Dog Friendly, Flinder’s Bay Caravan Park at Augusta

March 29, 2025March 30, 2025 | Chris Riley

For our first trip away in our little Avan, Georgie Girl, we decided we’d go again to Flinder’s Bay Caravan Park at Augusta. We stayed here only a few weeks ago in our previous Erde Camper trailer, and it was after that trip that we realised that ‘caravanning/camping’ really does put us in our ‘happy place’. That trip inspired us to go back to something that wasn’t canvas, it inspired us to get our little Georgie Girl. (Not that we don’t like canvas, in fact we do, it’s just that canvas is a little harder for two old codgers nearing their 70th birthdays). As you can see from the images below the caravan park is full of beautiful shady trees, with many of the sites having trees around three sides providing both shade and a feeling of privacy.

There’s three caravan parks in town, but during the main season Flinder’s Bay caravan park is the only one that takes dogs. I think during the off season it closes, and then dogs are allowed at Turner’s Caravan Park. I think both parks are council owned.

The park is right on the southern ocean, so the crashing waves provide wonderful background music. Several tracks lead out of the park directly to the ocean for a lovely walk down the rocky foreshore, or for a cooling dip for those brave enough to venture into the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. (Not me – if it’s not 40 in the shade, not much more than my big toes gets near the water). Dogs aren’t allowed on all of the coastline down here, but there is a dog friendly area of the beach at the eastern end of the caravan park. However, currently there are dozens (possibly even hundreds) of toxic Sea Hares washed up on shores of the ocean, and the banks of the river. These creatures are absolutely deadly to dogs, so it’s not wise to let a dog off the lead at the moment anywhere near water in Augusta. If you’ve never seen a Sea Hare, below is an image of 4 together on the banks of the river. Each would be around 20cms in length, and around 10cms across. They look like a huge piece of liver.

A little mobile Ice Cream van that makes delicious real fruit Ice creams is often at Flinder’s Bay. Our first encounter with said Ice Cream van was accidental on our first night here when we walked down the path that led to the beach. Of course, we tried one. Yum! Today’s encounter was much more deliberate.

There are two ablution blocks in the park. Both are more than adequate, and are kept perfectly clean. With Seniors discount the cost for three nights is $145. It’s a lovely park, not pristine, and there’s no jumping pillows, no swimming pools, and no kids adventure playgrounds. It’s a park that feels close, (and is close) to nature. As I type this, our Mr Tilly is lying out under the trees, and there’s lots of little birds flitting all around, the waves are crashing in the background, and I can smell the eucalypt. Tills is happy, we’re happy, and in fact there are a lot of dogs here, and they all seem happy, as do their owners.

The park is about a twenty minute walk to the river. We have walked it, but we prefer to drive into the river picnic area and then walk down the river to the river mouth and back again to our car. It gives us about an hours walk and there’s so much to see on the river. Today we saw pelicans, dolphins, wind surfers, kite surfers, kayakers, swimmers, paddle boarders, and water craft of all types. As we meandered down the shady trees that line the river back we saw huge trees, Hampton’s style grand houses, little old river cottages, and of course, those ugly, deadly Sea Hares.

Augusta is a lovely little coastal town located at the south west corner of Western Australia. It’s where two rivers meet and run out into the ocean, and it’s also where two oceans meet, the Indian, and the Southern Oceans. You can read more about the town here https://lifeofrileyow.com/2019/05/14/augusta-the-small-town-where-two-big-oceans-meet/ It’s only just over an hour’s drive from Busselton where we live, but it’s a very different sort of coastal town. Busselton is a place with calm pristine waters and beaches. Augusta is place with a rugged coastline, and crashing waves. As far as coastal towns go, Busselton and Augusta are both gorgeous places, but they are as different from each other as night is from day.

We go home tomorrow after our three night ‘shake down’ trip. It’s been wonderful. A real pleasure, and we will be back this way again for sure. It’s a lovely caravan park, in an even more wonderful unpretentious little coastal town.

