One of the great annoyances of finding oneself in a spot where Internet access is impossible is the fact that it is not until arrival that this electronic deprivation becomes apparent. Such was our plight at Fonty's Pool, a delightful caravan park 7 kms out of Manjimup, where we spent five nights whilst we explored the Southern Forest region of WA's south-west. My well laid plans to also use this time to catch up and post our Rockingham story etc were stymied....hence the blank screen of late.
In real time (21 March) we are now back in Albany where we are spending the next week or so in company with our Perth friends, the Cooks. The weather has finally turned on us...drizzling rain, low overcast skies and, typical of Albany, hooting winds. Fortunately I pre-booked sites which are in a sheltered part of the Rose Gardens park....had we been on our previous site we would be really battening down! The one advantage of this crappy weather is that all thoughts of fishing have been put on hold and indoor pursuits now take prominence....with a bit of luck within the next few days I shall be up to date with the tales of our most recent adventures.
So let's backtrack...to our overnight stay in Pinjarra and thence on to Rockingham. As I noted in my last, Pinjarra sits on the banks of WA's River Murray, a significant stream but certainly not of the same status or size as the real thing. We chose Pinjarra for an overnight mainly for the reason that is is but an hour's drive from Rockingham. This was important. The manager of our chosen park in 'Rocky' only opens for two hours from 0900 on Tuesdays, the day of our arrival. We had to be there on the dot and ergo a nearby overnight stop was essential if we were not to be hauling out in the morning darkness.
After driving back through Collie we joined the South-Western Highway, skirted around Bunbury and made our way north through the dairy country of Harvey and Waroona before turning off onto the very busy Pinjarra - Mandurah road and our camp for the night.
And what an interesting caravan park we found ourselves in at Pinjarra. Once past the entrance,
we drove past the tiny park pool
where the status of youngsters wishing to enjoy a dip was very clearly defined.
From here we crept along the very narrow park roadway past some of the many 'permanents' who occupy this park
to the 'camp ground area' where a goodly patch of the local real estate had been allotted to us. This was not a problem...we were only one of two vans in the park. Mind you, had we tried to get in the day before, we would have been turned away. This was the WA Labour Day weekend, and apparently the entire area you can see between us and the distant camp kitchen was completely taken up with campers over the Saturday and Sunday.
As I mentioned earlier, Pinjarra is different. Take the 'emergency' toilet for example. A genuine old style outside 'dunny'. I loved it. The only thing missing was the rolled up newspaper with which to dong the redback spiders!
Although there are a few modern and well appointed cabins here at Pinjarra,
and a few permanent sites, such as these near our spot, which were as good as we have seen anywhere,
there are many more permanent site sections of this park where the standard of accommodation is considerably different. But everyone we met was cheerful and welcoming and we did enjoy our short sojourn at Pinjarra.
The town itself, through which we did a quick drive whilst doing some shopping, has a few interesting old buildings, but I have to confess I was not inspired to start clicking away with the trusty digital. We really were on a mission.....to get to Rockingham.
Which is exactly what we did the following morning. We were at the front gate of the Cee and See Caravan Park (even the manager has no idea where the name originated) by 0930 hours.
We were amused to note this sign on the gate post.....it never altered for the entire time we were there, despite the fact that the site next to ours was unoccupied for much of it. The park manager is one who insists on pre-bookings....we were so glad we had taken the time to drive down here from Perth to check things out some weeks previously and book our site.
The park is actually owned by CBH, the large grain handling conglomerate. One of its functions is to act as a buffer zone between the huge grain silos which you can see looming above the trees in the first shot and the residential area opposite the park itself. We had read that the noise from the ship loading conveyor belts could be a problem here. Not for us. We found it similar to living near the trail line at Brighton...after the first day we didn't notice the noise at all, not that it was more than a distant hum in any event.
After reacquainting ourselves with Bill the manager, it was off past the office and some of the permanent sites (of which there are plenty here...good for the cash flow!)
to our new temporary home base.
Although this area of the park has only been recently developed, and is yet to provide the benefits of a proposed tree planting programme, the grass was in magnificent condition and our site gave us oodles of elbow room. As can be seen, I did erect shade cloth on the 'fridge side' of the van and despite the lack of shade we only needed to engage the air conditioner on a couple of days. Mind you, it was pretty warm, but with a superb nearby beach and plenty of lawn around us we were content.
Our view from the annex area past the very conveniently located dump point and amenities block was dominated by the CBH silos. In fact these can be seen for miles. They are huge, but more of that later.
Hopefully this shot, looking towards our site from the opposite side of the park (that's us just beyond the right hand end of the ablutions block) gives some idea of the grassy expanses on offer at this park. It really is spacious.
All the park roadways are wide and well surfaced, and even along this row of vans which were a little more tightly packed than we were, there was plenty of room between them. What a change from the 'sardine like' feel of many of the parks on the east coast.
The front of the park lies along the local Esplanade with a useful beach access gate,
and here there are a few rental cabins which provide their occupants with views over Cockburn Sound. We were interested to learn that these are more or less permanently leased to CBH as off duty accommodation for their grain train drivers. Again, a nice little earner and good for the cash flow. No wonder Bill was not too concerned about an empty van site or two.
The front section of the park is also home to many of the 140 permanents whose varying styles of home surround yet another delightful expanse of lawn and another amenities block. The trees here are testament to the fact that this is the original part of the park. Once the plantings are completed in the area we were occupying, this will indeed be a place to relish.
