uncle travelling Mac

That was the name of the horse that won the Grand National in 1986. My old man had the good idea to bet on him. He came galloping across the line as we drove west for half term holidays in Wales. I was feeling pretty lucky last week as I headed out of Perth in my 4x4 with two wonderful German chicks in the seat next to me. We hit the road by late afternoon and drove until late. We ended up camping in a field about 80km outside Albany. Not strictly legal and sure enough a farmer woke us up the next morning to tell us off for disturbing his expensive horses. We were up and out of there in no time and keen to get started on our tour of South Western Australia. After picking up some food supplies we visited The Gap - rock formations and impressive waves. We had lunch by the beach and drove on.

It was afternoon and my travel companions were tired. Christin was dozing off so Sonja and I decided to start hunting for a place to camp. Sonja had the good idea to ask at a farm house. The farmer was pretty friendly, he told us to go to Rames Head, "you'll need a good 4 wheel drive to get there, there's a few bits of water but with a diesel you'll be right". So with Sonja at the wheel, we engaged 4 wheel drive for the first time. The water proved no problem at all and we crept along steadily, only stopping to snap a few kangaroos along the way. The track wound it's way over the dunes and eventually we came down onto a small beach. The track continued on the far side of the beach but on our first attempt, the beast refused to climb up the sandy slope. Time to turn back we thought, but the slope we had just come down was even steeper and Bertha (that's her name) didn't seem at all keen to get up it. We were stuck and had to get unstuck pretty quick because the tide was coming in. We let the tires down a bit, scooped the sand out from in front of the wheels but still we were only getting half way before the wheels started spinning. In the end several long run ups at full throttle in second gear did the trick, phew.

We carried on along another track and came across a deserted camp. We met the campers a little way along the track they invited us to set up next to them. Turns out they were down for the weekend to do some fishing and mess about on the beach with their 4x4s. We cooked our dinner and had a few beers. I got my guitar out and we took turns to play some tunes, they told us stories of crocodiles and sharks. At midnight we headed to the beach to fish. I had bought a mini fishing rod and they helped me set it up. My job was to catch some small fish to use as bait to catch sharks. I caught plenty of chunks of seaweed and a couple of fish, not bad I reckon!

Next day we set off early after a quick jaunt on the beach. The plan was to the famous tree-top walk in the Valley of the Giants, near Walpole. Christin wanted to conquer her fear of heights and we discovered it is possible to get excited about trees. It was so exciting that we went to see more trees the next day in Gloucester National Park. We climbed 60 meters up one of them and enjoyed the view. Needed a drink after that so we headed to a winery (Australian for vineyard).

that's about it, time to head back to Perth and work. We had lunch near a lake and chucked in a couple of fishing lines. We pulled out three fat trout in no time at all. We were cheating a bit, it was a trout farm where they let you pay to catch your own but they sure did taste good.