Kangaroos and Koalas - 2 out of 3 for Sophie

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2^nd April - It falls to the parents to update the final episode of our family’s adventure, our travels through Western Australia (WA). Our final destination, chosen so that we could fatten up our waifs before returning to the U.K. and also because it was familiar territory in terms of language and culture.
It was an interesting start. We arrived in Perth thinking that we had rented the camper van from our arrival but this wasn’t the case. The company were good enough to give it to us early but problems with the door not opening on the camper meant that we decided to remain local and get it fixed. So we spent the first night camping beside Perth’s Eastern Bypass. In hindsight we could have picked a better location, we failed to find the nearest camp site and my suggestion of camping in the car park of the cemetery was not met with enthusiasm by our over imaginative children. Despite the close proximity to the bypass and railtrack the boys slept very well. The girls, however, learnt from the noise levels that freight trains are very very long in WA, and that speeds in excess of 150 mph can be achieved by motorbikes on the bypass in the wee small hours.

All grumpy we were back at the campervan place at 0700. The door was soon fixed and we were happy to officially start our Aussie adventure.

Yanchep National Park, our first stop out of Perth, the guide book informed us that we would see lots of animals and birds, and that we would not be disappointed. Sophie’s ambition at the beginning of the trip had been to see; “koalas, kangaroos, and whales in Australia”. As the sun set, the front lawn in front of the visitor centre filled with kangaroos enticed by the tasty green lawn, a feature which became scarcer on properties as we travelled further north.

The park also kept captive koalas. Not indigenous to WA, they were housed in a small compound containing eucaplyputs trees. We saw them twice, on the way north in the middle of the day when the heat means that they are very dormant, and on the return journey in the evening some 2-weeks later when it was fun to watch them eating the eucalyptus leaves. Their mainly eucalypt diet provides them with only low nutrition and energy, and it is this that means they sleep for up to 20 hours a day. We also had an interesting guided tour of the Crystal Cave.

We camped at the Capricorn Campsite, which must once have been a beautiful spot but has since been surrounded by the coastal suburbs of Perth as residential development marches its way up the west coast.

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