We left Burekup around 9am to make our way to Olive Hill Farm, Margaret River.  

We made a quick detour in to the town of Busselton to pick up a guitar Kaz has bought me for Xmas, i stupidly left mine in storage and regretted not bringing it. not that i can play the guitar but i keep trying. We then headed to the small town of Cowaramup to fill our water tanks.  It took us a bit of time to find the correct tap which was not signposted.  As we got to the end of filling, three more vans came in behind us.  We asked them how they knew the location of the tap and they replied, “we seen you filling up otherwise we wouldn’t have found it.

We left Burekup after having had a great last night listening to some live music at the country club and meeting some of the locals.  We will definitely return there on our way back north. 

Arriving at the farm along the the two km dirt road, we were met by the current caretaker and Helen who owns the property with her partner Benji.   Helen told us we could pick a spot wherever we liked since we would be here for the next month.  The other people who were arriving with families would be allocated a space to keep all the kids in one area.  This of course was music to our ears as Max is not a fan of screaming children or quiet ones or ones on skateboards or ones scooters.

The place hasn’t changed much in the four years since we stayed here.  We walked with Helen who gave us a suggestion of a great site and as we always follow advice we took her up on it and got the van in without issue.  We are looking forward to being in one place for so long having moved a lot in the last eight months and 21000 km crossing four borders.  We did it so quickly due to COVID and the need to get in to WA as Olive Hill Farm is the only thing we have booked in the entire journey.  We will now slow down dramatically and stay in places we like a lot longer.

Later we took a trip in to the town and found it packed with people all here for the Xmas break.  The Main Street was awash with people Xmas shopping and the sun was shining but not too hot.  We didn’t stay long and got back to the farm to see all the arrivals coming back in.

We asked Helen if Bemji was still producing haggis but she told us he stopped that some time ago.  Not good news as we were looking forward to that and we will have to get a fix somewhere else.  In no time it was late afternoon and we sat outside the van having  five o’clock cocktails whilst listening to all the bird life.  We were lucky getting a visit from a couple of male Fairy Wrens.  These things are tiny but the blue colour they have is stunning.  The females are an ordinary brown colour and it’s the males who have to look pretty.

For only the second time we will put our annex out which gives us a huge covered area outside.  I climb up on to the roof of the cruiser, open the rooftop bag and pass the four bags containing the annex down to Kaz.  It then took us 2 hours to finally set up completely but this was only the second time we have put it up and that time will fall now that we have labeled all the pieces and know what goes where.  Finally we attached the solar Xmas lights, mounted the tv and job done.  With the weather for this week being hot we can be inside in complete shade but with heaps of sun powering our two solar panels on the van plus the panel on the car.  It’s Karen’s birthday tomorrow the 23rd.  So that will be a fun day.  Then Xmas day is forecasted to be 38-40 degrees so we will end up going to the beach for a swim. 

Wishing you all a very Merry Xmas from Margaret River.

Steve, Kaz & Max. Facebook Group – our wee journey