In November Rodney and I flew right across Australia to the west coast, landing in Perth and meeting up with Caroline and Steve, who had flown over from Horsham in England, via her brother in Kuala Lumpur. It was a lovely trip, a short trip for us; only 11 nights spent in 4 different AirBnBs (all of them good).
We started with 4 days in Perth exploring Kings Park, the city centre, Freemantle and Cottesloe. Rodney and I spent an evening at the home of an old workmate of Rodney’s, Anil. He and his wife Nibha served us a selection of curries and entertained us thoroughly; it’s a shame they live so far away. Plus the highlight for me was a day on Rottnest Island cycling right round the island spotting quokkas and marvelling at the multiple stunning beaches. My three co-cyclists managed to cycle the 25 kms of ups and downs on standard bikes. I treated myself to renting an electric bike, which was absolutely brilliant, apart from the fact that you do still get a sore bum.
We then drove down south via Busselton to Margaret River for 4 nights in an area famous for wine making and the town is surrounded by a lot of wineries. Annoyingly I went down with a bug and had to spend a lot of time in bed dosed up with cough medicine and Panadol. This meant the others lost their designated driver to take them around the wineries and Rodney had to drive instead, poor thing. The following day was spent further south, lunching at the Augusta Pub and then mooching around Cape Leeuwin, Hamelin Bay and Prevelly.
Heading north again we stopped for one night at Halls Head near Mandurah and the next day drove back through Perth and further north to the small coastal town of Cervantes. We decanted our luggage from the car for the last time and then walked out to Thirsty Point and round to the town beach. Before dinner, Caroline and I jumped into the car and drove back to Thirsty Point to sit on the sand and watch the sun set in to the Indian Ocean. Having grown up on the west coast of England, watching the sun set into the sea and making the golden path follow me as I moved along the water’s edge, always fascinated me and still brings me joy. So it was something that I really wanted to do in Western Australia and it did still make me happy.
On our last day we headed out to The Pinnacles, somewhere I’ve also always wanted to see, and it didn’t disappoint. We read everything in the visitors centre and it seems that no-one really knows what created the strange rocky points that stick up out of the sand. It feels like something out of a film set. As Steve said, the whole area doesn’t feel real. Watching an emu stroll through them also added to the quirkiness of the place. Next stop was at Thetis Lake which has stromatolites growing around the edge. They look like rocks, but they breath and that I’m sure is not a proper description, you’ll have to google it and try and understand these ancient lifeforms for yourself. We also drove over to a beautiful deserted spread of beach called Hansen Bay; it was spelt correctly and definitely worth checking out; gorgeous. Our last stop was a drive further north to Lesueur National Park. We may have missed the Spring wildflowers at their best but there was still a bountiful amount to try and identify.
And in no time at all, our trip was over and the next day we were driving the 3 hours south back to Perth airport. We dropped off the International visitors, dropped off the hire car, and got ourselves dropped off at the domestic airport for our flight back across the huge empty inland of Australia to Sydney. We were a bit jetlagged the next day, which seems ridiculous after all the international travel that we do, but those 3 hours time difference really did throw us out a bit.
