Western Australia - Perth, Freemantle, Rottnest Island & Shark Bay

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So first impressions of Australia! The people are great. Its soo nice to be back in a place where you can speak your own language and people care about customer service.

After yet another argument with Lan Chile whilst boarding the flight from Santiago to Sydney (its too annoying & frustrating to repeat...I'm still going through therapy ha ha!) it was fab to arrive in Sydney where the Qantas staff were so helpful, we even got some of our other flights changed for free :-)

First impression of Perth where that we had arrived in an old peoples
retirement village - bungalows as far as the eye could see. I was a little concerned abut this and eventually decided to ask Phil (Alex's step uncle who had kindly collected us from the airport) why there were so few houses. Apparently this is because a) there is so much land so why build upwards? and b) it gets too hot upstairs! makes sense but it takes a while to get used too.

Our first stop was with Jenny Alex's step Nan who looked after us after a very tiring 3 days of travelling. Poor Jenny must have wondered what on earth was coming to stay when we walked into her lounge. We had on our combat trousers huge back packs messy hair and faces (we hadn't slept or washed for three days - nice!). Jenny later told us we looked as though we had walked straight in from the Jungle after an SAS training course....I felt like it!!! ......For Alex and I it was heaven staying Jennys. Cups of tea, Chicken salad, laughing cow cheese all the things we'd been thinking about for the last two months!...We took over her house - washing machine and garden. THANK YOU Jenny we had some much needed R & R it was like being back home.


Perth looks like a mini Manhattan from a distance. It's fairly easy to drive around and sits on the swan river. However, as we quickly learnt it was Freemantel or frio as the locals call it where its really at. We went to stay with Alex's friend Diane - she was fab. On the day we arrived we were given maps and ideas for things to do. Diane even put her Christmas tree up for us in her lovely apartment to make it feel more Christmassy!!....Lovely tree but it didnt really work...its just too hot to be Christmas :-) We had a great time in Freemantel, everyone is so friendly. We went out clubbing and met a friend of Diane's called Adam we'd only met him that night but he invited us back to his apartment on the river for a fry up at 3am and to play MTV really loud on his plasma! (Blimey how I miss my music).... That would never happen in London!...great fry up Adam - Thanks!

The next day another guy called Leo took us out on his yatch to Rottnest island. Its a beautiful island off Perth with white sand and lovely clear water - heaven!

Spent about 5 days around Perth and then decided to hire a car and venture into the outback to see the real Australia. We loaded the car up with water and set off at 4 in the morning. We were heading for the most Western point of Australia Monkey Mia and the Ningaloo marine park.

The drive was amazing, vibrant red sand, beautiful trees and lots of emu's and kangeroos. Its such a funny sight to see kangeroo warning signs on all the roads.

Alex had a bit of a shock when she crouched down at the side of the road to go for a wee and a 6ft tall emu started running towards her!...never heard her scream so loud ha ha!

The beaches are beautiful in the National park, the first bay we stopped at - Shark Bay was true to its name and within 2 minutes we had seen three sharks!

Monkey mia is a very special place where every morning without fail the dolphins will swim right up to the shore and swim between your legs!..its all very strange I think they do it as a bit of morning entertainment for themselves!...they know when you're trying to take their pic as they play hide and seek type games - amazing to see!

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Photos

Funky car!
Hey Conor, what do you think of this? 101 Dalmatians car! :-)

Ella steps onto the first Australian beach
Scarborough beach :-)