Ball Obsession disturbs humans.....

What does the above image look like to you? A baby doll? A plastic version of a human baby? Right, that's what it looks like to me too.

The dog's perception is rather different to ours. Bender does not see the above object as a baby doll.

Can you guess what Bender thought it was? When we let the dogs loose at the Yardie Creek Caravan Park in Exmouth, Bender immediately started searching the yard for balls. He retrieved a couple from the kid's sand pit, and they were quickly confiscated. We were trying to have an adult conversation, and he was more disruptive than the kids.

Starved of balls, he found the youngest girl's doll and picked it up by it's head. It looked a little disturbing, him carrying a baby around in his mouth by it's head.

It was met with laughter and cries of "the Dingo got my baby!" (for those who aren't Australian, context of the quote here).

We also confiscated the baby doll from him, but from then on he was obsessed. He picked up the baby in preference to the boring old tennis balls every time. L joked that when her girl grew out of the dolls, we might be getting a very strange package in the mail full of baby heads.

Can you imagine throwing one for Bender in the park or at the beach?

Road Trip to Exmouth - Day 5 - More Exmouth

On our morning toilet walk, Barbie noticed the kangaroos for the first time. They had always been there, but I think they moved at an inopportune time. The kangaroos up here are pretty small, not like the massive red kangaroos that we used to see around Kalgoorlie. I got her to forget about them eventually.

For the second morning in a row, we took the dogs down to the beach for a run. The dogs were quite tired, and it didn't take long before Barbie made herself comfortable on the sand.

We then took the dogs back to the homestead, to leave there for a few hours so that we could properly check out the Cape Range National Park.

On the way out there, we were flagged down by a guy on the road near 'the dune'. We were told we should go look at 'the dune', but not to go too far or we would get bogged. Well, this guy was bogged, but as we stopped he looked at the X-Trail and said 'I don't think your car is big enough to pull us out'. I was like, no - we don't even have recovery points on this car, it's really a city car.....so N offered to go back to Yardie Creek and ask someone to help him out.

We pulled back into the gate and they made fun of us "can't bare to be away from them from more than five minutes, hey"? They said they would go help the guy stuck on the dunes, but when we drove back past he was gone so he may have pulled over a proper four wheel drive car in the meantime.

We enjoyed swimming and sightseeing in the National Park. The Ningaloo Reef is pretty famous as a tourist attraction - it really is the WA version of the Great Barrier Reef. We really didn't get to do as much snorkelling as I'd like though as we didn't want to leave the dogs at the homestead all day - they had to go to town and go shopping and stuff.

Yardie Creek gorge is just lovely, and though we didn't have time to go on a boat trip we decided to go back with our kayaks to paddle up it. We also want to go and swim with the whale sharks during their season. We are looking at going back up (without the dogs) in May.

On the way back into the caravan park we managed to snap these emus hanging around outside. Emus are very cute and very fast. I found myself wondering if they would beat Barbie in a foot race.

We went to the homestead and collected the dogs and headed back into town for lunch. We revisited the cafe we went to last time because we knew it was dog friendly, and lunch was pretty good.

After we ate, we took the dogs back to town beach, though they were pretty tired and it was blowing a gale.

Barbie decided that she wanted a nice bed in the sand out of the wind, and in N's shadow out of the sun. I decided to record it after watching so many turtles dig holes in order to lay their eggs. Barbie's digging style is a lot quicker than a turtle's though!

Note her strange one-pawed digging style and the fact that she knew precisely how big to dig the hole!

On the way back out to the caravan park, N spotted three people sitting in their car eating icecreams and decided she wanted one. I figured the Lighthouse Caravan Park would have a shop and it might be a cool place to check out.

No dogs are allowed at the Lighthouse caravan park but they do have a resident Staffy. She had such an expressive face. Later when I asked the folks at Yardie Creek about her they said they had to put signs up telling people not to feed the Staffie as she was getting huge!

Once we had our icecreams we drove up the hill to the lighthouse to check out the view. It was blowing a gale and N didn't want to get out of the car. Neither did the dogs. I got out to take some photos and almost got blown off my feet!

I got some good photos though! I noticed that a fair few cars we had seen in the National Park that day, or spotted in town, or both, drove up the hill, stopped briefly, and drove back down.

Sightseeing for the day was over and we headed back to the caravan park. We had dinner at the homestead again and it was so cool to be hanging out with them. I was so glad to have finally met N's friends who live in Exmouth. The kids were also so charming and cute.

