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It's now June and we have been back in New Zealand for over 4 months! (seems like forever some days!) Time to round off our travelblog which we didn't quite finish before we flew out of Perth on January 27, 2009, bound for Wellington. Last time we wrote, we were in Perth for Christmas - spent the day with Blu's brother Ross, his wife Laurin and her family. Funny not to be spending it with our kids- first time ever without one or both on the day! Boxing Day we went down to Bunbury to spend the day with niece Ros and her extended family and had a very pleasant day - except on return to Perth that night I threw up a few times and was sick for the next week or so. Oh well a good opportunity for a restful time! Had a day at the Hopman Cup - Leighton Hewitt and Casey Dellaqua for Oz against James Blake and Megan Shaughnessy (US) - and spent quite a bit of time following other matches on the TV at Geoff and Caroles, where we were "housesitting" for a few weeks.
The next few weeks were rather anxious ones for
us - well compared to our relaxed and fairly stress free year just past. We really needed to sell our car and caravan, plus other bits and pieces, by the end of January, as I was due to return to my old job back home in early Feb :-( Well we got to know E Bay quite well over that time, and we eventually sold our caravan to a lovely couple and our car to one of our reles - so we made it in time - and also time before our departure to snatch a few days down the South- West. So after a weekend with Ross and Laurin, which included a vintage car club breakfast in the park, we headed off down to Albany on 19th January, stopping for lunch at Williams and who should we meet in the cafe but the lovely couple who now own our caravan! Small world!
We had been to Albany on an earlier visit to Perth -its a really pleasant town set in King George SOund at the bottom of WA. We really enjoyed our brief visit - two nights - although it wasn't quite the same without the caravan. But
our Jayco Destiny caravan
all ready for its new owners :-(we did have a TV in the motel, and were able to watch a few matches from the Australian Open Tennis, including following the fortunes of Jelena Dokic who captivated the Australians with her gutsy comeback into tennis. We also saw history being made with the Obama inauguration - the first US black president!
We enjoyed a return visit to the Torndirrup National Park just out of Albany - rugged coastal scenery with rock formations such as the Gap and Natural Bridge - very similar to the type of scenery on the Great Ocean Road or around the Eyre Peninsula. No luck with the blowhole again although this time we did hear it - just a murmur. In the other direction there is a beautiful beach at Two Peoples Bay, called Little Beach. The colour of the water is amazing! On the way back from there we saw a large python on the road - Blu thought it was dead but when we got out and had a closer look, it started wriggling across the road! We celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary in Albany at a really good Italian restaurant on the main street. Albany is quite a compact
Kate with 2 other beauties!
At the car club breakfast in the park town but big enough to have a good selection of restaurants and still retains a comfortable small town feel about it. We also enjoyed an excellent dinner at the lovely historic Earl of Spencer pub (circa 1865) on the hill - yum! Bit of a splash out for our last week in Oz for a while.
Left Albany and drove around the coast towards Augusta, our stop for the night. We dawdled along the south coast, stopping to check out places on the way. William Bay is a great spot on the coast but it was full of kids having swimming lessons when we called by!! enmark has loads of nice cafes and craft shops (morning tea for us) and then on to the Valley of the Giants Tree Tops walk at Walpole which was another return visit but just as enjoyable as the last time. You walk up and up and up a looong ramp which takes you 38 metres up amongst the top of the native tingle trees - it is an amazing construction of steel and it is still cheap to visit too.
Augusta for the night - small fishing village with a lighthouse on
the point - stayed in a really cool YHA in an upstairs old-worlde room and our own facilities. Had a very expensive fish and chips dinner at the local takeaway - 3 small bits of whiting, chips and a coke each set us back over $30!! Fish and chips in Australia is so much dearer than in NZ!
From here we headed up towards Margaret River the next day, stopping at the Lake Cave for a tour - it is quite a small cave but a very interesting one as its main feature is the underground lake which shows off the limestone features very well . The showpiece of this cave is the floating table - check out the photo! Just had to call in at a few wineries whilst in the Margaret River area - and had lunch at an interesting boutique winery with a German menu. As always though, we felt that Margaret River is a bit over-rated. So onto Bunbury via Cape Naturaliste - and stopped for the night at the Rose Hotel for a very special reason - Blu used to go there for holidays when he was a child and as a family they
stayed at the Rose - he has very fond memories of sleeping out on the verandah- we decided that wouldn't be a good idea this time as it is now "unsafe" to walk on - but we stayed upstairs in the olde worlde charm of yesteryear - a bit tired but still so much character. Had dinner in the old dining room of the hotel - Blu had to nip upstairs and grab a shirt as it said no T-shirts in the dining room!
Next morning it was time to get back up to Perth - no time to visit our reles in Bunbury this time as we had a few things to do before the weekend - our last one in Perth for a while! Also a quick trip to Fremantle Cemetery to check out the real gravesite of (Mary) Bridget Walsh - Blu's great -grandmother (we visited the grave of a Bridget Walsh a few weeks back but she was the wrong one!) - and a tour of the streets where she lived as a young wife and mother to Nana Lang. The last weekend was devoted to a round of get togethers and goodbyes - Ali
and Nicks for dinner, lunch with Ross and Laurin, Mel and the girls for tea, Vicki and Gary's for lunch, Trev and Teresa's for afternoon tea..... wow we were in demand! Australia Day and back down to the Swan River along Riverside Drive for the fireworks like last year - pretty spectacular but over so soon! This year we went down to the waterfront to watch them with the family- it got very COLD - we were wearing our summery clothes (of course) - but the wind off the Swan was bitter - quite unseasonal.
Well sadly - all good things come to an end eventually and our long holiday was over - we were off to the airport - where we got stung for excess baggage by a most unfriendly female counter staff - she was from Qantas actually, even though we were flying Air NZ - then had an uneventful journey home. One of those ghastly overnight flights cos you lose 4 hours on the way - arrived in Wellington to some confusion as I missed my connection at Auckland - not my fault though - just not enough time to transfer luggage across. Blu was on
Albany
rugged coastline a Qantas plane as I had forgotten to book him through to Wellington, so he got there before me. Dropped and broke a bottle of duty free scotch as he got off the plane - this added a great flavour to my genealogy files he was also carrying at the time, but not too good for the print!
Alister managed to squeeze us all into his car - an amazing feat considering it is a MINI - they hold a lot more than you would ever imagine! And the amount of baggage we had - a whole year's worth, minus the stuff we sold or left behind! And it was so strange (but nice) to be back in our own home - it has taken a bit of getting used to being back in good old NZ again for sure! Not to mention being in one place for more than a week or so! But be warned Australia - we will be back - after 4 months we can't wait to hit the road again - but we'll have to I guess! Bye for now.....
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