Found out today the trip meter zeros at 10,000kms

Last nights lobster dinner was pretty yummy.  Dave had to cut Mr Lobster in half and clean the insides out for us before we could hook into them.  He started trying to do it in the van...

but soon realised it needed a bigger knife and that he needed to be slightly rougher so he grabbed our largest knife and hacked into it outside..

Yes that is the door mat that he's leaning the chopping board on. 

Today's weather reports told of heavy rain and flash flooding up through the Meekatharra area and this can quickly and easily flow through to Sandstone our planned overnight destination.  They had already had heavy rain yesterday and more was predicted for Sandstone today so we decided to dodge the rain and head for Northam (just inland from Perth) for our overnight stop on the way to Kalgoorlie.

This was a little disappointing as when Mum and Dad came over last year they left messages along the way at some of the rest stops for us.  Our last message that we had to look for was 2 hours past Peter Denny lookout and now we won't be going that way so we will miss this message.  We've had no success in finding any of the messages that they have left us - the rocks went missing, the fence was removed, this one was written under a picnic table so was probably the only message we had a chance of finding - never mind hopefully it will be there for us to find again in years to come when we make it back over here.

Trip today was quite uneventful, we had regularly breaks and swapped drivers ever couple of hours.  Saw a couple of really big road trains today some of them you had to pull over for - the biggest ones of course came whilst I was driving!!

We arrived in Northam early afternoon and checked into the caravan park.  We asked the lady at the caravan park if there was anything to do here.  "Yes, she said there is lots to do.  We have a suspension bridge, there are baby swans on the river, there's a suspension bridge and there are ducks in the river, Oh and did I tell you there's a suspension bridge".  Well we better go and check out the suspension bridge.

Apparently its the longest of its kind in Australia (blah blah blah blah).  Some other people on the bridge were feeding the ducks some bread, I hope they enjoyed Dave jumping up and down on it to make it sway!  The ducks came from everywhere to get the bread.  We didn't see any swans though.  Tom's comment on the suspension bridge "If this is the biggest in Australia then the others must be really tiny".

Spent the afternoon kicking back around the caravan park.  The park is full of a lot of locals and Dave has enjoyed a chat with some of them whilst cooking the bbq.  Here is our setup.  The park is pretty dusty and dry - no grass, just all dirt and very very basic but we have all we need in the van anyway.

Off to Kalgoorlie tomorrow for a couple of days. It will be nice to be setup for more than just overnight.

Its all a little too late for us but the road to Coral Bay and Exmouth has re-opened again at 4:30 this afternoon.  The fire is still uncontrolled in many areas but must be safe enough next to the highway.

Kms travelled today 444

Kms travelled overall 10 194 (found out today that the trip meter only goes up to 10,000 kms, maths is now required to calculate our total number of kms)