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Published: November 22nd 2013
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Wildflowers have started to appear at long last so Pete’s camera has been clicking madly plus Western Australia also has a tree that they call their Christmas tree which is a stunning orange colour.
We enjoyed walking around the Pinnacles today, unusual upright rock formations not far from the coast and only found around the area of Cervantes and nowhere else!
As we will soon be spending five months pet and house sitting in Perth we drove right on, bypassing the city,on to Rockingham on the coast south and spent two lovely days with old friends. Rockingham is a great place with plenty of long unspoilt beaches, shops and restaurants.
We are going to explore further south just for a couple of more weeks so today we visited Bunbury and walked around the boardwalks surrounding the very old mangroves there and then climbed the town lookout to view the amazing sight of the huge coast line. All the Christmas decorations have been put up on the main street but somehow it just doesn’t feel like Christmas just yet. Guess I need to buy a ham and turkey plus presents and lots of other goodies first!
Next stop
was Busselton which has the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere at 2 miles long. This one, compared to Carnarvon was much easier to walk along and only took us 20 minutes one way.
On our way to the town of Margaret River, our GPS lady, as usual, took us through the back roads rather than the most direct route. However, we did not mind this time, as we came across a chocolate factory, a nougat factory and winery, all of which we stopped off to sample their wares!
Yesterday we booked onto a full day wine tour and it sure was “full on”. What with 3 beautiful wineries with a delicious lunch at one including a huge glass of wine, another trip to the chocolate factory, a venison farm, cheese factory and a brewery to finish we finally were dropped off at our campsite where we lay down for a cat nap and woke up at 8.30pm and totally dark outside! All in all it was a very good day!
Made it down to Cape Leeuwin today on the South west tip of the country and had a tour up the light house
taking in the amazing view from up there. The three lighthouse families that lived down there before it became operated automatically must have led a very isolated and sheltered lifestyle and the quote “Love thy neighbours” may have been put to the test at times I would imagine.
Today I partly climbed “The Diamond” Karri tree (57 metres tall), famous in that it was an old firewatch. It has metal bars inserted in it like a spiral staircase and can be climbed right to the very top to a tree house. In my younger days I would have been up like a shot but now I think of the consequences should I fall and am not so game. Didn’t feel so bad when a party of young guys came along and they declined too. It was also windy and the top of the tree was swaying so not really advisable!
Help! The warm weather has suddenly disappeared and distressingly we are now in jeans and polar fleeces. It was 15 degrees this morning and my feet are freezing! We have been in T-shirts and shorts for a long long time and think we must be getting soft or
something.
In Albany now, a beautiful coastal city with lots for us to see and do. We visited the Whale museum which was extremely interesting but very sad and gruesome and it made us embarrassed to be humans after watching how thousands of whales were slaughtered by man. The short movies that we watched were all shown in the now abandoned five huge whale oil holding tanks and with what with some of the 50 tonne whales producing 7 tonnes of oil one can imagine the slaughtering that went on there. We then went for a cliff coastal walk and were rewarded by seeing whales not far off land. Thankfully they have come back in huge numbers and are frequent visitors to Australian waters.
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Jen and pete
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can't wait
Can't wait to see this part of the world. Those tingle trees look fabulous. I've never heard of them. Regarding the weather, we've only had about 3-4 decent days since we have been home.