4 October 2013 – Perth including Clarkson, Guildford & Wellard

We left Guilderton this morning bound for the big smoke of Perth.  Josh’s cousin David (who we haven’t seen for many years) offered for us to stay with him whilst in Perth but he wasn’t going to be home from work until around dinner time so we had some time to pass.  We started on our journey south, thinking we would pass by Hillary’s to pass some time.  However, the weather was very ordinary so we pulled into the town of Clarkson.  I came to the realisation that this was the town where an old work colleague lived, so I gave Michelle a call.  Fortunately, she was able to make some time for us and meet us in Clarkson to for a drink and catch up.  We walked about the shops a little including stopping for a gift for Sami as it is her 9^th birthday tomorrow.  The weather was growing more grey by the time we left here so we gave Hillarys a miss and kept on towards the city – this time bypassing towards the Swan Valley and into Guildford where the Dutch shop is.  Friends of the family run this shop but at the time of our arrival, we had just missed Geoff – bugger!  We had a lot of fun choosing a basket of goodies which we hadn’t seen since much of since leaving home.  After paying for our groceries we walked out and the sky opened up, rain, wind and cold weather – I wasn’t impressed!  We made our way towards the south of Perth towards David’s house and I couldn’t believe how bad the traffic was.  Admittedly, it was a Friday and it was also school holidays so we couldn’t complain, it still wasn’t as bad as Sydney traffic.  We arrived at David’s before he did and realised that there wasn’t a lot of room to park the caravan so we looked up Uncle Rob’s address and headed there unannounced instead.  Fortunately, everyone was home and we were invited in for a coffee and catch up – arranging to meet again the next day.  We ended up leaving the caravan on his front lawn and just grabbing a few necessities for the night at David’s.  It was great to re-meet David and we were very impressed with his lovely new home that he had just had built.  He obviously has good taste as the house was great.  The kids were particularly impressed that he had a theatre room – the kids had gone to heaven!!  We sat and had some pizzas and a few drinks before heading to bed later that night.  I can’t explain how fantastic it was to sleep on a full size spring mattress after so long – we too were in heaven!