And finally.......

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And finally ....... this is it, the last blog!

As some of you will know, we had an interruption to our trip that could not be avoided!! Dave got himself a job and had to work for 3 months before we could manage to get away and finish what we started! We spent those 3 months back in Felixstowe, although not in our home, planning this final month.

Our lovely friend Linda had planned to join us in Oz and had already booked her flights over so Ann booked hers so they could travel together and Dave was joining them a week later. The girls (nicknamed themselves Thelma and Louise!) started in Sydney with a whirlwind tour of the city's sights. The weather was glorious and Sydney lived up to our expectations. Onto Melbourne next which we found to be a quiet city (we had just missed the Melbourne Grand Prix thankfully) and spent quite a bit of time in the botanical gardens which were gorgeous.

We then picked up a hire car and started our drive to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road. This is such a spectacular journey with amazing views and luckily we stopped at Queenscliff Information Centre where we got some great tips on what to see along the way, they were so helpful there and through them we saw a lot of the wildlife you hope to see in Australia. Our first stopover night was in Lorne, a nice little seaside town. We had spotted Koalas along the way, Linda's first sighting which was brilliant, one of them even waved to her or so we like to think 😊. As we got to our hotel a squall came in, rain lashed down and bits of branches and leaves were flying all over the road, the hotel loomed into our sights looking like a spooky version of the Psycho Hotel!! It was fine inside though and thankfully very comfortable with no sightings of Norman Bates! The following day we were having a helicopter ride over the famous and very spectacular Apostles rock formations, it was a little bumpy because of the winds but the pilot was very experienced and we had a great view of the wonderful coastline. Our accommodation that evening was in a farmhouse on a very deserted stretch of the Great Ocean Road. We had lovely hosts who gave us a great bottle of red wine and made us a very filling breakfast the next day to send us on our way again. On the journey we had seen Wallabies and Kangaroos and the most wonderful little wombat you could hope to see just ambling across the road at his own speed. We stayed one night in Portland and experienced Oz fish and chips which were delicious, the fish was called Flake but tasted very similar to the cod we have back home. We left Portland with a 6 hour drive ahead of us taking us into Adelaide where the following day we would pick Dave up from the airport. Adelaide is a great city, we all loved it and we had a bit of luxury there with a nice hotel.

So, the next part of our journey was by cruise ship! We had a 6 night stay booked on a P&O ship travelling from Adelaide to Perth stopping at Kangaroo Island and a seaside town called Esperance which had been on Linda's wish list and the Spencer's do try and fulfil their travelling companions wishes as best they can!

The ship was fine, a little old fashioned but good food and luckily lots of sunshine. Never having sailed in the southern ocean before we were not sure how smooth the ride would be but it started well. Kangaroo Island unsurprisingly showed us kangaroos and unfortunately spiders but luckily no snakes as apparently all the snakes on the island are deadly!! Esperance was beautiful, we hired a car there and drove to several beaches one of which is called Lucky Bay, the whitest beach in Australia which also 'squeaks' when you walk on it. The sea was turquoise and clear and we all have some stunning photos to prove it. There was a wonderful road called the Great Ocean Drive which almost equalled the Great Ocean Road we decided. The last couple of nights on the ship the weather changed and it was very rough seas, lots of wobbling about looking like you had had one gin too many! Cocktails went down well though and we even had a bit of a boogie! We docked in Fremantle early on Sunday morning ready for our last few days with Linda.



We had a great tour around Fremantle Prison. It was built by the convicts for the convicts and the cells were tiny and squalid. It only closed in the early nineties due to cells still only having a bucket as a toilet. There were executions there and prisoners were kept outside for hours in 40+ degree heat with no shade. We had a very intense and knowledgable guide who we believed may have been an ex prison warden, he certainly got us to feel what it must have been like for those prisoners. One sad statistic was that 40% of the prison population were indigenous people but they only made up 3% of the outside population. For the most part they were kept separate from the other inmates in the 'natives' block. We toured around the Margaret River region which was very green and fertile hence the amount of vineyards in the area. The wine tasted delicious and we had a couple of very filling meals there, the ozzies do like to fill up your plate, no small portions here!

After seeing a dolphin off Busselton jetty and a camel in the distance we took Linda to Perth airport where she was catching a flight to Cairns. She had planned to visit the Whitsundays and Airlie Beach but a couple of weeks beforehand cyclone Debbie had devastated the area so she had to quickly rearrange all her bookings. We were also getting on a flight and we were off to the middle of the country, Alice Springs, Kings Canyon and Uluru.

