After the dash from Esperance in the wild winds we finished up at Albany and the Big 4 caravan park right on Middleton Beach.

Pic: Middleton Beach

This is a brilliant location and a great park with heaps of facilities, but it was also the most expensive park we have stayed in over the trip at $51.00/night. We have discovered now that after some very good deals in Qld and NSW we tend to think that anything over $30.00 is a ‘bit steep’! It’s probably not, but we tend to be hunting out the bargains rather than just accepting that ‘its just what it costs’.

I love Albany. Its a beautiful place and the whole environment is sensational, but the weather… well, lets just say that in my last few holidays to this area (in December) we have had to start wood fires to keep warm. I am starting to lose a bit of faith…

While there we enjoyed lunch with the Vanderwals, dinner with the Sephto’s – hard to believe they were our old ‘youth group kids’, a morning surf at Nannarup Point and the obligatory visit to Toyworld. (Danelle and kids spent an hour in there while I read the paper.) Sadly my memory of my only surf in Albany was of uglylocals who felt it necessary to point out that I was a visitor and that they had lived there for 40 years… what the?…

Pic: camped at Ray’s place

We stayed 2 nights here before we observed the weather turning really ugly again. High winds and heavy rain were on their way… again… We had hoped to duck across to Cosy Corner, just 25 kms away, where there is a great free campsite, but given we would simply be stuck indoors waiting for rain to ease, we rang my friend Ray and teed up to stay at his place over in Denmark. He has a fantastic property sheltered well away from the wind and we had access to the house if the storms did become unmanageable. In the end we stayed in the camper both nights and although there was plenty of rain we stayed pretty snug.

Pic: Crazy country folks!

By contrast Ray and friends Paul and Abigail decided to use the first night as preparation for their Holland Track adventure and slept outdoors in their swags. I thought we were pushing it to be out in the camper, but these guys simply parked on the ground and stayed outside for the night in these tiny canvas coccoons.

We had a great time with these guys and were intending to head on from Denmark to Parry Beach. At $14.00 / night for the family and with a great surf beach right there I was getting excited. But the weather prognosis just kept on getting worse, so on Monday morning we said ‘stuff it’ and hopped in the car and drove to Busso where there at least looked to be some chance of seeing the sun.

Pic: view from Parrys campsite

We will keep Cosy Corner and Parrys as places to venture back to. Parrys especially looked nice with sheltered campsites and good facilities right on the beach. I understand it gets really busy in holidays, but maybe we will be able to hit it outside of them.

So I’m a tad disappointed…

I had hoped to invest a couple of weeks in seeing the great south – Bremer, Albany, Denmark, Walpole and surfing myself silly, but the ugly WA weather simply got the better of us.

We had considered packing up the whole show and heading for Kalbarri, but given that wind is our greatest enemy we decided that it wouldn’t be that smart to head for one of the windiest parts of the whole WA coast.

It looks like we will be home in around 12 days now and the adventure is coming to an end. I think we are all pretty much ready and yet at the same time a bit frustrated that we haven’t been able to enjoy some warmth. But then I’ve heard that this has been typ[ical of WA for the last 6 months and this is possibly the best 6 months we could have chosen to get out of there!