Friday December 24th, 2010

Harvest is finished, just over 12,000 hectares in 8 and half weeks, not to bad going. This week has been a bit slow going because of the weather, the moisturiers was high in the grain, so Dale had to deliver it to Cascade Grains to be dried. Cascade Grain is owned by half a dozen farmers in the area ,Wayne is one the owners. Once it is dried they reload it then deliver it to the Grain Silo. Lucky we have finished as we've had showers off & on the last 2 days.

Sunday December 12th, 2010

At the beginning of the week it was very cold & overcast so harvesting of the wheat was very slow, by the weekend it had warmed up. The crew are over halfway through the 4500 hectares of wheat.
While Dale & I were over east they harvested the 1200 hectares of Peas & they are stored in the long plastic bags the same as the Lupins.

Sunday December 5th, 2010

It was still very over cast today so they harvested the 100 odd hectare's of Lupins, more was planted but they lost alot from the wet autumn they had here. The Lupins where put in long plastic bags in the paddock & will be stored there until they are sold later as sheep feed.

Saturday December 4th, 2010

We've been back at Cascade for 2 weeks now & have been very busy. They have finished harvesting the 4000 hectares of Barley & have started the Wheat. The boss was a bit worried about more rain so he hired a contract harvester for 10 days, with 4 headers they were getting over the hectares very quickly which meant there was a lot of grain to cart.

One day Dale,Wayne & a sub contractor Jim, carted 1000 tonnes to the local silo as well as filling all their field bins. We have had a few showers, it was only enough to give us Friday & Saturday off.

Saturday November 20th, 2010

Seeing as we had the rain we have had a quick trip over the east to see Dale's brother Jeff as he hasn't been to good. It also was our youngest granddaughter's 2nd birthday so we were there to have birthday cake with them & celebrate.

Sunday November 13th, 2010

They have changed over to harvest the Barley as the rest of the Canola was planted a little bit later.
They have 3 headers & 2 chaser bins. The headers have GPS Nav Sat's in them to guide them doing the harvest & the readings are within 20 cm of the last row.

On Thursday they had 30 ml of rain so the harvest has been put on hold. So Dale has been doing a few jobs on his truck.

Sunday November 7th, 2010

We have settled in very well with the family & work. Its slowly warming up, Yah. Harvest started this week, all up they have 12,000 hectares of crop to harvest, they started on the Canola of which there is 1,400 hectares. To harvest Canola they swoth it first which means they cut it first & put it into windrows, it stops like that for two weeks to help dry it out then they strip it with the header.
Dale loading another load of Canola.

Sunday October 31st, 2010

Our first week of work was pretty good at Cascade. The nights are still chilly. We met the other 6 workers, 1 is on full time the other 5 are backpackers. I went into town shopping with Liv, which is a 220 k round trip, which I will have to do every week or two for supplies.
Dale was on the grader most of the week getting the laneways/tracks ready for the harvest which they hope will start next week.

Sunday October 24th,2010

We left Esperance on Saturday morning for one more night of camping before starting work next week. We headed west along the coast to Fanny Cove which is an inlet which is popular with the local fishermen.
Sunday we arrived in Cascade and met our bosses Wayne & Chris they have 2 of their 4 sons working with them Mark & Gary and their wives Liv & Karina. We are based on the home block "Torakuni' with Wayne & Chris.

Friday 22nd October

Since being here in Esperance it been a bit cooler than what we have been used too, we have had the doona on most nights, but the days are nice. We did a trip around the Great Ocean Road here, we saw more beautiful beaches & a Wind Farm, which was the first one in Australia.

Tuesday 19th October, 2010

From Kalgoorlie we travelled to Norseman then into Esperance, we went to Cape Le Grand National Park but we were to late its first in to camp there, so we set up camp in Esperance. We did a day trip out there & once we saw the beaches at Lucky Bay & Cape Le Grand we understood why its such a popular place to camp, they are beautiful.

Saturday 16th October 2010

We have spent a few days discovery everything Kalgoorlie-Bloulder has to offer. We both were kids in a candy store at the Sweet Shop in Bloulder, some of the shops in Bloulder are still being repaired after the Earthquake that happened in April 2010

At the Super Pit we saw a Blast take place.

