The next day we pushed further north to the vast salt lake, west of Menzies, Lake Ballard. The previous story is very strange but this one is nearly better. In 2003 the internationally known artist Antony Gormley was commissioned as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Perth Arts Festival to produce the statues, then situate them in Lake Ballard. The figures were fine as far as art goes, but the location is somewhat odd as far as attracting art lover...

 Our first stop was the ruins (only three chimneys remain) of the Premier Hotel in the ghost town of Kunanalling. Kunanalling had a population of 800 in 1898 and several were recruited from here for WW1. Kunanalling is located about 32 km north of the town of Coolgardie.From here it was a short drive to the resilient Ora Banda Hotel. While Ora Banda has been a virtual ghost town, the survival of the Hotel has prevented total decline. Gold was discovered in 1893...

 We then headed back to Manjimup and Jan-Marie accompanied us down to Pemberton. Pemberton is famous for its forestry lookout trees, with the creme de creme being the Gloucester Tree. The Gloucester Tree is a 60 meter high giant Karri tree and is one of 8 with a fire lookout built in its lofty crown. For those who the term fire lookout is a mystery, it simply means someone located in the lookout maintained a vigilance to ensure any outbreaks of fire were report...

Well we decided if we were going to travel all over Oz we had better have a practice with the camper, and what better place than the South West? - first stop Manjimup. We visited friends (Jan Marie & Glenn) who live right in town and other friends (Morrie & Anne) on a property, both couples Avan met in Darwin / Wyndham when he first travelled around Oz.Morrie and Anne run an orchard, which also produces some pretty good wine. The view from their porch is truly a...

Hello to all our friends and family! We did have a web site going previously for this trip but it crashed around the middle of the year and so I thought now that we have set up this web site for our 2005 trip we would put in a condensed version of 2004 and upload a few of our favourite photos. It was a year of experiencing Australia in a different way to people who just complete the circle on highway 1. We achieved our aim of meeting lots of people in real countr...