PEMBERTON TO NORNALUP (another–UP)

Sad to leave our lovely house in the bush – a great place for bird watchers, families (pool table in lounge and table football on deck, Rich!) and motor bike enthusiasts – stacks of adventure and other bike magazines to read, but no girlie ones!  Gordon and Andrea, the empty-nest owners, had several bikes in the back garage and had just done a 2 week group biking trip in India – not for the faint hearted as anyone who has been on the backroads of India  know.  Even they said 7 hrs a day at full concentration for potholes, cows, people and traffic coming at you on wrong side of road, made it an endurance test rather than a holiday.  This is the lovely road to and from the Black Georges.






So, onwards - not far as the straight bush roads go, but we made another few stops on the tourist trail, heading south to Northcliffe (if you haven’t got –UP at the end of your town name then chances are you are named after some Brit dignitory who funded the settlement.)  We took an audio tour of a great sculpture trail (Understory) in beautiful bush – my photos don’t really do it justice and it was great to hear the individual artist describe what they wanted to say and how they made it – much better than just a walk around and not understanding what you are looking at.








Then on for proposed picnic lunch at Mount Frankland and a high level lookout – but the road was one of many unsealed road still around (see the one above from our last home) and 26km on bumps is not our idea of easy travel – plus we were thinking of Niki’s poor old car – it’s going to need  good valet by us when we get back to Perth.  So we called it quits at Fernhook Falls (just 6K and then came back to tarmac)– not much falling being done – more of a trickle really – but a nice shady picnic spot (heatwave continuing in Perth but not too bad here) where we had great views of this Goanna pottering around looking for our crumbs.




Stopped in Walpole (5 cafes, 1 garage, 1 grocery shop and 3 estate agents) for a few bits then on to our next Airbnb at Nornalup.  Another fantastic setting on the edge of the River Frankland.  Bit of a problem though – no wifi, no mobile signal (that I can use with a dongle I bought to access wifi via mobile signal - works great as long as signal!!) so no emails or blogging.  Have had to drive to Walpole or sit at a nearby beach to get signal and up load all this!