Perth

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We were especially excited about getting to Perth as Mark's Mum & Dad were waiting there to meet us. Despite arriving late at night, we sat and caught up over a bottle of wine before heading up to the luxury bed we had been treated to.

Perth is a lovely city and we spent the first day exploring it. Then we arranged a hire car so that we could drive south along the coast to experience a bit more of Western Australia.

Partly for the benefit of Mark's parents but also for us, we visited a wildlife park near the city to go and see some kangaroos and koalas. We stroked the koalas and tried to feed the kangaroos who had obviously already eaten plenty as they wouldn't eat anything.

We then drove down to Rockingham so that we could visit Penguin Island to see some more Blue penguins, this time in a sanctuary rather than in the wild. The island itself was lovely and the weather was hot and sunny which made for a great afternoon sunbathing on the beach.

After Rockingham we travelled to Busselton, another nice seaside town with the world's longest wood pile jetty at just under 2kms. We walked the full distance to the underwater observatory at the end where we watched fish and an octopus swim around the jetty posts.

One of the highlights of Western Australia was a visit to the wineries of Margaret River. We did a 'Bushtucker Tour' which took us to four wineries, a brewery, a chocolate factory and a cheese factory. It was a fun day, we even tried some 'bushtucker', including witchetty grubs. Needless to say we were all a little tipsy by the end of the day!

The furthest point south we made it to was Augusta where the Indian and Southern oceans meet. We then headed back up to Perth via Rockingham visiting a few beaches along the way.

When we got back to Perth the weather was extremely hot. Despite that we embarked on a long walk to Herrisson Island which is apparently home to Kangaroos. We didn't have the energy to look for them by the time we got there and had to cool down with a beer by the jetty.

We had a lovely meal overlooking the river at a posh restaurant where we all got a little tipsy and demolished a shared dessert plate.

On our last day together we went to Freemantle, a touristy suburb of Perth where we had lunch and wandered around the parks and harbour. It was time for sad goodbyes after that as Mark's Mum & Dad went on to Sydney and we went to stay with some friends.

Paul and Danielle are friends we met in Peru and we went to spend a few days with them in their home town of Perth. Paul took us rock climbing which he and Mark were very good at but Lorna found it pretty scary.

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