2024 draws to a close

December 16, 2024December 16, 2024 | Chris Riley

As 2024 draws towards its end I can’t help but feel relieved. What a year, not one I hope to repeat anytime soon that’s for sure. As anyone who knows me well, I’m very adaptable to change (with the exception of changes to technology). 2024 though has seen more changes than even I can adapt to easily.

First we sold our home of 2 1/2 years in Nova Village. Thank goodness we moved into ‘one of those places’ whilst we were still young enough to recover from both the experience, and the financial loss. That’s not to say those places aren’t well suited to some people, it just didn’t suit us. At the time we sold the real estate market was at the peak of the biggest real estate boom I’ve ever seen. Finding a house, any house at all wasn’t easy. Fortunately we found a place to rent on a periodical lease whilst we looked for a place to buy. We knew the rental propert was going to be short term so we needed to pounce on anything remotely suitable. Houses were going under offer before they were even listed. It was manic!

We did find a place that suited both us, and our budget, and moved in on Paul’s birthday, the 8th of May. We’ve done a few things to it since, but at a much slower pace than is usual for us. We’ve both been tired from the two moves, not to mentioned our strapped finances after our estimated loss from the move out of the retirement village in excess of $300,000.

Our enthusiasm for home renovations has been unusually slow, but is recovering now though I’m pleased to say. We’re making plans for how we can really put our own stamp on this little villa to make it our own. I’m sure I’ll have a few changes to show you in 2025, but let’s just see the back of this God-damned awful year first.

Above is one change we’ve made so far. The kitchen needs a bit of makeover, it’s been designed poorly, but for now Paul has built a small half wall across the end of the kitchen so as to give us a place to put our microwave, and we’ve painted the dark drawers white. (I only do white kitchens).

Below is an image of one of the planned changes to come. A double Velux roof window into the kitchen – with one window opening. It will provide ventilation and light, as well as giving a sense of space by adding some height to the low ceilings.

We did manage to fit in a couple of little holidays this year. I went to Bali for a week with a small group of ladies from my walking group. Then Paul and I flew up to Darwin for two week break from the winter.

We bought a swag, tried that out in the forest, and loved it. Carting it along with enough camping gear in our little Toyota Hybrid though wasn’t easy. We had a tow ball fitted to the car, and looked for a light weight trailer. The most suitable one we found happened to be camper trailer – which created another dilemma for us. Anyway long story short – the camper trailer won out. Out with the swag, in with the small camper trailer, which we tried out with Mr Tilly as soon as the weather permitted.

What a nightmare that was. We’ve since decided no more mobile homes for us until Mr Tilly goes. He’s such a stress freak when away from home. He’s only 7 1/2, so that’s a good few years away I should imagine. We have still kept the camper trailer, but have removed the tent section. The trailer is very useful for our little home hobby business.

Ah – now there’s another little snippet of news for you. You may remember Paul has upcycled a lot of furniture in the past. It’s become somewhat of a hobby now. Much of our own furniture is old pine furniture that’s been saved from land-fill with an up-cycle, and we’ve done quite a bit for friends as well. We decided a couple of months ago to try to put our spare time to good use, and try doing some up for sale. We hate the throw away mentality of the world today, so prefer to re-cycle and up-cycle for ourselves wherever possible. This has evolved from that.

We look for furniture pieces that are around 15 – 30 years old. You know the old dark stained rubber wood or pine pieces that were popular, the pieces that are now being discarded, often to land fill, as the owners replace them with the latest furniture trend. After many, many hours of sanding, filling, repairing and painting we move them on via the local face book market place. It’s become a bit of a labour of love, with enough profit to allow keep us investing in a few more pieces that we can save from the scrap heap. It gives us a sense of purpose, and we both love seeing the old transformed into something new.

