TUESDAY 14th APRIL 2009 – HYDEN TO ALBANY W.A.

We pack up and get away early as we have a long drive ahead of us to Albany. We back track from Wave Rock (5 kms) to Hyden where we fill up with petrol and hot coffee before we notice across the street some unusual looking metal figures.

We stop and on closer investigation notice these rusty old metal figures and on reading the descriptions they started with a local farmer turning his old junk into 'junk art'. This became a competition between the farmers so now there are approximately 20 displays. We found some of them very amusing but extremely clever nevertheless.

From here we drive west then turn off south towards Albany on the coast. We stop at a very quaint little town called Lake Grace which is a major grain growing region for the state producing wheat, canola, oats, barley, lupins and legumes. As we drive there are sandy plains which are beginning to be transformed into a sea of colour for the wildflower season.

We notice there is a Mission Hospital Museum here which we think might be of interest. It is adjoining the local Hospital so we drive into the Accident and Emergency area (quite an unusual sight for this sleepy little town) as we are towing our 16' caravan. We find an area to park and head towards the entrance of the old hospital. It is all closed up so we walk across the lawn to the 'nurses tearoom'. It is full of activity with morning tea in full swing. We ask the nurses if we can enter the museum and we are told that we need to phone a number on the door as it is not manned regularly. I guess typical of the country.

The nurses on duty were delightful and so helpful but we weren't prepared to wait and lose time so we decided to push on and continue our journey.

It was on this drive south we started to notice the names of the towns, mostly ending in “UP”! We decided to make a note of them as we were driving through them ie Pingrup, Gnowangerup, Ongerup, Jerramungup, Kojonup, arriving into Albany at around 4pm.

We found a nice quiet caravan park about 4kms out of town at Emu Bay. We found a lovely site with a view of the beach and I left Nick to set up camp while I went into town to buy some food.

As I was driving through the roundabout Jan was just crossing the road in front of me. I park the car and after Alan also finding us we stop for a chat. They arrived here yesterday and are staying at the caravan park next to ours. We don't make any definite arrangement to catch up as they are going to be playing a bit of golf but we are in phone contact.

I buy the few things we need and then head back to camp. Lucy has made friends with a gorgeous black afghan named Lara who is staying in the tent next to ours. They have a lovely time romping around and playing with each other.

The wind is beginning to come up so we cook dinner, batten down the hatches and after watching a little bit of TV we are off to bed.