Two months and counting
On the 20th of march we headed of for a climb in the mountain Bluff Knoll (the one just around the corner). We could use Hennie’s volvo to drive there and she gave us a couple of nutbars, in case we got lost halfway. At the beginning of the road towards Bluff Knoll we saw two sign indicating: Visitors Fee and Climbers Registration. A quick think made push the peddle to the floor and drive on through. A spectacular view on this road when the scenery changes from farm land and dead trees into green forest. When the road started climbing the foot of Bluff Knoll the car seemed to have some difficulty getting up the road (what gave us a flashback to our road trip in Bali). When we arrived at the car park of the Bluff Knoll trail Neil had already finished his first nutbar, giving him a slight disadvantage when we would get lost 
. Standing at the beginning of the trail reading some tourist information about the trail and the history of the land, we read that you should allow 4 hours for the trail. We both had the same idea and told each other: give us an hour and we’ll reach the top. So we started walking quite fast, talking and having fun… this went on for probably half an hour before the heavy breathing, silence and aching legs started to kick in. Enjoying the views and plants, we saw two people coming down the trail, so we asked (we’ve been walking for 45 min now): “are we there yet?”, they answered: “you’re about halfway up the mountain” what sounded promising! After another 10 min walking we asked a group of people coming down the trail: “are we there yet?”, they said: “you’ve got 2/3 to go”. This wasn’t the answer we where looking for, we wanted to see the top! 30 minutes, 3 breaks and 20 litres of sweat later we nearly saw the finish. It started getting colder and Bart saw some dark clouds heading our way and before we knew it we stood between a Lee wave. It’s was a beautiful site to see how fast this wave actually moves over the mountain top. We decided to turn around as the trail towards the actual top became misty. On the way up we walked past a small plateau, what gave a nice view of the Stirling Range. So on the way down we stop here to have some lunch. After a few minutes we saw a wall of rain appearing in the distance, what eventually turned into a complete cylinder of rain. So from our view we where surrounded by rain. It began to rain on Bluff Knoll as well so we headed downwards, carefully walking on slippery rocks we managed to make it to the car park in how many hours? Correct! 4 hours.. So we celebrated the achievement with a nutbar and a seat in the lovely warm Volvo.
At the moment the van is in Albany where the gas tank has been taken out, so it finally can be licensed. It’s a Nissan Urvan (long wheelbase) from 1989 with a 2.4 litre engine, giving an astonishing 74 kW of power!! And it does 0 to 100 km/h in…. 8 seconds! The handling is good and the seats are comfortable. The van is equipped with a kenwood cd/mp3 player with two speakers in the front and two speakers in the back, giving you a whopping 100 W. The plan is to build a bed out of the wood that the previous owner fitted into the back of the van. Resting a wooden board between two blocks we can transform the bed into a place to sit, using a coolbox as a table. Something like this. And the space underneath the platform we can use to store stuff. We hope to start building this week so we can head of. Once we’ve got the van ready we’ll upload some photo’s for you.
And a request for Grandpa: Some shots from the inside of the windmill!
Bye bye
B&N
the one month+ anniversary
I realized i’ve been talking about work on the phone and on chat with several people but not to the readers here. A little peak into the days of our work;
We’re making a true effort to the lily. we have pulled out soo many weeds everywhere last week.. the so called love grass is everywhere (no wonder) and the wild mellons are a pest as well. second half of the week we cleared the water dam from trees. in the weeks before; the process circle of making flour, we have cleaned the windmil from excesive flour, dust, spider webs & spiders, grind grain, labeled flour packs, & packed the flour eventually in the flour packs. We’ve also been labeling wine for a while from the old wine production of their grapes. In the first weeks we’ve been mostly in the vineyard, straightening the vines (getting the stams vertical & branches horizontal on wires), clearing more weeds & some rows of vines had to be pulled out completely. So far there’s only one row out but i believe there are some more to come. maybe today? Every day is basicaly a surprise. There are more things we did but these are the main ones!
further.. i’ve been driving around in a ute (big 4 weel drive) to get the hang of driving.
we’ve been to Albany last week for a day off. it was nice! we found a van and we were thinking of buying it but it’s registered in victoria (eastern australia) and it has some difficulties. which means it has to be relicened (couple hundered dollars) & fixed so it’s allowed to be on the road again (APK/MOT, dutch/brittish) so we’re deffinitely not sure but a car would be nice.
Pleun in Albany;
The entertaining ourselves is getting more difficult. we’re low on money and the things we did before had cost us money.. and so we’re running a little low on ideas. we’re trying to find some work in the area so we’ll probably leave the lily somewhere in the following weeks.. to be continued
ratatatHAT
we’ve found a new toy as you can see in the pictures:)! we’ve been out of bullets for a couple of weeks but yesterday there was great news! more bullets!
Not the best picture of a lee cloud or maybe the best day for it but the main idea is that this ‘lee cloud’ sort of crawls over the mountain from the back towards us, the front and then drops. It looks a bit like the mountain has snow on it. A couple of days ago there was a huuuuge lee cloud but no pics :p. next time.
A respond to the comments on previous post;
WHERE IS BARDY?(&NEIL;))
the first picture was the easiest… anyone can see that.. but we’re in all of them so better try again. Neil and i are not both on the couch… fooled you;). it’s just one of us, the other is some place else.
So,.. scroll down and try again
Hoe is de sushi tent?
pret pakket ontvangen! maar dat weten jullie al.
hahaha cleanshaven i am not. it’s all about the inside grandpa
i’ll shoot some pictures of the windmill if they’re not already there.
hee grand P. als ik terug kom ben ik ook jarig geweest he.. tel je het er even bij op? hahaha
hou je even op met die 50 euro..
Happy 5 weeks
B&N
