Day 63. Albany to Parry’s Beach

OMG - the Ants!

It was pack up day today, and time to move on from beautiful Albany. We have had a lovely 5 days here, and could easily have stayed for another 5 days. It was a big pack up, so straight after breakfast, Scarlett moved two caravans down to play with her little friend and Shane and I got stuck into it.

While I was making Scarlett’s bed, I noticed a million little black ants on her wall. We have had a few ants since Bremer Bay but nothing like this, there were heaps of them. I got Shane in to help me pull down Scarlett’s bed while we sprayed, cleaned them all up, and surfaced sprayed. Lucky Scarlett wasn’t here she would have freaked out.

First stop was now Bunning’s, where I got one of everything to try and get rid of these little pests. I got a tip to use the ant baits that they eat and take back to the colony, that hopefully then kill the queen. I bought more surface sprays; including one for use outside we can spray around the caravan legs. I will rid myself of these dammed ants, if it’s the last thing I do. If anyone has any good tips, please feel free to pass them on.

It was only about 40min down the road to Denmark, where we hit the visitors centre to find out what there is to do and see around here. Apparently there is an Alpaca farm just down the road some other travellers we are following visited; they said their kids had a great time there so we decided to check it out. We were also very disappointed to hear from the lady at the visitors centre, the campground we had decided to stay at for a few days called ‘Parry’s Beach’ would not take our size caravan. Apparently it is really tight and not suitable for caravans, only tents and camper trailers. OK so now we needed a new plan for tonight.

When we got to the Alpaca farm Scarlett was told to go to the first paddock and check out the new baby alpaca that was just born last night. Little did they know Scarlett is very experienced after staying with Andrew and Liane at their farm back in Finley where she played with heaps of baby alpaca’s. There were so many alpacas here they scared Scarlett by all coming at her for food at the same time.  The farm was huge.

There were highland calves (so cute and weird at the same time), goats, sheep, emu’s, a bison, horse, ferrets and so many more. Scarlett has a real thing about farms at the moment. She has this grand master plan of putting together her own at nana and grumpy’s house. She spent so much time in the guinea pig and rabbit cage, putting them all together on the seat and feeding them. Scarlett had the best time here; sometimes you just need to take her to the simple things, they bring out the biggest smiles.

As the weather had warmed up, we decided to head to the beach for a dip. The most famous around here is the ‘Greens Pool’, it seems everyone also had the same idea. When we got there it was full of families all enjoying the protected bay, with shallow clear water. There were more people here at this beach, than all the other beaches put together so far I think. Don’t get me wrong to be packed out here in W.A. has nothing on Sydney’s packed out. There were probably only about 100 people, with still plenty of room.

Green Pools

While watching Scarlett play with the kids, we spoke to a couple that were staying at ‘Parry’s Beach’. It turns out they have a big van, and they were able to get it in with relative ease. There is a 3mtr height limit but they thought we would be OK. The campground is really full though, they recommended we do a walk through and leave the van outside first as it can be really tight to get back out if there are no spots.

Green Pools

So we headed over, and with a huge amount of luck we found a spot vacant that would fit our size van. The van did fit under the boom with 10cm’s to spare, and it was a slow careful drive to get the van in and into our spot. We were incredibly lucky, apparently the people in this spot literally just left and it was the only spot left in the campground we would have fit in.

‘Parry’s Beach’ is a very popular campground for the more laid back camper. There’s no power or water, but they have solar showers and it is right on the beach in a dense bush setting, and only $7 a night. Apparently ‘John Butler’ the singer was here a week or so ago, I’m spewing we missed him.

We had a great night around the levely couple we met at ‘Greens Pool' camp fire. The kids played and we met and talked to the nicest people. They were all cooking dinner in the coals. They had wrapped in foil potato, onion, sweet potato and pumpkin, turns out you can buy it all here at an honesty box system out front from a local farmer. I can see us again settling in, and not wanting to move on AGAIN!