The dogs were exhausted and sprawled in various positions around the deck. After some wine and a lot of stories and food we headed back to the tent for a good night's sleep.

To be continued.....

Road Trip to Exmouth - Day 4 - Exmouth finally!

Water is scarce up here, so in the morning we got to share our camp site with these pink & grey galahs, who were just after a drink.

The owners of the caravan park are friends of N's - so we went and visited the homestead in the morning for a cup of coffee. We bought the dogs around. They were a bit cautious about how their Boxer, Roxy would react to having two strangers in her yard. I was pretty confident they wouldn't scrap though, as Roxy was the smallest of all three of them - and Bender and Barbie would be out of their territory.

They shut Roxy away in the shed while I bought Bender & Barbie in. Bender and Barbie then just had to deal with the three kids that decended upon them - aged 3 to 7. The youngest kids took a shine to Barbie because she tends to keep all four paws on the ground. She did remarkably well with a four year old boy trotting around after her, his hand resting on her rump.

We let Roxy out of the shed, and they were all fine together. Bender and Roxy had a couple of vocal altercations over a coconut, but apart from that they were all good the whole time.

We were advised that the best local beach for the dogs to go for a run was Janz Beach. After breakfast, we went straight there. There was no-one around, and so we decided Barbie could run muzzle-less.

She seemed to appreciate it. It also made for some better beach photos without the ugly thing on her face!

After their run on the beach, we decided to drive into town and get ourselves breakfast. Exmouth town centre is nowhere near the coast - the coast is mainly taken up by Australian Defence land (it's the Harold E. Holt command centre for deep water subs), and Cape Range National Park. It's a fair drive from where we are staying at Yardie Creek Caravan Park, which is on the coast and just outside of the National Park.

The cafe provided plenty of shade, and the dogs got a lot of attention from friendly locals. It seems that less people up here are scared of them and choose to take a wide berth. The food was pretty good too.

It was still pretty hot - probably about 38 degrees celsius, cooler than the days before we arrived. We decided to go for a drive in the National Park. There is a scenic gorge drive that you can do without going through any checkpoints. We didn't let the dogs out of the car since they aren't allowed in National Parks, but it was too hot for them anyway.

The gorge was very pretty. We saw another few cars up there, but not many. We drove up, took photos, and drove back down again.

After our drive, we went into town and bought salad rolls from the bakery, and headed to the town beach.

You are allowed to drive on this beach, though we chose not to. I kept Barbie on the lead here though, just in case. She didn't seem to mind. She was pretty tired after her run that morning.

After we had hung out on the beach a while, we headed back to the caravan park. We did some washing and hung around the campsite til it was time to go to the homestead for dinner. There was another couple visiting, and the guy was Italian and intent on making pizza. We had authentic italian wood fired pizza for dinner. The dogs were happy just to run around and eat grass.

After dinner we left the dogs at the homestead and went turtle spotting on the beach. We saw a lot of turtles hauling themselves up the beach to lay their eggs, and we even got to see a Green Turtle laying. No photos though because flashing lights can startle them and send them back out into the ocean. I did get a nice picture of a turtle track up the beach the next morning though.

We got back late and everyone had gone to bed - the dogs were all sleeping on the porch but got very excited to see us! We collected Barbie and Bender and we all slept very very well in the tent.

To be continued....

Road Trip to Exmouth - Day 2 - Geraldton to somewhere South of Carnarvon via Kalbarri

Trucking out of Geraldton rather late, we had a rather large detour planned for the day - out to Kalbarri to see the cliffs.... but first we came across Hutt Lagoon, which is a Pink Lake where the algae in bloom produce beta carotene, which is quite a lucrative aquaculture harvest.

There are two 'Pink Lakes' in Western Australia, one down in Esperance, and this one which is near Point Gregory.

When I saw the water it reminded me of a lake full of Red Creaming Soda, so we had to stop for photos!

After Hutt Lagoon we bundled back into the car, and decided to go the long way - via Kalbarri. N had been to Kalbarri many times before, and she reckoned it was worth the extra kilometres. It wasn't that hot, and the cliffs in Kalbarri are actually part of a national park where dogs were not allowed, so we left the dogs in the car while we went and checked out the view.

Bender was particularly miffed. He loves the ocean. The views were quite spectacular even though the wind was howling. We didn't take much time to appreciate them though, because we were worried the dogs would start eating the car. They were good though!

After Kalbarri it was back on the road. The landscape was getting more arid as we headed North, and the air was notably hotter.