We didn't really know what to expect from this part of the country but were imagining it being very different to where we had roamed before. And it was! The first thing we were told when we arrived at Alice Springs airport was not to drive our hire car at night because of the animals. Then when we got to our hotel we were advised not to go out alone at night walking around the town as it could be a bit threatening, we didn't expect that. We were however, quite shocked at how many aboriginal people we saw (much more than any other town we had visited) and how sad, depressed and poor they looked. A lot were begging or hanging around on street corners. They are so very different to the white Australians in their culture and outlook on life and it is hard to imagine both 'peoples' ever integrating. We stayed one night and the next day drove 5 hours to Uluru which truly took our breath away. How many times have you seen that grand red rock on pictures depicting Australia? It's a truly iconic sight surrounded by greenery which surprised us and the red earth that is everywhere in this region. We saw the sunset and the colour of Uluru changing gradually and the many stars that you can see from this point. It was stunning. We had a great evening sitting outside but under cover in a huge BBQ area of the resort where you cook your own meat and put it with a huge salad whilst drinking beer and listening to live music. It was as relaxed and casual as you could hope for and we did this on all four evenings that we stayed in the Uluru and Kings Canyon resorts. Unless you camp there is no other place to stay which is how it should be really, tourism but controlled tourism. We visited Kata Tjuta national park to see the 'Olga's', a very impressive group of rocks and we visited Kings Canyon where we did a 6k walk around the rim which took us 3 hours. It was amazing and both places are spiritual and sacred to the indigenous people and you can understand why. It is quiet, peaceful and spectacular. We loved it there. Back to Alice Springs for a couple more nights and then onto our flight for Perth and the last part of our trip to Australia.

Back into Fremantle (Freo) and a chance to have a look round what is essentially an old town and busy port-reminded us of home! Lovely old buildings and a great cafe/bar culture, very laid back. We had booked a ferry trip to Rottnest Island (Rotto) just half an hour away for a day out. We were in for a real treat, the weather was glorious and we had booked two bikes to cycle round this car free island. The scenery was just stunning and the icing on the cake were the quokkas! Little marsupials that only live on this island and are super friendly. If you look on You Tube you will see lots of people taking selfies with them so when in Rottnest!! They are very cute and we came across a little family of them funnily enough wandering around an information stand all about them! It made our day. If you ever get a chance to go here you must, it's a little bit of paradise 😊


We decided the furthest north we had time to get to before our flight home is a place called Sharks Bay. It's a 10 hour drive that we did in two daysstopping on the way at a place called The Pinnacles, an area full of rock formations between a foot and 10 foot high that was fascinating to see. We also went to a place called Hamelin Pool where there are organisms called Stromatolites. This is too difficult to explain in a blog but Bill Bryson went here and explained it all in his Australia book so read what he says or google it. It was interesting but we both had to don our fly nets as the place was alive with them! Shell Beach was just up the road which not surprisingly is a beach made of compacted shells. Then we reached Denham, our destination and stopping point for 3 nights. Miles and miles and miles from anywhere, it was lovely. Hot, breezy and quiet with a turquoise Indian Ocean and gentle waves, very much a family place with children playing in the shallow waters. This peninsula also has a place called Monkey Mia, a marine biologists haven. We visited on a spectacularly sunny day and watched as wild dolphins come into the shallow waters to be fed. The rangers there have a great relationship with the dolphins, recognise them all and are teaching people how to behave around them so that they survive and maintain their natural behaviour as much as possible. They have three feeds each morning, just a couple of fish each so it doesn't make them lazy and the feeds are dictated by the dolphins when they choose to appear. It was a wonderful experience being so close to them, very much a lump in the throat moment 😊 Dolphins can live up to 40 years old and one of these dolphins had just had a calf three days before. We took loads of photos as you can imagine including some great ones of the huge Australian pelicans that also hang around on the beach. There were numerous emu's wandering about too so a real nature day for the Spencer's and a fitting end to our Australian adventure.

Thanks for being with us along the way. If you ever get a chance to do something similar our advice would be 'DO IT'!!! It has been one of the best times of our lives.

Lots of love to you all, Ann and Dave x

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Comments

[Teresa and George]

Good to hear from you both
Lovely to hear about your travels in Aus. Which P &October ship was It? We did a cruise to the Canaries in March on Oceana which is their oldest ship I think. Anyway all your travels sound magical with places and wildlife and you have some absolutely fantastic memories as well as lots of photos I'm sure. It is very cold here at present for the Mayday bank holiday; we had heavy showers today some of hailstones. See you both soon. Love George and Teresa Xx