Perth, Melbourne and the West coast Australia

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Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the Western most city in Australia and one of the most remote cities in the world. There are about 2 million people in the city on the western coast. I visited the city for a day and then headed to the coast.

From Perth I booked a tour to head north up the west coast. During this trip I got to see 1500 kilometers of the rugged country that makes up Australia. We sand boarded down huge dunes, hiked several canyons and gorges, did some incredible snorkeling and on Easter Sunday I fed a dolphin at Monkey Mia. The dolphins have been coming up to the beach at Monkey Mia for many years now. They will come right up to the edge of the water and if you are lucky enough to be chosen, get to feed the dolphins.

The snorkeling we did on the Nagaloo Reef was better than most of the diving I have done. It was like sticking your head into an aquarium. We swam with Manta Rays, tons of turtles, Mooree’ eels sharks, two beautiful Lion Fish and millions of other fish.

Melbourne

After Perth, I was planning on heading to Indonesia. However, I met an Aussie that was going to be sailing up the West coast of Australia in a couple of weeks. They were taking a 47 foot sailboat from Perth to Darwin and over 8 weeks were covering 3000+ kilometers. Considering I always have wanted to learn how to sail and the trip sounded incredible, I decided to join them. Joining us on the boat was a 25 year old Scottish girl and a 31 year old German girl. If any of us wanted to get of along the way (or were asked to get off) we would simple have to find our way back to wherever we were heading. Since the boat was not leaving for another 2 weeks, this gave me the chance to visit Melbourne.

Melbourne is my favorite city in Australia, however the weather can be bad at times. They say you can have four seasons in a day in Melbourne, and I experienced them all while there for almost two weeks. I stayed with some friends I meet on my trip up the west coast of Australia. Thanks Luke and Jennifer! Melbourne is a friendly place with tons of great small suburbs and the pubs each with there own vibe. It is also a bit of a place that you need to have a local show you around to find the great pubs since most of them are quite hidden, down a small alley or just a door of the street. And nothing is much more than a 15 minute tram ride to the bustling city. I enjoyed taking it easy in Melbourne and simply visited most of the cities neighborhoods, parks and museums via the busses, trolleys, and trams. I also headed out to some wineries with Mike Herrmann and visited some of the areas of Victoria that were destroyed by the massive fires they had a couple of months ago.

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