5th Birthday {Celebration}

Who is this little girl that is five?
And what happened to my baby girl?

It really does feel like only yesterday in someway that we welcomed our not so wee girl into the world.  She was such a hurry at one point I was sure would be born in the car and I am sure my friend I happened to be chatting to during labour was sure she would be born at home on the couch while I was talking to her.

Her last picture as a four year old.

But she is most certainly her own person, she is most certainly still my little girl but she is well and truly now FIVE too!  She continues to amaze me everyday with the things she comes out with, she has her own little personality & most certainly her own unique style {which includes hating doing her hair regularly}.  She one of a kind and I wouldn't have her any other way.

We had a lovely day celebrating and even better for her with all of the phone calls she took during 'school time'.  A day spent together relaxing, then wandering around the Museum of WA here in Kalgoorlie, some fairy bread & watermelon with friends and of course cake.

Start the day later than normal {she slept in go figure} with presents from us & Nan/Grayza/Aunty Ali & co

 

 

The cake
{Rainbow coloured banana cake with cream cheese icing}

 

The trip to the Museum

 

Happy Birthday time
{with Alissa, Hannah & Emily}

She had a wonderful afternoon with the girls playing at our place and then followed up with a play at the park.  Once they all left we set to work cooking her requested dinner of hamburgers of which she only ate half.  It was a lovely way to spend her first day as a 5 year old.

Next birthday for us will be J in August.

Kalgoorlie {Caravan Park - Work}

We have arrived, even if it is as my family are leaving for a holiday or have now left to live in Perth!

Kalgoorlie really is a place that never changes, it looks exactly the same as it did the last time we came up and that was 3 years ago for Easter {my sister & her girls came too}.

Before we left Albany {and I still had reception} I emailed a few of the caravan parks to see which would be cheaper and the one that was the cheapest {Discovery Park South Kalgoorlie} turns out also wanted to talk to Justin about some work, so that is the one that we went with.

When we arrived we decided to give it a week and see what happened with work for J.  Well he did a two private jobs and we managed to negotiate the caravan park job so looks like we will be staying put until mid April.  So we are almost two weeks into our stay and I have seen more of the area than I have in any other past visit, kind of scary when you think about it!

As always no trip to Kalgoorlie is right without a trip to a Hammond Park and b The Super Pit, both of which we managed to do on the first day and J has been back to the super pit a few times since.

With some time up our sleeve on Friday we decided to pack a lunch and head out to do part of the Golden Quest Discovery Trail and I am so glad that we did.  It has so much history and it is so hard to believe that people lived in the middle of no where, literally nowhere in the late 1800's/early 1900's.  Now in most cases there is nothing left but may-be so rubble or grave sites but they have marked the locations with signs to show where the gazetted town sites used to be.  There are hundreds of all exploration shafts, probably the same in number of old mine sites and it is all in the middle of this isolated outback.  In some ways I can just picture what it looked like, in others it is really hard to believe that up to {and sometimes more} than 500 people lived in these locations.  These days they struggle to get people to live in Kalgoorlie, everything is no FIFO much to the detriment of not only these country towns but also to the families that these workers belong to.  IMO anyways.

Kalgoorlie is also nothing if good at keeps you on your towns when it comes to weather.  We have had several thunder storms since we arrived, lightening, heat, cold, rain and even a magnificent supercell {if only I hadn't been so slack and had reached for my DLSR and not just used my iPhone}

Now that we are done part of it I am hoping that when J had a break over Easter we can go and do another portion, it would be great to see some of the other places that my Mum and her family used to live.  Menzies is really no more than a caravan park now, even the petrol station is no longer manned {promise pictures next time of Menzies}.

Next update will be for a certain little girls birthday!

Holland Track {4WDing & Free Camping}

Driving from Albany we had planned to stop at the Stirling Ranges for a night but the weather put us off as it was wet & cold which would have made it hard to do many, if any of the walks.  So we took in the wonderful ranges as we drove right though the middle on our way to Hyden.

Wave Rock is nothing like I remember it, well it is still a giant rock shaped like a wave but i don't remember even being able to actually walk on it or that it was actually established as a dam in the early 1900's to provide the town with water.  See even I learnt something!

Next stop on our day in the car was to find the Holland Track and get started.  It really wasn't that bad of a 'track' to be honest and I was starting to think that we would have it done in no time at all.  We stopped for the day around 4pm, set up and took a look around while taking in a wonderful sunset.

We heading off reasonably early the next morning to make the best of the day.  Well let's just say we lost the track twice and it turned out to be more of a 4WD track that I thought.  There must have been a massive amount of rain in the area earlier in the week as there was some serious mud puddles laying around, some that we had to take the car/camper through.

We stopped for a drink and something to eat mid morning and meet up with another car that couldn't find the track, they had lost it at the 'State fence' so J was pretty happy to have someone else with us a few hours as it was a little more game with some of the tracks that we took.  I will admit to closing my eyes in some points and to mud flying in my opened window.

It proved to be a great day for wildlife, we started with Kangaroos, a wild dog running down the track {which was very large}, more race horse gonnas than I could count and a few thorny devils.

It took us all day to travel just under 300kms so we stayed the night at Victoria Rock, which is really just a great big rock but it was a nice spot for the night as driving onto Coolgardie was just too far.  We stopped just before 5pm so it was a long and exciting day in the car.

Next stop Kalgoorlie as J has a job laying flooring starting on the weekend.