We knew the weather was going to stay bad, but with less than four weeks till we get home, we thought we better hit the road.

As a rule, when you see a Severe Weather Warning, you would generally avoid camping. Nah, not us. We pushed on through the rain and wind down the freeway for a few hours to Dunsborough where I demanded a coffee stop and refused to set up camp in the dreadful stormy weather. Then on to Yallingup, just 8km down the road. Fergus, Harry and I all thought that this sort of weather should cause us to stop in at one of the many 4 star resorts in the region. However, this must have got lost in translation, as John found us a spot (there were many available) at the 4 star Yallingup Holiday Park – for campers! Yay!

Looking on the bright side, this gave us the opportunity to use another piece of equipment. We put up all the canvas sides to the trailer! That’s just what you want on a Severe Weather Warning night – a good piece of canvas.

Together with the previously mentioned warning, there was also a Marine Weather Warning from Bunbury to Cape Leeuwin, with bad stuff going on out there on the water. This means a big swell, but the crazy wind means no surf. It was pretty tough to be at such a supremo surfing location and have nothing to surf. You could only describe the water as “a mess” .

That’s the genuine colour of the sky. It produced a lot of rain!

Nonetheless, Yallingup is an absolutely beautiful place. The homes are nestled around the beach and for a couple of million, you could have yourself a nice shack.

When it rains in Perth, it really rains. And that’s what it did today. Lucky I did the washing on our first day here. Lucky weren’t sailing to Rottnest today.

Instead, we went underground. Well, John and the boys and Maff did. They went on the Fremantle Prison Tunnel Tour. This was a trip below the prison and the town via a network of tunnels built by the prisoners in the 1800s. Originally they were built to access a water supply for the prison, but it ended up being a good supply for the town of Fremantle. They walked through small tunnels and paddled along in small canoes. There were exceptional Health and Safety police on the case.

Me? It was retail therapy and coffee of course! I gave the coffee 8/10 – so good in fact that I had a second.

It’s Sea Kayak Tuesday at Maff’s house (every Tuesday) followed by Burger Night. So being good guests, the paddlers in our family joined in. Maff paddles every week with some like-minded mates from North Fremantle beach to Fremantle Harbour. The boys paddled hard and kept good time with John in the three person sit-on-top kayak while the others were in sea kayaks. “Only a matter of time” I hear you say. Indeed. Then it was Burger and Beer time at their groovy little local haunt.

John decided to bond with the Landcruiser out in the street and rotated the tyres and changed the oil and filters. We needed a thingy to get the oil filter cap off. Maff (that’s Andrew) has one of these thingy things on the yacht. So he took me for a spin in another of his toys.

This is an impeccably restored MG. I don’t know what year (sorry Maff). We burbled off down the road to the Fremantle Yacht Club, taking the corners very hard of course. It had a slightly different feel to my Audi!

Nice toys Maff!

It was a perfect sunny day, so we headed into Kings Park in Perth after paddling on the Avon River. Kings Park is 400 hectares of land (that’s a lot of land) adjacent to the city centre and overlooking the Swan River. It is Kings Park Festival this month and the wild flowers were doing their thing. I dragged the boys all over the place – pay back time. The perfume from the boronia plants was just amazing. It carried almost 100m from their bed of many plantings.

Boronia

The state emblem is the kangaroo paw – one of my favourites.

Why don’t they grow this well in my garden?

They had an area of plants and trees to represent each part of the state, as well as some great example of rare plants. Below is a photo of the amazing eucalyptus macrocarpa – the largest species of eucalyptus. (I think that’s what they said in the blurb).

Eucalyptus macrocarpa – with flower bursting from pod

The flowers are enormous and the foliage is a silver grey, with the huge branches going in all directions.

PIC gallery 5642, 76, 40 with captions

Teach them everything you know. That’s what we like to do. And when it comes to outdoor pursuits, John has a lot of teaching to do. So with the Avon River on Perth’s doorstep, we headed up the Swan Valley to paddle the white water rapids in the kayak. This section of the river was part of an event we ran a couple of times here in Perth and is well known in the paddling fraternity here.

They got kitted up at Walyunga National Park, about an hour out of Perth. Harry was doing a very serious, intrepid explorer pose.

Smile Harry!

Fergus got that sorted out.

I sent them off and did my taxi job, driving downstream to Bells Rapids to await their arrival. I’m good like that. I had great plans for a long session blogging while I waited, but they surprised me arriving after less than an hour. It was all smiles, and I think there may well be a new passion unleashed in Fergus and Harry – white water paddling.

Here’s a series of photos from the small section near the get-out.