CARNARVON - THE PLANTATION CARAVAN PARK & OUR LIFE HERE (JULY - OCTOBER 2014)

Before we embark on another Carnarvon travelogue I thought it was high time I shared a few aspects of our new found life of relative stability here at the Big 4 Plantation Caravan Park. Without having trawled through past missives, I suspect a few of the photos may have appeared before...I crave your indulgence for any repetition....my editorial brain is not functioning at the moment and I am keen to get this posted.

The first comment I must make is that it continues to stagger me just how quickly the day passes, even when not engaged in any particular project. And life has acquired a routine of sorts, albeit varied to a degree, but more of that later.

One of my prime concerns when we knew that we would be living here for some time was to pick a suitable site for a long term stay.  The effect of the howling winds of our first week here had taught me a very good lesson...what ever was on offer, we would be facing east or it was not happening. What is the importance of that, I hear you ask?  It's a matter of van set-up and inherent self protection.

Experience and a close look at the long term prevailing weather conditions here in Carnarvon taught me that we could expect plenty of wind and that these annoying breezes were most like to have their origins in the southern quadrant, ranging from south-east through to south-west. With the van facing east, these winds hit the 'fridge side' (as we all call it), the side opposite the door. Obviously, the door opens onto the annex area which means that the body of the van shelters the potentially flapping and banging canvas of the awning and annex walls when the winds are more than a gentle zephyr (there is actually no such thing here in WA.....it's either calm or 20 knots!), and believe, me the amount of shelter provided in this way is considerable.  

Another major consideration for a long term stay has to be the annex floor. Grass or a cement slab?....that is always the question. Cement every time, thank you.  It provides a flat and stable floor for all the bits and pieces which find their way into that space, including cooking and eating tables (and the trusty Baby Q just outside the rear door)








and, providing it is of a size to allow for all the annex walls to be pegged outside the edge of the slab, the chances of inundation during heavy rain are remote.  With a grassed site, creeping damp is an inevitable result of any downpour. And the size of the slab is also important. If, because the area of cement on offer is larger than the annex, one or more of the annex walls has to be roped across the surface of the slab rather than pegged to the ground. It is impossible to seal this particular edge with the result that rain falling on that part of the cement will inevitably run under the wall and into the remainder of the annex area.


Most sites in the eastern states have huge slabs which makes a wall rope down inevitable, but to my great delight I found that site 84 here at The Plantation not only faced east and backed onto large shade trees, but had a slab which was exactly the size of our annex. All our walls are pegged outside it, and what a blessing that has been on the odd occasion when it has rained.....heavily. We have remained dry and as snug as bugs in rugs.


And you all thought the only problem with a caravan park site was actually backing onto it! There can be much more to it than that. Experience in this game is a very valuable thing indeed, and as if to emphasis the importance of this decision, our forecast winds for the next seven days are all SE - SW with nothing below 25 kph......all day!  At least we had some respite in late July - August.

But enough of this self-congratulation....now that we are set up, what is the park like and what do we actually do all day?  Firstly, a quick tour.








The entrance roadway takes new arrivals 









past the green expanse which used to accommmodate the air filled bouncy castle (recently removed because of wear and tear). Beyond this can be seen the office which is attached to a home which used to house the owner and his family, but is now rented to a Carnarvon local.










The office, of course, is now Liz's worksite.












On the other side of the entrance road we find the park pool











and camp kitchen.














The Plantation is the only park in Carnarvon with sealed roadways. This was one of its selling points in our original decision to stay here. 









It also advertises as being the shadiest park in town....I've not checked the others beyond a cursory glance from he road, but have no reason to challenge this assertion. There are trees throughout, and large ones at that. Not only do they provide shade, vegetation like this acts as a wonderful wind break.



 


Grass is another park commodity in high demand, particularly in this desert area of the State, but this can be a double-edged sword for park management. Whilst it is undoubtedly a selling point, keeping things green in what has been one of the driest winters on record (despite the 10 or so mils of last week....pictured earlier) remains a constant challenge. At the micro level, I was determined to do what I could around our patch. Dust was not an option.  

The results have been worth the effort...apart from the area on which the cruiser sits, we are now surrounded by constantly improving grass.  


