Happily, the four day Easter holiday tends to arrive just as the weather starts to cool down in Perth. In fact, I believe that the Easter weekend normally means the start of the rain. This year, however, the weather forecast was promising good weather. Woo hoo!!
We have been toying with the idea of taking the girls camping for the first time for a while, now. The twins are independent enough, we have conquered the daytime toileting issue, and night time nappies would take care of..... well, nights! The fine weather forecast was all we needed to convince us. Let's go camping! For one night.
Sleeping bags, tent, kitchen gear..... where are those air mattresses? I'm sure they are in the spare room wardrobe. Except they aren't. Bother. Hooray! Crisis averted care of our lovely neighbours (thank you!). We packed our car and trailer on Saturday morning and, not forgetting some essential Easter accessories - nor children, for that matter - we head off into the countryside.
We live in the Perth Hills which gives us a headstart into the Wheatbelt, prime farming land. With a vague idea about where we might camp for the night, we decided to head to the other side of Dowerin and see where the day would take us.
As we passed Yorkrakine Rock, the girls decided they must climb it. Climb they did - or rather, run! Miss M fairly took off up that rock before I could get the camera sorted out, closely followed by Miss E. Miss J took a rather more sedate pace....
.....by hitching a ride on Daddy's shoulders!
Here. Huff. Let me stop to take a photo of the rock and the beautiful view - puff, splutter!
We did eventually find a great place to camp and promptly rolled out the borrowed tent (thank you, generous SIL!!). We did a practice run of this at home the day before but I was still amazed at how large the tent was. It was a 9 person monster! Sorry - no photo here of the tent set up in its finished state. But believe me, it was enormous!
We gobbled up the pre-cooked pasta and Bolognese dinner and, after a truly magnificent almost-full moonrise, we settled in for the night.
At least, that was the theory. The girls were somewhat excited to be sharing a 'room' and, of course, didn't want to go to sleep. So it was at least another 90 minutes and the digging of numerous 'poo' holes before they decided that they really didn't need to go to the toilet for the 12th time and that sleeping might be a really good idea!
And then, during the night, the Easter Bunny found our campsite...
Sunday morning was glorious and brought with it a bountiful Easter egg hunt and the girls' first ever camp fire on which they cooked their toast. Yum.
On the way home my eagle-eyed husband spotted something on the road and screeched to a halt. What was that?
A Thorny Mountain Devil, a lizard right in the middle of the road, warming itself after the cool night. I can't believe that G could see it; it's not big at all and was cleverly camouflaged against the bitumen of the road. Amazing!
We all got out to have a good sticky beak.
Of course, we left it where it was even though the girls were less than impressed; it was on the road after all and they thought it was too dangerous. But the Thorny Devil had survived so far and was sitting where a car would go right over the top of it.
"Take only photos and leave only footsteps".
Will we camp again? Of course! We had a ball!!
Sam xx
