Walpole to Monkey Mia

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The south of WA doesn’t seem to disappoint us at all. After the beautiful beaches in Esperance we ventured into the Valley of Giants. We decided to stay in Walpole as it was closer to most of the attractions and the campsite was in a beautiful tree setting near the beach.
We went to see the Tree Top walk, which was pretty good but in all fairness more interesting for children. After that we thought it would make sense to taste the wine and cheese in that region and it was delightful.
Pemberton was our next stop the next day with a giant tree (64m) to climb. Scary business I’m telling you as they have hammered a spiral staircase of nails into the tree with a viewing platform on top. No way was I going to go up, but Ed went, even though I think halfway up he thought it wasn’t such a great idea 😉

To continue with the wine theme, we stopped in Margaret River and booked ourselves in for a wine tour and a canoe tour the day after. The wine tour was great fun with a lot of tastings, also a stop a chocolate and cheese factory, a sumptuous lunch including some bush tucker and to round everything of a visit to a brewery. The canoe tour wasn’t that great, just a little paddle here and there but also some lunch with more bush tucker this time including a witchety grub!

After all that food and wine we were off to Freemantle, which is like a Mini Melbourne with the coffee and food culture to match. We had some pretty good fish and chips there near the harbour. We haven’t really spent much time in Freo (as the locals call Freemantle) or Perth. Just went to Perth for a quick visit to see Kings Park and a little of the CBD. Rottnest Island was the highlight for us around this area. You get to this small island on a ferry just half an hour from Freo and then rent a bike to go around the island. There are some nice swimming/snorkeling spots but the best are the incredibly cute quokkas!!! Little kangaroo like creatures that are all over the island.

Most of the time we managed to travel in daytime but after Rottnest (Rotto) we had a long drive to Cervantes and we thought we’ll stay for a couple of nights to see the Pinnacles and whatever else this area has to offer. In hindsight we could have only stayed one night as there isn’t much to do other than seeing the Pinnacles which you can do in one hour. As we were here for another night we went to see Stromatolites as well, the worlds oldest living beings…not very interesting at all. Anyway, we treated ourselves to a seafood platter that evening with the local rock lobster a feature, yum!

After Cervantes another 2 night stay in Monkey Mia which could have been done in 1 night but oh well, it was lovely anyway. Monkey Mia is famus for dolphins visiting the shore since the late 60’s. They first came because fisher men through bait and fish into the water and the they probably thought, hang on, that’s how we can get shit loads of tourists to come and pay loads of money and that’s what it is. A big tourist attraction with a huge resort around it but enjoyable still and we have seen loads of

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