Australia

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After breakfast we headed to Mandurah - a town south of Perth - where Jo and Nitin had just finished building a new rental property. It was at the final stages so they just had a couple of bits to do before people started to view it.

Jo described it as a small place, but it was a lot bigger than our three bed semi! It had a large kitchen-diner-lounge, another separate lounge, three bedrooms, garage and two bathrooms! It was on a developing estate where they had a club house, indoor and outdoor pool, games room and art studio.

After finishing off the jobs inside they house they took us for a look around the estate. There were still plenty of plots left available, but many already had houses on them. The club house was luxurious, with trendy artwork on the walls, lots of wicker chairs, a bar area where they residents can have get togethers and massive bbqs on the veranda. Unfortunately the pool was locked up until the lifeguard came on duty a bit later on so we drove to the nearby estuary and Nitin insisted on buying Matt and I 15 minutes on a jet ski. It was the first time either of us had been on one and I was terrified at how fast they went! I think it was worse because I wasn’t driving it myself so was trusting Matt not to ditch me in the water (which wasn’t easy as I kept remembering the surfcat incident!).

The course was only small and there were two other skis out so I was convinced if I fell off the back, one of them would run me over. I clung on to Matt and kept shouting at him to slow down. His logic was that the faster he went, the smoother the ride would be. I couldn’t believe how exhausting it was, clinging on for dear life! By the time 15 mins was up my arms and legs were aching from holding on!

That diversion filled in the time until the pool was open at the estate, so we drove back and made the most of it. It was a lovely big pool and there were lots of families taking advantage of the sunshine.

After a dip we drove to the nearby marina for fish and chips which pleased Matt as he can never get enough of them.

It was late evening by the time we arrived back to Mindarie so we spent some time chilling out with a glass of wine before getting stuck into some research about hotels in Thailand.

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