For us, well me in particular, the amenity of our digs, and the pleasure to be had along the beaches and foreshore parks of Rockingham itself, were but a bonus. We were here for a specific reason....to welcome Stu home from his tour of duty in the waters of the Middle East and off the coast of Africa as the Seahawk pilot on the guided missile frigate HMAS Melbourne.
The ship was due to come alongside at the Garden Island naval base at 0730 hours on Thursday 6 March. And indeed it did. This rather 'grainy' shot I lifted from a Navy site shows Melbourne manoeuvring onto the disarming dock were she discharged the majority of her missiles and other ammunition.
As you would expect, the ammunition facility is positioned well away from the main section of HMAS Stirling, or Fleet Base West. Stu rang me as the ship left the ammo dock to make a passage along Cockburn Sound to the refuelling and resupply docks. Off to the beachfront I scampered where I managed a photo or two of my own.
Here she is framed by a moored catamaran and the end of the grain loading wharf. Refuelling and stores loading took most of the afternoon, tasks in which the entire ships' company are involved, so Stu did not manage to come ashore until after 1800 hours. I was there to pick him up (he had previously arranged the necessary entry pass to be waiting for me at the causeway guard house) and we set off for a wonderful evening.
After pre-dinner drinks and canapes in the annex (we surprised him with Coopers Pale Ale and Mum's bacon savouries....his favourite tipple and nibbles) it was off to the Sunset Restaurant where we enjoyed a delightful meal,
followed by a nightcap or two back at the van. God bless her, Liz remained on the straight and narrow for the evening and was on deck to drive Stu back to the ship just before midnight. I won't bang on about how good it was to see him again and to get the real story about some of his adventures....I'm sure I can leave that to your imagination.
So let me take this opportunity to share with you some of the things he got up to on deployment. The Australian Navy does a marvellous job of posting photos of many of the activities of the ship's company whilst they were overseas. Here are a few involving Stu.
As with the previous shot of the ship, these photos have suffered somewhat in enlarging them, but I am sure you will get the idea. This is Stu in the driver's seat (left side of the photo) awaiting a final electronics check just before take off on a sortie.
His role was pretty varied. Here he is sling loading stores onto the flight deck during a resupply operation but most of his time was taken up with searches well away from the ship. Initially pirates were the target, and later their attention was turned to drug running boats. Stu's mission was to fly high and well away from the target vessels using the highly sophisticated sensing equipment in the aircraft to plot the course and actions of these suspect boats.....the unseen, unheard 'eye in the sky'.
Melbourne had a very successful tour of duty. Nine Somali pirates captured, and a number of drug seizures including 2 tonnes of hashish, a major amphetamine haul and two separate interdiction's which resulted in 190 kgs and 350 kgs of heroin being destroyed. These drugs are sold to fund various terrorist groups, so these captures were good news indeed given the total value of the seizures amounted to over a billion dollars worth. That's serious money!
Here is a shot of Melbourne closing on the pirate skiffs. Those on board had twigged to the fact that they had been spotted and had thrown overboard all the weapons they had used to (unsuccessfully) attack two merchant ships in the previous 48 hours.
But they are not too bright, this lot. The boarding party found the skiffs' bilges littered with empty shell casings...clear evidence of the villainy in which this lot from the Horn of Africa had been engaged.
So it was into the brig for them (until they were later put ashore per the current protocols...why on earth they are not put before an international court is beyond me) whilst the Seahawk's 7.62 calibre machine gun
put an spectacular end to the useful life of their vessels. Scratch two pirate skiffs!
Off the coast of Tanzania Melbourne made a number of drug seizures where a boarding party would search suspect vessels identified as such through intelligence reports and the observations made by the flight crews.
The results were stunning. This is what a large heroin haul looks like
and this, a serious pile of hashish blocks.
A couple of milestones were achieved by the flight crew during the tour, including the S-70B-2 clocking up its 5,000th flying hour. Stu took the aircraft aloft where he and the crew were photographed holding the relevant sign
and the, as they do in these circumstances, celebrated the milestone with a decoy flare drop.
This is not actually it, but one Stu did later and obviously at night...much more spectacular!
And then , as you would expect, there were the obligatory flight crew group photos. In this one Stu is second from the right in the back row,
and in this, he is the fourth from the left, again in the back row.
Throughout the tour, training exercises were constantly conducted to ensure that the crew was always ready to deal with emergencies. Here Stu is on the deck being treated as a casualty of a crash landing on the flight deck.
Let me close this short series of photos with one which I just think really captures it all....the flight crew preparing for a dawn take-off some where off the east coast of Africa....wow, what an adventure!
I was really tickled that Navy would release these photographs, and of course, many more of other crew members and their duties. It became my regular morning routine to check the latest additions to the media page. What with this and the information available on the Combined Maritime Forces website, I was able to keep pretty much abreast of what Melbourne was up to throughout its tour, although we always knew when something serious was up.....we would receive an e-mail from the ship stating that all outgoing communications would be suspended for a period.
And so it was that we farewelled Melbourne the following afternoon from our side of the water as she sailed out of Cockburn Sound en route for her Sydney base where she came alongside with all due pomp and ceremony on Saturday 15 March.
For us, back to our life on the road and a few more days in Rockingham where, as I have mentioned previously, we made the most of the good weather and the wonderful beaches and had the pleasure of entertaining our good friends the Glossups and the Finlay-Joneses.
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