Lane Poole Reserve

We left Mandurah and headed inland toward Lane Poole Reserve in Dwellingup.  After a brief stop at the Visitor Information centre (which had quite a good archive of the Dwellingup township that was burnt to the ground in 1961), we headed down to the Nature Reserve to find a campsite for the next 4 nights.

The "Baden Powell" camping ground at Lane Poole Reserve is right next to the river and is nestled amongst hundreds of huge pine trees which give lots of shade, and provide quite good protection from the wind too.  There wasn't any grass under the pine trees, but there was lots of dirt!

Lane Poole Camping ground, Dwellingup

On Thursday morning, we were doing some schoolwork, and a car that we recognised drove into the site.  It turned out that a family we had met in the Bunbury Caravan Park decided to camp in Lane Pool reserve too.  They have 2 boys (one Josh's age, and one slightly older) but all three of our kids got on well with them, so we spent 2 days where our kids played together (mostly riding bikes, or building a 'superpit' in the dirt with their trucks and diggers - even Natalie got allocated jobs to do in the 'superpit' and joined in the fun).

The Kids building their 'Superpit' in the dirt

The weather was hot while we were stopped here, and it was so hot that one day there was a total fire ban (the ranter told us that even gas cookers couldn't be used), but under the pine trees and in the bottom of the valley next to the river, the heat wasn't too bad.  If we decided that it was a bit too hot, we just went for a dip in the river (which was a beautiful temperature) and cooled off.

The swimming area at Lane Pool Reserve

Natalie cooling off in the murky river

Exploring the rocks around the river

For the first few days, the campsite was quiet, which made great bike riding
territory, then over the weekend, it got very busy, but we still had plenty
of room to ourselves so we didn't feel cramped.

On one of the days we were staying here, we went for a drive around the reserve to look at the other campsites, and we also took a brief trip into Dwellingup to check some email and phone messages (as we didn't have phone or internet reception whilst at our campsite).  Another afternoon we went for a bushwalk and saw the 'King Jarrah', a 400 year old Jarrah Tree.

Josh at the top of a steep 4WD track we walked up on our Bushwalk

We all enjoyed the Lane Poole reserve and our time here seemed to go quickly.  It wasn't long before we were packing up and preparing to head into 'the big smoke' - Perth...