That’s not all though – you may remember a good few years ago I wrote a post on the Bunbury Farmers Market. It’s a place we love to shop at, and a place I worked at for a short time. It was a fabulous place to work, and a job I enjoyed immensely. Unfortunately the travelling distance did prove to be to great, so I didn’t stay long. When I left though, I said, “if ever you open a place in Busselton, I’ll be back”. Guess what – a new Bunbury Farmer’s Market opened in Vasse, a suburb of Busselton, this month. And guess what else – yes, I’m back there working as Food Presenter once again. I’m in my element!

Bunbury Farmer’s Market

I’m thoroughly enjoying it again. It’s a wonderful, business, and quite unique for Australia. It’s grown to be quite big, so much so that I believe it attracted the attention of Gina Rhinehart, who has now invested into its future growth. I hope it doesn’t grow in way that changes what makes it so special. At the moment there are of course quite a few teething problems, but on the whole it’s running fairly smoothly. I’m a bit torn. I love working there, but I also find breathing new life into an old piece of furniture very rewarding. The furniture – well that’s really a two person job, and one which Paul and I love working on together. As we move towards the start of another new year, I’m sure my way forward will become clear. Let’s see where 2025 takes me…..

camping life – should we go full circle

July 7, 2024July 7, 2024 | Chris Riley

Paul and I went on our first camping trip in June of 1980. Friends had a Combi and invited us to come away with them to the Stirling Ranges (probably one of the coldest places you could go in Western Australia in June). We purchased two little nylon pup tents from Kmart, packed our two kids, aged 7 and 4, our bedding, food and our two little tents into our little Mazda Capella sedan and headed south for three nights. We didn’t have air mattresses, and couldn’t fit another thing in the car anyway. Our friends with the combi stowed a normal foam single mattress in their combi and brought that down for us. The intention was that Paul and I would be okay just on the floor of the tent with the ample bedding we had brought down with us, the kids should have the mattress. However, by the time our mattress arrived it was late at night and the kids were already sound asleep in their little tent. We treated ourselves to the mattress for the first night, and ended up keeping it for the three nights as the kids assured us they had slept wonderfully well without it.

Similar to the bright orange ones we had

We had a ball, and those tents had several more outings before being replaced, albeit with the addition of air mattresses, chairs and several other bits of camping gear. Paul was a whiz at managing to pack everything into the car, but eventually we wanted a better set up…..

The kids grew up and we became busier, eventually going into business. We had one day off a week only, and the idea of getting into the great outdoors for that one day and night appealed as a way to re-charge our batteries. Our next camping purchase was a heavy canvas, cabin style tent.

We didn’t use it that often as life was too busy to allow many getaways, and although cumbersome to erect and dismantle, it was a very snug and cosy tent. We loved it. That is, loved it until we decided it’d be a good idea to weather proof it even more with a tarp over the top, then we added a table and dining bench seats, lay back comfy chairs, a cooking station, and a multitude of ‘other stuff’. If you’ve ever tried to drag a tarp over a stand up sized tent on a windy day, you’ll relate when I tell you that camping went from being a relaxing pleasure to being very near to the stuff that divorces are based on. Thinking back to that tent, if we had kept it simple it would have been close to perfect, but having purchased all the creature comforts, it didn’t enter our silly heads to back-track at the time.

Next came a nylon dome tent. Very light and small when packed up, and very easy to erect – but oh, so cold. Next an old 1980s pop top caravan – ok, but we missed our tents in the great outdoors. Next came an Oz Tent (easy to erect, and warm, but I didn’t like it much at all. I don’t know why). Then Paul built the most amazing camper trailer to use with our Oz tent. We had personalised number plates fitted with KOW embossed in the number. KOW stood for Kitchen on Wheels. It was a fantastic trailer, with a slide out sink unit, stainless steel storage drawers and a slide out camp stove. We still didn’t use it much though. Mmmm, what to do to encourage us to get away more. “I know, let’s get rid of the tent and put a roof top tent on the trailer”. So we did. But we still weren’t using it. Eventually we realised we were just to tired from work to find camping week-ends of any description could do anything to help re-charge our batteries. We stopped camping altogether for the next few years.

