was able to block off the one over the middle of our bed, and other ones were not a bother, but we now know what needs to be fixed! All good, we still managed a good night’s sleep and with a great Camp Kitchen and Laundry, got some washing done and cooked a great dhal in the Thermomix (yes, we did bring it with us…how very middle class!) OK, that’s it from me this time, next instalment from Steve. Ciao x