.. oh and whales too!

Another British gold medallist in the making?
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Where does the time go? We only have one more week in the van – we shall really miss it yet the thought of not having to tramp through the undergrowth to get to the loo in the middle of the night does sound quite appealing, unless of course Don and Kris provide us with an outside dunny in Adelaide to break us in gently.

It was strange being in a city after so long on the road – which of the dusty pair of shorts should I wear? -though Perth is quite small and user friendly – free buses that you hop on and off. There are very few “sights” but it has a lovely relaxed atmosphere – city with watersports and such fit looking people everywhere. We climbed up to King’s Park (others ran up and down the 200+ steps timing themselves while we puffed and wheezed our way up) and had our sandwiches overlooking the river in the Botanical Gardens and watched the world go by. It was great fun to meet up with Heather and Chris for dinner and hear what they had been up to – gave us something to talk about for the next day or two. However, we did feel slightly envious as they walked back to their smart hotel and we caught a taxi back to our campsite on the flight path

The Pinnacles
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Perth was lovely and then Fremantle was lovelier still – until we got the parking ticket! We felt rather peeved as we had put a notice in the window saying the meter wouldn’t take our money but apparently there’s a phone number you should ring if that happens. So we did trot down to the Town Hall and politely point out to them that we didn’t know that and so are now awaiting the court case ….! (only joking Mum).

I think we’ve been in competition with Charlie Boorman to see how many different forms of transport we can use on one holiday – bikes came next. We took a ferry to Rottnest Island, hired bikes and cycled round looking for nice spots on the beach to rest before looking for the next one. Why is it that Patrick always has to walk to the far end of any beach despite knowing that we are only going to have to walk back and then get back on our bikes – surely that’s exercise enough? Rottnest was stunning and we really enjoyed the cycling although we felt it for the next day or two. There have been a number of places we’ve visited that we’ve gone to because people have said you must, even though we’ve thought we’ve done something like that before and we’ve always been staggered at how right they are. Rottnest Island was one and The Pinnacles was another – another bunch of rocks we thought. Wow, they were absolutely amazing, like nothing we’d ever seen – bright yellow sand and literally thousands of individual rocks just sticking out of the ground in the middle of the desert – hard to describe the impression of seeing them all around you, like something out of a Star Wars set.

The fairytale forest
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The weather has broken – we’ve had some rain but we read in the papers about flooding and cyclones in other parts of Australia so we have been very lucky with one or two showers. One was on yet another walk around a cliff top – but it was worth getting wet as we did see whales!!! A long way out but we saw the spouts of water and then a tail flip as they dived. Fantastic!

We’re now in Augusta – right down in the bottom left hand corner – having meandered through the Margaret River wine region – are we too old to get a work visa for grape picking? What a wonderful area – there is just so much to see. Very Mediterranean in many ways but also very different. Also very different from anything we’ve seen so far.

Someone trying to tell him something?!
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We set off to find yet another beach today and realised halfway along a dirt track that we couldn’t really take the van any further (it’s not a 4WD), so decided to leave it in a handy spot and walk. After about 10 minutes trudging a car came past – on the side of which was written “Margaret River Discovery Co” and asked if we would like a lift which we gratefully accepted -a young man driving and two Irish girls as passengers. He was extremely helpful, telling us an alternative walk back, showing us a map he had, he suggested where we went, told us to look out for snakes and the rip in the water etc. etc. When we got to where he was letting us out we all climbed out and he spotted a school of about 20 -30 dolphins which he then lent us his binoculars to watch and again he was very knowledgeable. We then set off and Patrick was amazed that a car salesman should know so much about the area, even having detailed maps and binoculars whilst giving his clients a test drive down a sandy dirt track. My hunch that he was actually a tour guide taking the girls on a tour of the coast was borne out when he passed us again on the way back and offered us a lift back to the van, commenting how sensible we were not to try and drive any further and the very nice Irish girls explained to us where they’d been all day. The dolphins incidentally were still there when we got down to the beach and we watched them for ages riding the waves, surfing and diving. Nature, eh!

Margaret River itself is a very pretty tourist town – there’s certainly plenty of money around here – lots of new buildings going up all along the coast. It’s such a lovely easy way of life here – everyone really is very laid back and helpful and kind – “no worries” really is their attitude. And of course we did a bit of tasting – perhaps not the best time at 10 am but it fitted in with our day.

The Discovery car salesman suggested we drove down to Augusta on a particular road – not the main road, as you go through a forest which is spectacular and there is a certain spot they call Kodak Corner as everyone stops to take a photo. He said you’ll know it when you see it. So we drove along looking for something special and when we reached the forest we thought that we had passed the spot but decided not to go back to take a photo as the view was good but not worth going back for. We drove on a bit further, then drove round a bend and there it was … the most amazing forest I’ve ever seen – hundreds of huge trees making a canopy really high up with lots of very green vegetation underneath – it just looked like something out of a fairytale. Breathtaking.

So the wonders go on and on – surely there can’t be anything else spectacular left!

Thanks again for keeping in touch – we really enjoy hearing from you. Conversation is still pretty thrilling between us – I can’t decide whether to shout everything I say or just to automatically say it twice. The rattle of the van doesn’t help …. However, all is well and we’re having a brilliant time.