A ful-filling fortnight!

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The plan for our trip to the west side of Australia was to spend a few days in Perth, head down the coast for a week and return back to Perth. This was lucky as calamity Vic had a run in with the dentist on our first visit to Perth where we were informed that she required 8 fillings! These obviously couldn't all be done at once, so with 4 down and 4 more booked for our return, we hired a car and went south.

First stop was Bunbury where was had a pleasant stay at the Wander Inn. Not a lot to say about Bunbury. Its only attraction is the Dolphin Discovery Centre were dolphins frequently come in close to the beach. We got up early and headed to the beach for 730am which is apparently the best time to go, and sure enough a dolphin called Levy put in an appearance. It was nice to see a Dolphin up this close but it was very touristy and a bit of a controlled environment. Its much nicer to see them unexpectedly. Still the centre was good for raising awareness.

Busselton was our lunch stop which is famous for having the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere at 2km - some acolade, I'm sure you will agree. After a walk to the end and back it was decided that a trip to the Bush Shack Brewery was in order. They had some interesting brews, in particular a chilli beer. This turned out to be purely for the novelty value as it tasted disgusting!

We spent the next couple of nights at the Surf Point Resort near the Margaret River. The Margaret River is a famous wine producing area. We visited the Brookwood Estate winery for some lunch and a couple of tasters. Their Cabinet Savignon was possibly the nicest we've ever tasted. Tried to ship some home but the backpacker budget prevented us.

Heading further south we stopped in at Hamelin Bay for a picnic lunch and sat on the amazing beach. In the shallows we saw some huge stingrays, attracted by the fish heads being discarded by local fisherman. We spent the night in Pemberton which sits amongst a huge Karri forest. A couple of the larger trees have been pegged and have been used as fire lookouts. Anybody can climb these trees so we thought we'd take a closer look. The first one we visited was the Bi-centennial tree. Paul had a go at climbing this but only made it halfway. It had no branches so there was no escaping the fact that you were a long way off the ground. The next tree we visited was the Gloucester tree which is slightly shorter and has many branches. Paul made it up this one easily and had an excellent view of the surrounding forest. No fires were spotted.

Albany was as far south as we visited. Not a lot in Albany really. We made a passing visit to some rock formations on the coast called the Gap and Natural Bridge which were less than impressive. We did, however, catch a glimpse of a large pod of Dolphins close in to the rocks below us.

We spent our last few days in Australia in Fremantle which is near Perth, at the mouth of the River Swan. Its a very nice town full of loads of old colonial buildings. In particular there's a colonial prison here, and we made a visit to check out the west coast convict records. There are no Sitch's recorded in the database, but there are 2 Goddards (which came as no surprise).

Other than a return visit to the dentist, we took a boat out to nearby Rottnest Island and hired at tandem for the day (hard work!), visited a suburb of Perth called Guildford which we believe is a colonial settlement set up by a man from Guildford in England (i.e. our home). There are lots of familar names here e.g. Woodbridge House. We also spent some time loafing on beautiful Scarborough Beach.

Another country down, we packed our bags and headed for a new continent!!!!

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Photos

Emu Crossing
The sign suggests otherwise

Comments

[john]

hi
Paul, you're nuts going up that tree - I felt quite nauseous just looking at the photo. Bet you didn't find any Lewis names in that convict place - they wouldn't let any Welshmen stay and carted us off to Patagonia

[Rat Race Escapees]

Lewis Convicts
Ahh but we did find a Lewis or ten on the convict list!!! We noted down the Goddards but there were just too many Lewis' to know where to start!