Albany and Denmark, WA.

 After trying to avoid the terribly wet weather in Albany, we were very lucky with what we experienced on our 4 days in the area. We stayed out of town at a free camp because all the caravan parks were ridiculously overpriced. Even though it was 25 minutes out of town, it was the perfect little spot. Toilets and a short 2 minute walk to the beach - and it was a dog beach, so we all enjoyed watching the dogs chase the sticks, balls and the waves. But it did make us miss our Tommy boy just that little bit more.

The only thing our camp was missing was the shower - so we went into town one day and used the surfers showers at the beach. We felt a little bit homeless walking past the cafes with our towels and soap, haha.

The kids loved our campsite because it had the best climbing tree for making a cubby house. There was lots of young girls in the campground this week and at one stage with had 3 girls from other camps playing with us in our cubby tree. We had 2 sister's from Geraldton going on a 12 month trip and then another young girl (and her mum and her 3 month old baby brother) who were full time travelers. We got lots of great tips about travelling from both families and the full time travelers had a Windsor Rapid van just like us so we had lots of stuff to talk about.

Albany is a town of big rocks! The suburb we did our shopping etc was called "Dog Rock" because there is a big rock on the side of the road that looks like a dog's head when looking from a certain angle.

The Gap and the Natural Bridge are big rock formations on the coast and both have very good viewing access. A wonderful way to view these spectacular rocks.

We spent one day driving around the Denmark area about 1 hour West of Albany. Saul was very interested in seeing the area because it was the location used to filmed a movie we watched recently called "Breath". Certainly some amazing hills and beaches, and again rocks. It was also our first real time seeing a surf beach full of surfers. The kids loved watching the people trying to surf.

We visited the William Bay National Park. We walked over the granite rocks near Green Pools. Bridie was determined to walk over these by herself, so Kylie and Bridie walked this section very slowly and carefully. Saul, Elsie and Zara explored ahead and found Elephant Cove where the rocks look like a herd of elephants standing in the water. We also ventured down the rocks towards to secret passage way towards Elephant Beach, but because it was a Full Moon and a king tide the water was up too high to be able to walk through between the rocks. (And it was way too cold to swim through!)

We stopped for lunch at Waterfall Beach which was pretty cool. The perfect size for the kids to play with.

On the way back we watched lots of seagulls at the mouth of the River in Denmark, and we also tested out the playground. It would be rude not to, right?!

Our campsite also provided lots of excitement with it's local wildlife. One night we saw a frog in the toilets, and we also saw a little creature sneak up to our caravan to steal biscuit crumbs from under the table at dusk. At first we thought it was a Potaroo, as we have been reading about the last Potaroo in one of our books, and we also discovered that the endangered Gilbert's Potaroo has a colony not far from Albany, so we were super dooper excited. But then after some googling we agreed it was a Quenda, which is a little marsupial like a Bandicoot. Still very exciting to see an animal we had never heard of before.