Albany Escape

“Schoolies Week” is a big thing here. Traditionally, groups of school leavers go off and enjoy themselves, completely free of supervision and parental control. Favourite venues from Perth are Rottnest Island and Dunsborough, but E and her friends decided to go further afield and booked 5 nights in Middleton Beach Caravan Park, near Albany. I had visions of them travelling down there in a car with an inexperienced driver who had just passed their test. So I put it to C that we should book ourselves into a place nearby and just transport a few of them down there.

We set off with 3 friends and Rocky in C’s car and everybody’s heaps of luggage in my car, on a 4.5 hour journey. It was a very hot day (about 33 degrees). We stopped for lunch at Williams Woolshed, where I was told to leave one of the outside tables because I had brought my own sandwiches, and later for a short break at Mount Barker in the carpark of Plantagenet Winery.

When we got to Middleton Beach we waited for the other 3 friends to arrive and they all went to check in. The manager was alarmed to be confronted by a group of schoolies and almost turned them away unless an adult was with them. Two of the group were 18 and the others 17, and this had been made clear at the time of booking. The manager wanted one of us to stay there, but we said we were going to a dog-friendly chalet up the road at Emu Point. Eventually the manager relented, having read the riot act to all the kids, with dire warnings about riotous behaviour which might annoy other residents.

Our dog-friendly chalet is really nice. It’s set in a grove of peppermint trees which protects it from the sea breeze. The only issue is that there are rabbits everywhere, so Rocky goes mad trying to chase them. Greyhounds are trained to go after a mechanical rabbit on the race track, so it’s hard for him to keep sighting real ones that pop in and out of the bush.

C had a mishap with an exploding bottle of non-alcoholic champagne, which she had put in the freezer to cool down and forgotten about: