The Duke

The Duke as the locals call it is a lovely grassy and treed caravan park. Western ground parrots and honeyeaters fly around the campsites and a walk through a tunnel of trees leads you to a the spectacular Duke of Orleans Bay.

As it was a long weekend in W.A the park was full, although it didn't feel overcrowded, and Zach, Matt and Abbey had made friends within minutes of arriving. The freedom of jumping on their bikes and coming back to the campervan when they are hungry or it's dark, exploring, playing at the playground or at someone else's campsite, looking for lizards and insects or in Matt's case birds to tell Uncle Jerry about, is a freedom often stifled by the routine of daily living at home.

There were a few beaches to explore including big and little Wharton Beaches. Our favourite was Little Wharton. Each day we would walk along the beach, over some rocks across to a sheltered bay, which was a spectacular place to swim, snorkle, fish and build sand sculptures. Between us we caught 16 fish in 3 days, including a nice size flat head I caught on the spear. The rest of the fish were skippys, rasse, black and Lots of omega 3 in the diet this week.

The Backsons came to visit for a day. We packed a picnic lunch, snorkel & fishing gear and headed to little Wharton. Instead of our usual walk along the beach and rocks Nick convinced Hamish to 4wd it instead. There was a rough track which went steeply up and just as steeply down some hills and sand dunes to "our" little bay. We spent all day here and the kids convinced Hamish and Sara to stay for tea and eat some of the fish that had been caught. All packed and ready to head back to the campsite. We set off a bit more cautiously up and down the track....made it back to the beach on the other side who whoo, but about 3 meters from the road out the 4wd got bogged - bugger!!! We all scooped out sand from around the tyres, laid rocks in front of them and emptied the car. After a couple of efforts "Disco" the land rover discovery was free much to Hamish's relief.

After tea we made a campfire in our mini webber. I made some damper and the kids found some sticks to wind the damper onto. The kids had a ball cooking their damper in the coals and eating it hot off the stick filled with strawberry jam, while discussing where we might all catch up again on the trip.