At the Miners Hall of Fame we saw how they used to do the digging & panning for gold, they certainly have it easy today. There still is alot of work to do to get it from a yellow sparkle in the ground to a Gold Bullion.

I got to hold a 1oz piece of gold it was the size a 10c piece & 6mm thick & on Saturday as the market changes it was worth $1380.

Wednesday 13th October, 2010

 After leaving Karijini National Park we drove to Newman, had a look at the mining there, still travelling the Great Northern Hwy we camped on the Gascoyne River, once we set up camp we had lots of thunder & lighting with only a few stops of rain the worst thing was we had to find a blanket during the night. At Meekatharra we checked out their gold mining history. We turned onto the Goldfield Hwy towards Wiluna of the 185 ks we had 160 ks of dirt it took us 2 1/2 hours.

We got to see the first of many wildflowers on this part of our trip. We were very surprise how good they looked as we thought we  might have been to late to see them at there best.

We made it into Leonora. We lost count how many mines there were between Newman & Leonara. 

5 k's from Leonara is Gwalia its a ghost town but in the 1800's right up to the 1960's it was an important town of the goldfields in WA. Today we wondered around the old buildings there are many homes, a guest house, a sly grog shop & a garage and it looks like when they left in 1960's the only thing they took was their clothing as everything else is still there.

With the technology they have today the mine has been reopened as there is still alot of gold there that was missed by the old propectors.

Saturday 9th October, 2001

From Port Hedland you can either keep going down the coast or take the inland route like we did on the Great Northern Hwy. Heading south now we got to Karijini Natinal Park, there was only one place we could camp, see the photo below.

Dale thought he was pretty special having everything named after him. We went to Fortescue Falls which is were Dale is sitting in the photo, Fern Pools, Circular Pool & of course Dales Gorge.

Wednesday 6th October 2010

After a relaxing time at Cape Leveque we got to Broome & restocked our supplies.

Still heading along the coast we arrived in Port Hedland. We saw an Iron Ore train come in, it had 120 Ore  carriages, it was only small compared to most, the longest ever train had 682 Ore carriages. We also went to the port & saw the Iron Ore being loaded onto a ship for export.

Port Hedland is also big into Mining Salt.

Tuesday October 5th, 2010

We left Broome yesterday morning & headed to Cape Leveque on the way we stopped at Beagle
Bay to see the Church, a Beagle dog was at the door to greet us, it was built in 1917 by the Monk's & Aboriginals inside the Pearl shells in the alter & window frames are beautiful, the workmenship they put into making it would have been very time consuming.   

After seeing the church we got back on the road we were surprised as we had bitmun as from Broome to Beagle Bay we had dirt which was very corragated , they advice only 4WD to make the trip. We arrived at Cape Leveque to beautiful white sand beaches, We drove around the beach about 8 ks to where we had our own beach to swim in.

After a very enjoyable afternoon we went back to camp & watch sunset over the Indian Ocean.

Sunday October 3rd, 2010

Saturday we went to a local Pub & watched the AFL Grand Final replay & not happy with the result but we always have next year. Had a swim in the Ocean which is something we haven't been able to do while we were in the Northern Territory. Today went to Cable Beach couldn't get over how white the sand was & how blue the water was. Also went & checked out all the pearling history in the Broome area & had lunch at the local brewery & tried a few of their beers.

Friday October 1st, 2010

After 5 months of working at Newry Station in Northern Territory we have decided to move on & are heading to Cascade near Esperance in WA. Once we had a sleep in we said our goodbyes to Tom, Cameillia & crew and cruised on into Kununurra did some shopping then got back on the road.
We headed south west down the Great Northern Highway got as far as Leycester Rest & camped the night.

Friday morning we got to Halls Creek & fuelled, then kept going to Fitzroy Crossing, we stopped there at the old Crossing Inn we smelt a strange smell it was the 2nd battery in the Cruiser it had cooked its self. The old mate there didn't have a battery for us & he adviced us to head to Broome to get a new one. We didn't want to have hot beer or loose the meat Tom gave us from the station so we made it to Broome on Friday afternoon, got new one fitted all ok now.