Southern Forests

We're currently staying at Manjimup, about 300km south east of Perth. We originally planned to stay a week here then a week at Wagin, but decided that there is so much to do in this area, and virtually nothing on offer at Wagin, so we have decided to stay 2 weeks here and scrap Wagin altogether. Besides, there is a nice golf course here and the one at Wagin has sand greens....

Manjimup is surrounded by the Southern Forests, vast tracts of forested land that have been logged for over 100 years. There are now many national parks, some with 'old growth' meaning never logged but many with regrowth after past logging. The 3 main timber trees here are Jarrah, Karri and Marri, with beautiful hard wood used extensively for building, and lately also for hand crafted furniture. Jarrah in particular was especially sought after, and many roads in London and Berlin were paved with Jarrah blocks before the era of bitumen. The forests provide a beautiful backdrop to the region, and the national parks have many lovely walking and driving trails. The drives in particular are very well set up, with FM radio transmitters set up at significant spots, so you can stop and listen to commentary on the car radio.

Karri is one of the tallest trees in the world, and from the 1940s on fire spotting platforms were built on the top of strategically sited extra tall trees. While these were decommissioned in the 1970s when planes were introduced for spotting fires, a few are back in use to cover the gaps when planes aren't in the air. Some of the old fire spotting platforms are now open to the public, you have to climb 50 to 60 metres almost vertically on spikes driven into the tree to form a sort of ladder. Wendy tried her hand at one, and found it much harder than she had imagined, she made it only about two thirds of the way up and her legs are still stiff and sore a day later. It certainly gave us respect for the fire spotters, who have to not only climb up the tree every day but then sit for up to 12 hours in a tiny hut built on the top of the tree in all sorts of weather. Pretty scary stuff in the middle of a thunderstorm! One of the stories we read about involved a spotter who radioed back to base that he was going to climb down as a massive thunderstorm was approaching. The controller requested he stay put, as the lightning could cause fires that would need to be spotted. To reassure the spotter, the controller said 'there are plenty of trees left in paddocks that have survived many thunderstorms'. The spotter apparently retorted 'there are more of the buggers lying on the ground!' and climbed down.

Manijimup itself is a bustling country town servicing a population of around 5,000. While it doesn't offer much in the way of tourist delights, there is a heritage park with information and displays on logging and timber. John was delighted with the old steam train engine on display, giving free rein to his inner three year old. The park also has pioneer buildings, including a heritage school house, forestry office and police lock-up, and an excellent timber history museum.

We also spent a full day at Pemberton, another logging town about 30km further south. This is a very pretty town with a much more tourist focus than Manjimup, although it is also much smaller. We were delighted to find local produce available at the information centre and stocked up on cheap, fresh avocados, lemons and peas, as well as smoked trout at a local trout farm. (We had bought some of the first of the new seasons cherries at a farm gate near Manjimup, they are likely to get some more business from us before we leave here). Pemberton has a tourist tram which runs on the old lines built for transporting timber before the age of tractors and trucks, we had a lovely couple of hours travelling through the lush forests of the region, with several stops to explore the rivers and trees.

Busselton

We've had a very pleasant 2 weeks at Busselton, although the weather has been a bit iffy. While the east coast has been sweltering in record high temps, down here in Australia's south-west corner they're still waiting for a decent Spring to get started, let alone anything resembling Summer. Still, we scheduled touristing rather than golf on the wet days, and managed not to be too badly impacted.

This corner of Australia is home to Margaret River, and there are over 100 wineries in the area. Many of them have cellar doors open 7 days a week, and being only a bit over 2 hours drive from Perth the roads were heaving on the weekend with people trying to fit in a visit to every single one of them. We visited a fair selection, and while we didn't buy very much table wine, we couldn't resist a case of some excellent sparkling, so once again the van will be sitting down on the hubcaps. Like many wine areas, the concentration of visitors draws other tourist and gourmet businesses, so we also visited a chocolate factory, several cheese producers, an artisan brewer and a fabulous ice cream shop, as well as having a couple of lovely lunches in vineyard restaurants. Ice cream joke: an ice cream van has its music playing and lights on, with kids milling around, but no-one is serving. A policeman goes to investigate, peers into the van and sees the ice-cream man lying on the floor, covered in chocolate topping, 100s & 1000s, chocolate sprinkles and those little jelly things. He ushers the kids away from the sight, then radios the station. 'Quick, send someone down to the beach, the ice-cream man has topped himself!'

