Margaret River to Falcon & Mandurah & Perth

Its been a while since we last put pen to paper so I will try and do a catch up.  I ended the last blog arriving in Augusta,we booked in for 4 nights and it was a great little town.Very pretty with water at every turn. Main street backs onto the Blackwood River and the mouth of the river meets  the ocean right in the township.. Still no Salmon but we tried hard... all 4 of us.                 Trish had a catch of 11 herring and 1 whiting.     Bag-man not happy.....
          Leaving Augusta we travelled to the beautiful tourist town of Margaret River and booked in for 5 nights.   
We even had a Coles supermarket there as it had been a while since we had last seen one..    Now you city folk will think we have gone completely mad but Trish and I got quite excited....We really played the tourist in Margaret River and did lots of day trips, the township is situated between 2 coastal capes, approx 138 kls apart so we travelled  lighthouse to lighthouse, checking out the rocky bays,limestone cliffs and once again the sandy beaches...BUT best of all was the cheese factory, Evans and Tate winery, (Trish now has shares in the winery)  chocolate factory, fudge factory, gourmet deli's etc,etc.    Think the boys wanted to go bush again after letting us loose around the town.                       In this part of W.A.called the south east corner they have a incredible amount of towns ending in UP, (meaning..... place of ), so we have passed through a few, we even had a visit to Cowaramup and  Dwellingup... Its hard to get your tongue  around some of these names. We also did a day trip  to Prevelly , Yallingup, Dunsborough and Busselton..(Busselton is known for its famous jetty that is 145 years old measuring 1841 mts long but only limited access at the moment while its undergoing a 27 million dollar restoration. ...Baggy saw a piling rig and we think he was having withdrawals,and wanted to get the hard hat on.................  We still managed to get a few photos...        


   After 5 wonderful days in the Margaret River region we decided to move on to greenier pastures so we headed off to Bunbury and only stayed 1 night.. We had a quick look around the area while checking out all the van parks..All though it was a pretty town and very up market we did not stay long as we intend to go back from Falcon and do a couple of day trips to different areas that we missed.   We have now arrived at Falcon, just near Mandurah south of Perth.
  
  We are staying at the home of Ken and Roxanne (Ken is  Rhonddas Brother--- Rhondda is  Baggys sister in law, married to Sergio for  those of you who can't make the connection)  They have opened up there home to us and let us take over..Room for everyone here, We have both vans on there property and  still heaps of space. We had a great laugh  when we  pulled in .             Ken had made a sign  and put at his driveway,                                            "FREE CAMPING FOR QLD'LANDERS."  
Think we may stay a while  (ha-ha)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              In the south east corner  there is a charity art exhibition of painted cows,   it took us a while to find out what on earth was going on, as every  town had  these  big painted  cows. I think this art exhibition goes overseas too , so you will see lots of photos with these cows but we started late, if we had started any earlier the whole blog could have been photos of cows.... They look great when you know what its all about.
                Mandurah is the place where Brads Mum lives so its off to visit Cherry today and she how she is going.  She has had a rough time  of late.........Later....Have had a visit with Cherry and she seems to be doing o.k..She  lives alone in a  complex and confined to a wheel chair  but she wants to stay there and remain independant..                                                                                                                                              We have also been into the Perth hospital to visit Brad and Trisha's friend from the army days .Sticks--real name Scott, he has had a terrible accident and has spinal injuries when he fell from a hugh machine as it crashed to the ground while on a mining site, up north of wa.. He is from Brisbane also.He still has his sense of humour and had  us all laughing.  The spinal ward is not a place to laugh about, thats for sure...
    Later...much later, can't seem to get this posted so i will add the latest..
Met Sticks and his Mum and friend  Shoey at a pub in Fremantle for a steak..Sticks had his first day pass from hospital so it was a big day for him.Sticks had to be back at hospital at a certain time,so the time went fast..... We had a great afternoon  and lots of laughs..................... Freo is the place to be on a weekend very busy with street performers, buskers, markets ,deli's,cafe's,etc,  Note i said Freo, just like our Goldie...Freo is written on everything ,buildings,hats, shirts...
      We intend to hang around here at Falcon for a while as Ken and Roxanne are getting married on Saturday so we will have a reason to celebrate that. We never need a reason to party but this one is for real...We have more trips into Perth planned so thats to come....Also Brad and Trish have family catch ups to do in this area before they head home at the end of  May..Thats when we will go north of Perth on our own..             It  will be very strange to travel on our own, but its all part of the  adventure,  even though it will be different ......Till next time  ..Love to all   The Baggys                                 

Brad and  Baggy have turned to AFL

Evans & Tate  Winery

Cows for Charity

Chocolate factory Margaret River

More charity cows

and more

and again

We are broke now with all this charity collection

Bustleton Jetty

Jetty under construction

The bird whisperer at it again with the local corellas

View from Bunbury lookout

Ken & Roxannes welcome to the Queenslanders

London Court Perth City

Taken from the  Round House Fremantle

Swan River colony's first jail.

Tempted to leave him there,but he started to go red around the gills

The round house is WA'S oldest remaining public building

Baggy,Brad, Sticks ,& Shoey

Fremantle Sail and Anchor Hotel.