We then came across an area just filled with goats. A lot of them had little babies. We slowed down every time we saw them, but they seemed a little smarter than the other animals on the road and didn't run in front of the car.

After a long drive it just seemed to be getting hotter outside the car, and we stopped at Billabong Roadhouse for a break. As soon as I opened the car door I was hit with very loud roadhouse music, being piped into the area around the petrol bowsers. It was Christmas day and it was dead. There were no trucks on the road, and no other cars at the road house - except for an old Hyundai Excel which was sitting near the air compressor with a shredded and flat rear tyre. I spotted the people who belonged to the car heading to the 'caravan park' which was next to the road house. There didn't seem to be any other guests. There was really a lonely feel to the place.

The woman at the road house took to the puppies, and asked us how they were going in the heat. She said her dog would usually be out in the yard but was curled up under the airconditioning. I told her the aircon in the car was doing OK.

As we headed towards Carnarvon, it got darker. Dawn and dusk are dangerous times to travel on Australian country roads because of the heightened risk of hitting kangaroos. The car does not have a roo bar or any other frontal protection, and the headlights left a bit to be desired.

We decided to stop at a roadside camping area. The ground was hard as rock and we couldn't drive in the tent pegs. I had to unload everything from the car into the tent just to hold it down. N tied the guy ropes of the tent to a tree, and we parked the car in a position to provide the most shelter.

I cooked dinner while the dogs waited. This was only Barbie's second night sleeping in a tent and it was a fitful one. The wind made the tent flap around a lot and Barbie kept waking up. She tried to sleep on my bed.

We had a big day planned the next day - a drive to Exmouth via Carnarvon. To be continued....

Road Trip to Exmouth - Day 1 - Perth to Geraldton

I managed to get leave between the Christmas and New Year public holidays, we decided to go on an epic road trip up to Exmouth, WA. I also got myself a car which would comfortably fit us, the dogs, and all of our gear.

I've yoinked this map from somewhere on the internet to show some major towns in Western Australia. We used to live out to the east in Kalgoorlie and make road trips down to Esperance.

On Christmas Eve, we packed up and headed off to our first stop - Geraldton, about 450 kilometres North of Perth.

Bender was hyper in the back of the car for almost the whole trip - he took ages to settle, but did eventually. Luxury of luxuries, we got to stay in a house at Geraldton. This place has a huge backyard. The dogs enjoyed the grass and the wide open space.

There was one problem. Bender ran to the back of the yard and he found his arch nemesis. A horse.

Of course, he barked. I had no idea what he was barking at, but I knew he was afraid. He was barking with a bit of a snarl on his face, but he was keeping his distance from the fence, and creeping backwards with each bark. N ran down there and saw the horse, who was totally freaking out and galloping around in small circles. He had run into a star picket in his pen and had a flesh wound on his chest.

N went next door to tell the neighbours that Bender had spooked their horse, and that it had hurt itself in a panic. The neighbour came around and was telling us the horse was only in the little pen because it had been recently attacked by a dog - no wonder it reacted the way it did. While N and the neighbour were chatting through the gate, Barbie slipped out the front of the house.

The neighbour had been saying that she really liked Greyhounds and was thinking about getting one as her next dog. Barbie slipped out of N's grip and stood in the front yard. N took her time getting out to her, and couldn't see her anymore. Barbie had headed towards the neighbour's house, as they have two dogs and I think she wanted to introduce herself.

I called her name - she looked up, then spotted the sheep across the road, so went over to their house. She refused to come back to me, and instead trotted circles in this person's yard, sniffing around very close to the house. She finally stopped and stared at the sheep. I caught her and bought her inside - she was not going to be trusted off leash on our holiday now, except for on one beach. Hopefully she didn't put the neighbour off Greyhounds for life!!

In the morning the dogs were given their Christmas presents, and I got the best present from N - a brand new camera to replace my ailing Panasonic Lumix FT-1 which turned out to be not-so-tough.

I didn't get any pictures of Barbie with her Christmas present - a new stuffie. She seemed to lose interest in it fairly quickly. Bender loved his toy though. Here he is enjoying it!

We left Geraldton after going visiting and headed north. We didn't get out of town until about midday. The dogs both settled into their positions on the back seat quickly, maybe a little tired from visiting and getting so much attention from so many people. We stopped at a few attractions on the way up towards Carnarvon (Banana Town) - but I'll tell you about that when I've recovered from New Years Eve.... so stay tuned for some beautiful pictures of what North West of Western Australia has to offer :)