One of the paradoxes in trying to maintain the lawn is the fact that during the busy times when a green and inviting park is a major selling point, the very demand for sites makes effective watering difficult to schedule and maintain, particularly when the bore pump pressure is such that at least eight sprinklers must be operating at any one time.  As soon as things quieten down, out they come.






Green is not the only colour of The Plantation.  Rounding the bend just past the office we pass the bright multi-hued display of the bougainvillea hedge...a real splash of colour. 










Smaller hedges of the same plant are dotted throughout the park to provide natural barriers between sites, but they are not a patch on the entrance hedge.












The amenities block is dated but functional and clean, 














particularly following a major spring clean a few weeks ago when Liz donned gloves and hopped in with all the other staff.

















As would have been evident from my earlier comments about our site, this park offers both grass and slabs

and a number of cabins of varying sizes.














The park is also home to a few permanent residents, including our good mates 'The Watto's, (folk we first met in Busselton almost twelve months ago) who are in the process of transforming their recently acquired 'shack' into The Plantation's 'Taj Mahal'.










I was encouraged to find a fish cleaning table, and have recently put this to very good use (patience..all will be revealed in due course!) 







Our site is on the eastern side of the park, in the 'dog section'.  When things are quite, which is now fairly constant, we look out at the neighbouring banana plantation, one of several surrounding the park and from which the park obviously gets its name.  








On the opposite side of the park, beyond the camp kitchen, is another plantation, this time mangoes which are current blooming prolifically....a boon for all of us hay fever sufferers.....not!











Beyond the 'big rig' area 















lie the park settling ponds, a site of some significance to your scribe as you will see shortly.












And yet more plantation mango trees abut this northern end of the park.










The southern end shares a boundary fence with the Caltex Service Station which operates twenty four hours a day on Robinson Street and which can be the source of significant large truck noise when the road trains pull in next to our fence and remain on idle whilst the truckies grab a feed. Sites at this end of the park are only allocated when things are hectic.







This is what we can actually see from our side (when not poking the camera at head height to peer over the fence)











And, as with most places in Carnarvon, the OTC dish looms high over the fence. The old tracking station site on the ridge of the Browns Range is less than a kilometre distant to the south-east, and when there are no resting road trains in the Caltex to block the view, this is what we seen from our dining window.

And once more for good measure, in close up, again taken by peering over the fence. I'll have much more to say about this Carnarvon feature in a later blog, after we have met Andy Thomas!






Our location at the eastern end of the park can be a little noisy with the heavy general traffic using Robinson Street. Road trains down-shifting with their engine brakes blaring as they slow to make the right or left turn at the junction of the North-West Highway and Robinson Street, are a sound unto themselves.  But, just as we soon became used to the sound of the trains when living in Oleander Street, we now take no notice.  I suspect our first departure night spent in a quiet spot is going to seem quite odd.

Sitting for any length of time looking south out of the van's dining window across the end of the neighbouring plantation to the North-West Highway presents a range of traffic which almost has to be seen to be believed. This is the front half of a typical road train,








and this is the rest of it!












Trucks carrying goods of all descriptions, towed caravans, plantation utes and commercial vehicles of all shapes and sizes are constantly on the go. The amount of what is obviously mining related equipment moving in both directions is staggering. This road junction is without a doubt one of the busiest traffic locations in Carnarvon and has become part our our recent way our life.




So just what do we do all day? From Liz's perspective, the answer is simple....she works in the park office, taking bookings, allocating park sites according to the clients' van size and whether or not they are travelling with pets, arranging site payments with or without relevant discounts, issuing receipts, making forward bookings on request and providing answers to that myriad of questions new arrivals invariably ask.  








To be able to do that, one of the first tasks we set ourselves on arrival was to learn as much as possible about the town's services, pubs, restaurants, tourist attractions, fishing spots and so on. But with all this knowledge and the ability to provide an excellent service, there are still those who ask for the impossible.

"You want what???"  I'll not repeat my earlier diatribe about the excessive and totally unreasonable demands of some who arrive here seeking a place to lay their heads for a night or more, with one exception which, for me, goes straight into the 'classics file'.

We have recently been invaded by a flock of galahs which have decided that the large gums of The Plantation are just the shot for their nightly roost.....a natural phenomenon for this and many other parts of Australia one would think.  Not so one of our 'guests' who stormed into the office after a typically raucous morning departure by the flock in the tree near her site. "You didn't tell me there would be galahs near my van...why did you put us there? What are you going to do about making sure they don't come back tonight?"  Seriously!  