Tired from work, and disgruntled with changes made to the superannuation we decided to pull the pin on work early. In 2013 we purchased a Travelhome fifth wheeler, left work in 2014, four years earlier than planned, and we set off around Australia. We sold almost everything at the time, our house, most of our worldly possessions, and off we went on our big adventure, an adventure we’d planned on living for at least the next seven years. This blog was created at the time to record that adventure. Alas, unanticipated family commitments put an end to that little escapade.

We became ratepayers again in 2016 so as to have a base from which to make anticipated return trips to the UK to see Paul’s dad who was going down hill fast. The fifth wheeler was still going to be our winter accommodation in the North of the country when Busselton became cold and miserable. However, the fifth wheel, towed by a Hi-lux had weight issues, plus we weren’t living in it full time so really had no need of such a big rig any more. We replaced the Hi-lux with a Prado, and the fifth wheeler with a smaller, New Age Manta Ray 16E.

It was certainly good enough for our winter trips to Broome or Darwin. In the meantime in 2017 our pooch, Mr Tilly entered our lives. We did our homework before committing to a pup, and although we realised there’d be a few restrictions on us when travelling with a dog, we felt the benefits of dog ownership would outweigh any of those restrictions. What we hadn’t factored in was Mr Tilly’s adverse reaction to travel. He’s an anxious little boy, the vet calls him, ‘hyper-vigilent’. We hoped he would grow out of it, but he never has. He’s now on anxiety medication, and he doesn’t take well to changes in environment. We felt it wasn’t worth keeping the caravan for the amount of use it was going to get. We decided we’d give camping a miss, we’d get a house sitter and go overseas instead once or twice a year for 2- 3 weeks for our holidays instead.

However we both really prefer to holiday in our adopted and beloved country, Australia. So now at the ripe old age of 69 we’re wondering if we should go ‘full circle’ on the camping thingie. We much prefer holidaying in Broome during our winter months to going overseas. Where-ever we go, we know Mr Tilly won’t be coming with us, he’s much less anxious with a housesitter in his own home than he is either going to someone else’s home, or coming with us on the road. Accommodation is frightfully priced in Broome, and anyway, we prefer our own bed, even if that bed is just a mattress in a swag, to a bed that has been slept in by hundreds of other people. A big money investment isn’t justifiable for just the few weeks in a year that we’d feel okay about leaving Mr Tilly in someone else’s care. Which has us thinking about the circle of life, or in this case, the circle of camping…..

We’ve perused all the options, and this is what we’re considering:

The reasons for considering this option are listed below:

We loved the canvas cabin tent the best of everything we’ve owned, that is until we complicated things by adding too much gear.

We only have a Yaris cross hatchback car now, so providing we keep to just the basics these two accommodation items will fit into our little car with enough space left for the basic necessities and just a few creature comforts. (Note to ourselves – Keep it simple).

The Outback swag is heavy canvas and quite roomy inside. Definitely not the size of the canvas cabin tent, but it definitely has the coziness of canvas. The biggest problem we anticipate with it is the nocturnal loo visits that come with advancing years. We’ve sussed out a few options to get around that though – more about that if we decide to go ahead with this next hare brained scheme.

The gazebo alongside will give us a dressing room and shelter from the elements if we want to be indoors. It can be closed up against the elements with the additional walls, or the walls can be opened up making it an open sun shelter. We’re thinking the two items of accommodation together will be a bit like a cross between our first little pup tent and our bigger, cumbersome, but oh so comfortable cabin tent.

Now the big question we have to ask ourselves:

Are we too old to go full circle, too old to start using a swag? Paul is still very agile, but have I lost too much of my agility to be able to cope with this? I’m definitely a lot less agile than I was in 1980 when we bought our first pup tent, but I don’t think I’m much less agile than I was just 20 years ago. 20 years ago at 49 I certainly wouldn’t have been wondering if I was too old to start ‘swagging it’. But if this idea progresses we’ll both be 70 when we take our first road trip in a swag…… Pleasure, or pain – that is the question?