One of the area's sheep stations has also decided to cash in on the flood of visitors by running a sheep show each day. The farmer has his patter down to a fine art, and is very amusing. As well as a shearing demonstration, we had his dogs round up some of the sheep (necessitating an excited kelpie leaping across the sheep's backs) and the kids in the audience were able to hand feed some very young lambs. While the kids were thus distracted, the adults were treated to a demonstration of how the lambs' tails are docked, which isn't as gruesome as it sounds as it just involves putting an elastic band around them, so they shrivel up and drop off of their own accord. We'd been a bit dubious as to whether to attend this show, but in the end we really enjoyed it.

As well as the wineries, this corner of Australia has abundant natural attractions. There is over 100km of limestone coast which is a mecca for surfers, and is also pitted with caves. We visited 2 of the 6 caves that are open to tourists. The first was a standard guided tour, with all the speleotherms (limestone formations such as stalactites and stalagmites) lit up and given cutesy names. The second was smaller but much less developed - they had laid down a boardwalk but there were no lights, you were issued with a helmet and a torch and got to wander around on your own. It probably wouldn't have been very terribly impressive if it was crowded, but we were virtually on our own and the quiet and darkness is very affecting. When we got to the deepest part of the cave we sat on the bench provided and turned off our torches, no matter how long you'd stayed there your eyes would never have adjusted, you couldn't detect any different quality in the darkness even when you brought your hand right up in front of your face.

A lighthouse guards the southern and northern tips of the limestone coast, we did the tour of the northern lighthouse (Cape Naturaliste) but decided to just walk around the grounds of the southern most one (Cape Leeuwin). They are both still in use protecting shipping from the rugged coastline, although there is no longer a lighthouse keeper to stay up all night refueling a kerosene lamp and winding up the mechanism that turns the lens. Cape Leeuwin marks the point where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet, from here on we start to head back east, having travelled the entire west coast of Australia.

Of course, land that is good for grapevines is also good for golf courses. We played a couple of extra games at Busselton as well as competing in last weekend's tournament, and also played at Capel, Dunsborough Lakes and Margaret River.

Tournament almost success at last

Busselton is in the south west corner of Australia, an area known for surfing and wineries - Margaret River is just down the road. We arrived on Wednesday and as is our custom once we were settled into the site we went to check out the local golf course. The pro told us that the course was closed on the weekend as they had a big mixed tournament, news that of course made us prick up our ears. He laughed when we asked if we could enter, as it 'was filled ages ago'. However, when we did some checking on the internet that evening we found that the posted timesheet had a gap in it - obviously a couple had cancelled. So the next morning we called into the golf club office and they were happy for us to be late entries and fill the gap.

People who have been following this blog would know that we have a very poor record in the tournaments we have played in during this trip, but this being a mixed event, and given we have been playing a bit in the last couple of weeks, we were hopeful that we could do better. We were quite impressed by the format - individual stableford on the Saturday, played in men's and women's groups but then the partners' scores aggregated, and 4bbb on Sunday. The tournament winners were the pair that had the most points for the weekend, plus there were daily prizes. Our optimism was soon proved to be misplaced - John scored a respectable 31 points on Saturday but Wendy had a total wreck of a day and could only scrape together 24 points. (A mitigating factor for this is that Wendy was quite ill and wasn't sure she wouild even be able to play) However we fronted up full of hope on Sunday morning at the crack of dawn (unfortunately the pair we had replaced had obviously requested early tee times - we were off at 7:41) and played the four-ball like champions, coming in with a very good 45 points. John did most of the heavy lifting, we reckon he would have had 43 if he'd been playing on his own, but Wendy also played much better than the day before, we had plenty of holes where we would have both scored 3 points.

After lunch at the club (provided as part of the entry fee both days, as well as dinner on Saturday night) we came back to the van to watch Tiger blitz the field at the Masters, then headed back to the golf club late in the afternoon for the presentations (and the ample supply of afternoon tea nibblies also provided as part of the entry fee). First were the overall winners (with a very impressive 120 points for the 2 days) down to 5th place, then the individual stableford winners from Saturday, down to 3rd place, then the 4bbb winners. 1st and 2nd - 47 points. 3rd - 45 points - but not us, we lost out on a countback. So still no tournament success, but very, very close. Next time will be ours!

