Gidgegannup, House Sit, October 2015

Easy short tow to our next address, the entrance was a little narrow for our van but we managed all good.
House sitting was a totally new experience for us, we had spoken to some people who had done it and the general opinion was that it can be a very rewarding exercise.
This property was a large rural lifestyle block of 10 acres. We were met by the eldest son of Cheryl and Stephen (the owners) who helped with the caravan, positioned and levelling of the van well before his parents arrived home.






We only had this evening and tomorrow to get to know and into the swing of what our duties would be before the family went off on their travels. Before and after dinner both of us went around the garden with Cheryl, her showing us where the chicken house etc was. The family had a lovely dog called "Bitsy" and three beautiful cats. These animals were not our responsibility we were told. Michael, Cheryl's eldest son would feed them, he is staying home!

The most important duty would be to keep the chickens, ducks and turkeys happy and collecting their eggs, which I can tell you now were abundant!! We were going to do a lot of watering of the trees and veggie garden too.
In the garden were various fruit trees, the lemon tree was just full of fruit and because of so many eggs Helen made a few jars of Lemon Curd/honey, which tasted amazing due to the fact of the freshness of the produce!
While we are here and settled for a few weeks, Richard, will be doing some maintenance on the caravan. We want to have an extra solar panel on the roof and get the caravan booked in for wheel alignment as Rich has a concern about one caravan tyre. This was all organised and solar panel bought and fitted within the first two weeks.


The days and weeks seemed to pass very quickly, especially when we were busy with our duties.  Bitsy would be Richard's companion all of the time here.

Bitsy

We did have a trip out along a scenic drive which was off Toodyay Road and very pleasant it was apart from a small downpour which wet some of the inside of the caravan, that was our fault for leaving the tops open.
Pictures of the scenic lookout we visited.


The colour red in the middle of the picture
 is a long train travelling eastwards

 

   

  

The weather during our house sit was very good with some really hot days and some nice weekends with Jon and Kyan being able to visit and all of us using the beautiful pool. 

This day in particular was very hot and the pool was so welcoming, we were very lucky to have it.

 





 

Richard learned that an ex colleague, of his from Grimsby, Helen, lives quite close by so we made a date to catch up with her in the Hotel at Mundaring. In fact we managed to see her twice during our stay here.

We had been told about the town of Toodyay (pronounced Too-jay) which is about 52kms away from us and encouraged to take a trip to look at the Christmas shop and the Coca Cola Café. We found a sign directing tourists to a Lookout point so this was our first view of Toodyay..

This town is so lovely we had a stroll up and down the main street following an historic path, with a number of plaques explaining about the town. A coffee was had in the Coca Cola Café with lots of photographs being taken.

Toodyay Hotel

Coca Cola Café

 

 
 

 

During the month we did get out and about, Helen did most of the food shopping in Mundaring a beautiful little town that had everything one would need and approximately 45 mins from Perth. Richard had the job of taking Kyan to a very big event Monster Jam in the city and did the travelling by train and Helen picked both of them up at Midland Station again only a 20 minute drive from the caravan.

We even caught up with friends for lunch at Mindarie Marina. We had met Caron and Pete way back along the Stuart Highway and then Wendy and John relatively recently in Carnarvon and it turned out they had all met up while searching for wildflowers here in WA. We had a great lunchtime catch up!! the men chatting about caravan trivia, mainly toilets!! Sorry we were all too talkative and forgot to take photographs!!

 

We were able to have Kyan for a few nights  and he loved feeding the chickens and having some time with the horses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



We had not seen any of our relatives whilst being in the area of Perth and one Sunday we did manage to have a few over for a late lunch... It was a warm day too and we decided to eat under the large patio area of the house where there was fans!  A great way to see our relatives.







Another friend of ours, David, from the UK was over visiting his daughter and his grandchildren, we were so pleased to have them at the caravan for lunch. But again, no photographs!! The same evening our friend Helen and partner Chris visited us. Why did we leave all our entertaining to just one weekend!!

Soon the family were home, they had been to the USA and had a great time. Plans were soon in hand for some of the family to enter items to the Gidgegannup show on Saturday 31st.
Richard and I had a really interesting time at the show we spent over 4 hours there before getting back and finishing off our packing of the van. Tonight we had been invited to a family BBQ and a very good time was had with the family and other family members.


We left and travelled back to the caravan park "Back to Nature" where we will stay for a while and then leave the van in storage as we will be in Jon's house for two weeks.

Our next journey will be on 24th November to a caravan park near where we have to get the van for a service. Our next port of call will be somewhere towards the Margaret River area!!