We left Beechina and headed to Wundowie again for one night before we headed to Northam, a free camp just on the edge of town. We explored the town, walked around the small market in very hot weather and enjoyed the aircon in the local shopping centre and The Spud Shed. The Spud Shed is a small Chain of supermarkets only in WA and nowhere near as big a chain as Coles or Woollies but with large shops selling all grocery needs plus other products, both singularly and in bulk buys.

Next we went to York, the oldest inland town in WA. We parked by the Avon river and with just a short walk over the swing bridge to the town with its beautiful old heritage buildings. We explored all the shops and also the visitor centre at the town hall with its old theatre. We walked around the Courthouse museum and learned the history of York and also how the museum is occasionally used as a music venue.

After York we went to Beverley with a disused railway line running through the town. The railway station is now used as a bit of an art gallery and artists can stay in the first floor accommodation and run courses for a few days. While we were there we met a lovely lady artist from Melbourne. Like us, she was enjoying the friendlyness of the local people.

Next stop, Brookton, where we stayed at the caravan park for the good value of $15 a night with power and water. Most of the people staying here were working in the area. The couple next door to us both were, him driving a truck for the harvest and her at the local service station. Like us, they live on the road full time but they still need to work occasionally, saving up to move on again. Again we appreciate how lucky we are! In the 11 1/2 years we’ve been on the road we’ve never had to do any paid work. Chris managed to get in a game of golf here before we moved on. 

We are glad we traveled down through the Wheat Belt of WA so we experienced the small towns that we traveled through but have to say they have all been a much of a muchness. Hot, dry and dusty comes to mind as well.

We then booked into Dawesville caravan Park for a few days before the start of our Housesit which will take us over Christmas and New Year. A good time to be off the road and out of very expensive overcrowded caravan parks for the school holidays. Our friends Richard and Helen live in Dawesville so we caught up with them for a quick visit and organised a lunch date at ours for an early Christmas celebration. Our house owners had been happy to agree for us to have our friends for a visit which we appreciated. 

We are now coming to the end of this housesit so I need to recap about our time here. We moved into this beautiful family home for a five week stay to look after two dogs, Frankie and Harley. They are really well behaved and obedient, they rarely bark, don't scrounge or pull on the lead. They are good company during the day but sleep outside at night except for when there was a thunder storm which they don't like. We have had two storm at night since we've been here but little to no rain. Our days have been hot and sunny with temperatures into the 30s pretty much every day. Yesterday was 41 degrees and today looks like being the same!

We had a lovely early Christmas celebration with Richard and Helen along with other friends, Penny and Bob. Both couples we know from our trips to Darwin. We had the classic roast turkey and Christmas pudding lunch along with secret Santa presents. It was a lovely day with lots of laughs and reminiscing.

Our Christmas Day was quiet with just the two of us and I was feeling like WA is a long way away from the east coast. We had a lazy start to our day with a lovely breakfast and lots of phone calls to family and friends and then went to the beach. Instead of going to the nearest beach we decided to explore a bit and found four other beaches for short walks and then to Waikiki beach and a swim before heading home for a late seafood lunch. Our NYE was quiet too as we decided to stay home to keep the dogs company as we didn't know how they'd be with the fireworks. Funny thing though, we didn't hear one firework outside the house that night.

We spent time exploring both Rockingham and Mandurah and one day made the trip down to Eaton near Bunbury. We met the people at another of our planned housesits. On our way back from Eaton and after calling to see Helen and Richard, we visited the first of the six "Giants of Mandurah, (Seba’s Song) a large wooden structure by the artist Thomas Dambo. These giants are scattered around Mandurah with only one in Subiaco, north of Perth. Placed In different settings, they are designed to get people out walking. This first giant was facing out to sea and around a 4km walk needed. We said then that it would be good to see this one from a boat which we did another day. We got on a boat at Mandurah and did the 2 1/2 hour cruise down the waterways, seeing lots of dolphins, coming close to the giant and then a bit further on to see the mouth of the river to the ocean. The Jyttes Hytte giant was near the thrombalites at Clifton Lake so after the bush walk we then walked the boardwalk over the shallow water for a good look at this strange sight. We have now seen all the six giants with our last being Bille Bob in Subiaco. This was an easy walk in the beautiful Subiaco Theatre Gardens and then we went into Perth's famous Kings Park. We have been in here before but this time we explored more, driving and walking around, admiring the views, looking at monuments and climbing the DNA tower. We then called in to see Penny and Bob before heading back home.

We had another lovely day with other friends, Lynn and Martin. Lynn is the daughter of our very good friend Dorothy and the mother of Helen who we caught up with in Tom Price late last year. Never short of things to talk about, we had a lot of catching up to do and another great day.

While we've been here at Waikiki we have had a good sort out in our van, got rid of a lot of stuff, cleaned everything and replaced things like hoses and sullage pipes. Also our bed linen, pillows etc. I'm now looking forward to getting back in the van and sleeping on our latex mattress topper!

List of giants in the order we visited them.

1. Seba’s Song

2. Santi Ikto

3. Yaburgurt Winjan Cirkelstone

4. Little Lui

5. Jyttes Hytte

6. Bille Bob