Rockingham

Our time at Rockingham hasn't been entirely spent playing golf. Apart from a pleasant beach front, the main local claim to fame is Penguin Island. This is a reserve populated, as the name suggests, by little, or fairy, penguins. The penguins spend all day at sea and only come back to their nests in the evening, so you don't actually get to see them. However, there are 10 penguins that live in an enclosure at the visitor centre on the island, due to injury or other causes that makes them unsuitable to be released back into the wild. They are hand fed 3 times a day, during which the park ranger gives a talk on all things penguin related. The little fellows are really cute, but they treat their human keepers with quite a lot of disdain, some of them even having to be coaxed to have a few fish for breakfast. Apart from the penguins, Penguin Island is also home to masses of other sea birds. Pelicans have created huge rookeries on the tops of several hills, and terns, seagulls and various other birds nest on every square inch of the small island. We spent a pleasant half day wandering around, although you couldn't afford to be too fussy about what you stepped in. If you expand the boardwalk photo above you can see what happens to every horizontal surface with so many birds about.....

On another day we caught the train into Perth city. As we mentioned in our previous post, Perth has a wonderful new train service. It took only half an hour to get to town from here, and trains run every 10 minutes in peak hour, every 15 outside peak. They have designed the system so that the stations aren't too close together, so the train doesn't have to stop too often, but the stations all have huge carparks and bus terminals so you can connect easily from the train to all local destinations. It only cost $8.80 for an all day ticket on the entire system, with the restriction that you couldn't start before 9am. Perth is a lovely city, lots of imposing buildings from the gold rush days in the late 18th century and lovely wide streets to allow the camel trains to turn around. We spent hours walking around looking at the various historic sites and lovely buildings. The photo to the right is of an arcade built in the style of Ye Olde London streetscape, quite a contrast to the rest of the city. John was particularly impressed with the waterfront bar where we had lunch - as well as the tv screens showing interminable sport around the bar, they had a screen above each urinal, so he didn't miss a ball of the one-day cricket replay!

Of course, we spent most days playing golf. Last weekend John played in a 36-hole tournament at Rockingham, with Wendy offering loyal caddying support. Unfortunately he wasn't a lot more successful than Wendy had been in her tournament a week earlier, so we haven't managed a single prize, or even ball down the line, between us. For those interested, we have played the following courses in and around Perth while here: Royal Fremantle (Wendy only), Rockingham, Kwinana, Secret Harbour, Kennedy Bay and Joondalup (including the famous quarry nine). While the scoring hasn't been great, we have had a wonderful relaxing time, and feel we're just about ready to win big.

Golf at last!

Last week we spent a long day driving from Mt Magnet to Rockingham, which is about 45km south of Perth. However, with the massive amount of development that has happened all down the coast south of Perth (thanks to the WA mining boom and a very efficient new train service), Rockingham is now effectively a Perth outer suburb. We chose to base ourselves here for a couple of weeks because we have reciprocal rights at the Rockingham Golf Club, based on our membership of our club in Melbourne, which means we can play there for free.

Some time ago we found by chance that the Australian Women's mid-Amateur Championships were being played at Royal Fremantle Golf Club, starting 2 days after we arrived. Given our lack of play in the last few months Wendy was unsure whether she should bother entering. However, we threw caution to the winds, and Wendy went ahead. We're proud to say that she had a top 20 finish, although with only 21 players in the field that was almost assured. She didn't come last but unfortunately not far off. Oh well, it was a chance to play at a lovely course that she wouldn't normally be able to get on. John caddied for 2 of the 3 days, on the other day he played in the men's comp at Rockingham.

We have quite a few other golf games planned for the rest of the time here, we'll both play at Rockingham again this week (Wednesday is ladies' day, Thursday men's), plus we are exploring some of the other wonderful golf courses that Perth has to offer. Luckily we are both improving with the practice, today we played a nearby course called Kwinana, and managed 36 points for Wendy and a massive 40 for John. Obviously class will always shine through, even without any practice!

We have also done a bit of touring about, drove out to the Perth Hills to have a look around and visit a winery. We also went to Mandurah, which is about 100km south of Perth, but like everything else around here is really the edge of the Perth sprawl. Both Rockingham and Mandurah are not considered part of Perth and both are much larger than we expected. Mandurah has a population of around 75,000 and Rockingham about 85,000. The other thing about both is that they are expanding at a frantic pace. Everywhere you look there is a new housing estate being touted or already in the building stage. We reckon there will be another 30,000 or so in the two centres within 10 years.