BigRedBusTouringCo.com: November 2011

House sitting is not new, and has been around for a very long time now, especially over seas, and is becoming increasingly popular here in Australia. Thousand's of people over the years have taken advantage of the many websites that now offer the service, of which there are many. Some of course, better than others, but most charge a annual joining fee for those seeking house sitting, but free for the home owner.

Our Serpentine House

Barry with His Lawn Mower

Off He Goes

For the past few months we have availed ourselves of this great service and the joining fee, has well and truly paid for itself.

The positions are many and varied and each state has it's own listing, which of course changes on a regular basis, according to the time of year. The sits vary in duties, from just sitting and relaxing, to doing a bit of watering and looking after the beloved house hold pets, from the solitary gold fish, chookies,the odd camel or two, dogs, cats,the odd sheep or two and some with special needs, but on the whole fairly basic care, just as you would look after your own home. Lawn mowing, mail collection - all just part of the duties that are expected of you as the house sitter. The majority are unpaid, in lieu of free accommodation, which is a huge saving, and not to be sneezed at, when on the road full time.

Our Egg Supplier

Roo's In The Back Paddock

Even for those that are not grey nomads, this service has something to offer everyone. Want a holiday - accommodation free, then this is for you.

We are currently house sitting on a lovely property of 10 acres, at Serpentine, just south of Perth. We look after 6 chooks, 9 sheep, and keep the reticulated watering system going and just a bit of looking after the vege garden, of which we can take the spoils. We have been here for 5 weeks and have another 5 weeks to go, after which we move on to Koorda, north east of Northam - still not that far from Perth, where we will be looking after a large sheep station for 5 weeks.

The options are endless and using Google there a number of house sitting sites, but we are signed up to Aussie House Sitters. The $65 joining fee, pays for itself in no time at all. The opportunity to meet so many lovely new people is just another one of the wonderful advantages.

Our Serpentine house sit has been for 10 weeks, which for some may be a bit long, but gives us the opportunity to have a good look around the place, and get involved in some of the community events. The community is small and fairly rural, so have a quiet lifestyle, but with the added advantage of only being some 50 kms to Perth, and so many other communities nearby, such as Freemantle, Armadale, Mandurah, Rockingham, Byford. All have a lot to offer, depending on what you are after. Its a huge growth area, probably due to the influx of fly in, fly out miners, all building houses on the coastal fringes, and fly out to work for 4 weeks at a time. The more suburban areas, are wall to wall housing estates, with massive shopping centres in between - not our cup of tea, that's for sure, and the price of real estate is way over the top - being around the $400,000 mark for a 600m2 block, of which most have a back yard that wouldn't be 10 foot from the back fence.

Some of our Chapter friends, from Highway Wanderers are still hanging around the area as well, following the CMCA rally in Kalgoolie, and we have had the chance to catch up on the odd occasion, so all good, and always great to catch up.

When we are in an area like this for any length of time, we take the opportunity to do many of the local attractions. Some wonderful drives and walks to do, and Barry has tackled some of the bigger ones,one of 14kms, another of 10 and 11 k's, I have just picked him up and finished the final legs with him, as they are just a bit tough for me. Down the road at the little historic town of Jarradale are many walks, through Serpentine National Park, and through one of the old POW camps, which were situated here during the second world war, where many Italians and Germans were interned as they were seen as a threat to the war efforts. Upwards of 1500 POW's were interned and used for cutting timber and firewood to Perth. Many of the ruins still remain, both at Jarradale and Dwellingup.

Barry At The Entrance To the POW Camp

Off On One Of His Trek's

Bridge Across Serpentine Creek

Old Railway Bridge

Spencers Cottage

Bottom Of Serpentine Falls

The milling of timber was just huge here, and the felling of the beautiful and majestic jarrah trees, and a timber mill at was commissioned in 1872 and became the State's largest timber operation. Later that year the Rockingham-Jarrahdale railway line was completed to transport timber to the coast for use around the State and for export overseas. The durability of the timber resulted in jarrah blocks being used for paving the streets of London and New York during the 1890s. Some of the walks around the Jarradale area, follow the history of the old railway/tram tracks used by the timber industry, so much history to be had.

There are a number of dams in the area, including Serpentine Dam, Danulup Dam, all of which are the main water supply for Perth. They are beautifully set up, with lovely picnic areas walks.

Serpentine Dam

There are markets on and around the area, every weekend, and so far the best one has been the Serpentine Markets, held at the old Turners cottage. We took our goodies along and did ok, and will go back in a couple of weeks. Lovely environment to hold markets, and have also been to the Jarradale and Pinjarra markets, which we didn't find so good.

Turner's Cottage - Serpentine

Serpentine Markets

This last weekend past, Armadale held its annual Highland Games. It was quite a warm day, and we found the heat a little hard to handle. The Games are held in the main park in Armadale, which is a beautiful setting, but way too small for such an event. Too little shade, too little seating and way to cramped to be able to see everything properly and enjoy it. We have found that the area has some lovely parks, but it's weird as there is never anywhere to Park???

Mandurupp Falls

Medieveil Fighter At The Highland Games

Swordsman

Heavy Weight Throwing

Pipe Band - see the guys reflection in the Drum???

Our landlord, who is home for a brief stay, was very generous and shouted us a ticket to the big Motorplex Drag Races on Saturday night. Have always promised ourselves that we would get to one of these events one day, and so here was our opportunity. Lots of noise!!! mountains of it, and just amazing to see some of these vehicles doing in excess of 400kph, burning heaps of fuel and rubber. Barry was over joyed to see his little old Torana hb out there doing it with the best. An interesting night, and can now put that tick that off our 'bucket list'.

Hb Torana on the Drag Strip - just like the one Barry had.

So many Western Australian town names in 'up' or 'rup', but why you ask?? Well here is one explanation.

"The Noongar are an Australian Aboriginal people who lived in the south west
of Western Australia from Geraldton in the mid west to Esperance on the south
coast. Many south western towns are derived from Noongar words, especially
ending in "up" or "in/ing" (both meaning "place of" in different dialects).
Eg. Joondalup, Manjimup, Narrogin and Dandalup, Dwellinup.

This is another explanation that I found

"The "up" in these names comes from the Aboriginal Noongar language but there is some dissension as to whether it means place of, water place or meeting place and most likely it is a combination of all three translations.
All of these towns were originally spelt with a double "p" - so Cardupp, Wonnerupp, Burekupp, Yallingupp and Karinyupp.
The double "p" spelling in the original Western Australian Government gazettal of these names was used because the Lands and Surveys Department had adopted a system for spelling Aboriginal names developed by the Royal Geographical Society. The RGS system had a rule that vowels are pronounced as in Italian and consonants as in English.
This would have meant that names ending in "up" should have been pronounced as "oop", because the Italian "u" was a long "u", as in flute. These Aboriginal names were meant to be pronounced as "up", and the Department asked the RGS for a rule to assist in correct pronunciation.
The RGS solution was that doubling the following consonant shortened the preceding vowel, and this meant the "upp" ending ensured the "up" pronunciation. However, this particular rule was rescinded in 1915 for south west towns with the suffix "up", as the Australian way of pronouncing the letter "u" was almost always short, and rarely the Italian "oo" - something you always wanted to know!"