I suspect it is just as well that I wasn't in the office at the time.  The temptation to take this nature lover aside and quietly explain to her (if I could have maintained a straight face) that "the Head Galah had let us down and broken our agreement to roost on the other side of the park for the week", would have been too much.  As it was Saint Liz offered another site...it was declined!  I did everything I could that afternoon to encourage a return of my pink and grey feathered (temporary) friends.    

Until recently Liz was working a half day Monday to Friday and an alternating full Saturday or Sunday. She shares the office role with the wife of the current park manager. That was when we were busy as you can see here.






As is evident from some of the previous, more recent photos of the park, the extraordinary 'tsunami' of vans heading south from their three months' winter sojourn at Exmouth, Coral Bay and even places further north, has finally slowed to a mere trickle. Accordingly, Liz is now working seven days a fortnight (on an odd but effective roster with a few hours off during the quiet part of each day).  We are hoping to take advantage of this by using her days off to scoot out to places like Gascoyne Junction and so on during our remaining four weeks here.  

Like all staff members, Liz is also expected to mingle and spread good cheer (which she does both willingly and very well) at the regular, free park 'sausage sizzles', which until now have been a feature of each Thursday late afternoon.  More of these shortly.

And as for your scribe...well I do like to become involved, and for the past few weeks whilst Paul, the new manager, has been very busy with a one off maintenance programme, I have been hanging off the end of the lawn mower and whipper snipper.






Like all plants in Carnarvon, once watered, the grass here grows at a speed which can almost been seen with the naked eye. And there is a lot of it.






I worked out a schedule by which I could mow most of the common areas by working for a couple of hours or so, three days a week, culminating in ensuring that the lawn around the camp kitchen was in pristine condition to accommodate the sausage sizzle hordes.





Whilst this routine works, it demands a fair effort.  I use it as exercise, pushing the mower at just short of jogging speed. "Bugger, it's hot today!"







Despite my willing participation, this is a most inefficient system by which to deal with the vast expanses here at the Plantation.  And before you ask the obvious question about a ride-on mower, yes, we do have one, which Paul has recently mastered. From now on my lawn mowing will be confined to those areas which are too tight for the ride-on. Given the grassy response to our recent watering campaign, this is probably just as well.

Long grass did present another, one-off, problem here in the park.  Two settling ponds store and treat park grey water.  These, together with the other, legally required park facilities ,were recently to be the subject of a Shire inspection.  The only snag was that the couch grass around this inexhaustible supply of water had not been trimmed or burnt off for many years. It was like jungle grass, and it had to go....urgently!!

"Pete, what are you doing on Tuesday?"   "No real plans, Paul, what's on?"  "We have to clear the grass around the settling ponds.  Are you available?"




As you will see, the answer was yes. Foolish move, Marshie.  What a job. After an inspection we decided that an 'industrial' sized whipper snipper would be needed. The local Mitre Ten came to that party.  My job was then to figure out how to arrange the accompanying harness and manipulate the monster.








After we had pulled down one of the surround fences, it was game on. I could not believe the size and toughness of the stems of this wretched weed. My original estimate of one good day's work to knock this off proved wildly optimistic, even with the help of Ali, another of the park's casual staff, who is a dab hand with our own smaller snipper.





At least four or five sweeps of the snipper were needed to reduce this 'couch on steriods' to something near ground level. Add to that the problems associated with maintaining balance on the uneven and, in places, challengingly narrow pond banks (and take my word for it, falling into this putrid black lake was not an option),and I freely confess this was the hardest physical work I can remember doing for quite some time.






Despite the fact that replacing a snapped trimming cord on this particular machine was a pain, I almost welcomed the breaks notwithstanding the fact that this also meant removing and replacing protective gloves, glasses, ear plugs and nose masks each time. 








As is the practice, I joined the remainder of the staff for tea after their weekly meeting at the end of day one, where Liz, the phantom snapper, caught me trying to keep my eyes open for long enough to munch on a proffered lamb cutlet. 

There is no other way to describe this task other than in the Aussie vernacular....'it was a bastard', but after these two days of sheer hard work we did get the job done...and my reward, apart from a bottle of Jack Daniels Honey.....I got to become the park hoon in our very battered work ute.




I previously mentioned the weekly sausage sizzle. This had not been a feature of park life when we first arrived, but was reinstituted under the new management.  They are good fun, and very popular.  





