What a difference a week makes

Firstly

The reason for this week’s title is very simple – last week 48C sunny and the only thing you saw for miles was bushy scrubland, plus only a few nutters (tourists) coping with the heat. This week 25C (plus it dared to rain slightly, twice!) massive Karri trees stretching 90m high and a lot of yuppies in Margaret river.

Our Week

An interesting week or so down under which has included nearly 2000km of travelling and some exciting day trips.

We travelled down fast from Exmouth to Mandurah just south of Perth and suddenly realised that there is civilisation in Australia especially when we popped into a shopping centre just North of Perth called ‘Lakeside’. It was massive and probably bigger than the one in England! We saw more people in that 1 hour than we had the previous 4 weeks and that includes the cars we passed on the way!

New Year’s Eve

We managed to get to Bunbury which we had been advised was a fun place to be on New Year’s Eve for a ‘Trotting’ meeting. A great evening which was followed by a fantastic firework display. We nearly won our stake money back as well! Unfortunately they only have a Tote running and on one race we bet $5 to only win $1 profit!

Family background music – AC/DC or Footloose?

A question that occurred during the racing. On David’s ipod there is some AC/DC which he has been able to play rather loudly as we have travelled through some of the landscapes here which has been rather apt.   However, at the ‘family’ evening at the races the DJ played music between races which was very middle of the road e.g. footloose, Kylie etc apart from 5 AC/DC songs!!! – for David very good and amusing at the same time! Apparently they were requests from the crowd (I am not so sure).

Bussleton

One of our favourite days and one of the main reasons for coming down here the ‘Bussleton Underwater Observatory’.

The jetty is nearly 2km long and has an observatory at the end, 8 metres down on the ocean floor, for viewing the pylons and marine life.  Excellent especially to see the coral growing around the piles as above and you don’t get wet.

We have spent an excellent few days around here visiting some more beaches etc etc. We did though manage to spot a pod of Dolphins playing in the surf just off one beach – surfing in on the rollers and doing backflips out before beaching themselves – a fantastic site.

David did get his way on one occasion and we managed to visit a local establishment that did its own home brew – a fantastic idea here though is that for the tasting you can purchase 6 beers in 100ml glass shots and there is a little tick sheet that you complete and they put the glasses in the order on the list.

For the connoisseurs from left to right – Chilli (5.5%), Dark Roast Wheat (6%), Yallingup Old (6%), Dirty Dans Dark Delight (6.5%), Old Saint Nick (8.5%!) and Ginger Beer (4.5%). Dawn had to drive for the rest of the day and David then snoozed on the beach!

Chocolate and Wine

Self explanatory I think from the following photos from around Margaret River (well it is famous for its wine!). Unfortunately the Chocolate one opened at 9.00am in comparison to the wineries which were 10:00, so it had to be viewed and just so happened to have free tastings!

What next?

We are now off to the land of the trees (very big ones) and a few more wineries and beaches down around Walpole and Albany before heading back up to Perth where we fly on 13^th January (yes it is a Friday) to Alice Springs for a week. This will include a hotel room on the first and last night which will be fantastic in itself but also includes a 5 night trip around Uluru and the mountain ranges in the area in a 4x4 vehicle and involves us sleeping in just sleeping bags under the stars. We now call this sort of thing ‘an experience’, others may call it something different.

Koala Korner

If you are keeping track of our blog you will note that Dawn’s family seemed to have too much time on their hands over Christmas offering captions for the photos posted (see comments at bottom of last blog).  Not only that they also managed to build an alternative ‘nativity’ scene to ourselves as shown below, which they toasted on Christmas day (any excuse).  All done out of Lego but please bear in mind the youngest member involved in this creation was 22, whilst the eldest does not allow disclosure of age on public forums!

Catch up next week

Love

David and Dawn xx