A group of regulars from Busselton, who 'winter' annually here at The Plantation, were on the job immediately.  It was clear this was not the first time they had done so. (you may note your scribe lurking in the background)







Here in WA, the snags and onions are presented in long (hot dog) buns rather than between two slices of bread. This local tradition is a most effective way of feeding the masses, once the buns are buttered. Here the 'Busso wives' came to the fore. Liz thought she had better join their group and learn the ropes for future reference,











before she got on with her 'real job' for the evening....flogging the (free) raffle tickets 

as the queues formed.









We did have some big nights before the general rush subsided. We had learnt at Kurrimine

Beach just what a great 'meet and greet' a free sausage will encourage. Here was no exception, where the feed in the shadows of the setting sun 






usually went on to become a number of drinks after dark.










Like most parks, we have our characters, including this utterly charming French couple who presented Liz with (excellent) breakfast crepes in the office one Sunday morning and had great fun with me as I practised my long forgotten (not entirely) French on them. If only all back-packers were like these.








And, at the opposite end of the scale (to be taken however you choose), we present our park 'fashion statement' for whom any appearance in public 'sans hibiscus flower' was anathema.







Just before the last of the 'Busso Boys' left to return to the chilly weather of their home town, I was asked to help out with the onions.....they were somewhat short-handed, the only situation which gives any 'outsider' the chance to help.





The result?...need you ask....the best caramelised onions ever enjoyed on a bun (general consensus...not my comment, although of course I agree!)







The sausage sizzle is now on hold until the pending madness of the October school holidays, but our last was very much a case of 'the show must go on'. Liz and I had just returned to a wet and overcast Carnarvon after our four day respite at Port Denison. "Are we on for tonight?"  "Of course."

By this stage the 'Busso Boys' had all gone home.  It was time for the emergence of Chef Pierre as the sole tongs man. What a great day to debut.

These bloody snags will be cooked, by hook or by crook!  







Fortunately the hungry horde was of limited numbers and we were able to accommodate all who showed up in the relative comfort of of the camp kitchen.









In a later, most earnest conversation, Matt, the park owner (who had come up from Perth to relieve Liz during her break) and I agreed that there is nothing like a touch of adversity to enhance the fun. Shushhh...Paul is trying to make a speech!












But how could one take anything seriously and not have fun this afternoon when the man himself took the lead and demonstrated that wonderful Aussie ability to make do with anything.....including a garbage bag poncho. Matt, you're now a star!








The staff here at The Plantation are a close knit lot. A shared meal is the order of the day after the weekly Tuesday evening staff meeting together with the odd impromptu gatherings as the occasion arises.  




Just yesterday, for example, we got together for a late Sunday lunch in the camp kitchen. I though this was the perfect opportunity to share some of my recently acquired bounty from the sea, so we began with shredded mud crab on Jatz, followed by small morsels of crumbed shark








whilst Paul, the manager, took my usual place at the BBQ.









We had a fine time, with home made bread and all sorts of other goodies, and, surprisingly, a few drinks.

Staff spouses are always welcome at these gatherings. So here we have Liz, Paul, his wife Suzanne who shares duties in the office with Liz, Ray (Tina's husband), and the two park cleaners, Tina and Ali. For a park of this size, this is a relatively small work-force.  It is interesting to see just what can be achieved when everyone is committed to really improving the appearance of the park and the services and facilities on offer.  I am more than happy to be involved from time to time.

And finally, no, I haven't forgotten.....Max just loves the place. Mind you, he is not so terribly difficult to please (most of the time), particuarly when the annex goes up. There's nothing like a place to relax in the (almost) great outdoors either under his chair,















or on it,












especially after a hard morning on the computer 'cat' ching up with my moggie mates at home.






I have just realised that this missive has assumed something of a life of its own...it's time for a break (this has taken over ten hours from go to whoa). I've not bothered banging on about my daily life. Suffice it to say that with my weekly forays around the park gardens, domestic duties, making sure that Liz is well fed each evening, and seeing to other assorted daily odds and ends, the daily happy hour seems to be on me before I know it. We are both still really enjoying this totally different experience, but I have to say my feet are just beginning to itch a little.

In the next 'Letter from Carnarvon' we'll return to the water for a look at the Fascine and the fishing boat harbour.