Albany

 

We only spent one night in Albany but I think that we managed to see a great deal in the afternoon we arrived. There is some amazing coastline, both rugged and beautiful. You can imagine some wild weather coming off that Southern Ocean at times. Luckily for us it was quite calm and we enjoyed walking along the coast and admiring the view.

The Valley of Giants – Tree Top Walk

We walked through the Red Tingle forest and did the Tree Top Walk – Near the town of Walpole. The Tree Top Walk is about 100kms west of Albany so we did it on the way.

Red Tingle Tree

 

Albany coastline

Natural Bridge

We had dinner at the Albany Hotel – the oldest hotel in Western Australia (1835)

Albany is also the home of the Brig Amity replica. This was the ship that brought the first European Settlers to Western Australia and they settled in Albany. Two years before this however, the Amity brought the first settlers to Queensland (Redcliffe was the place of the first settlement). Harry and Belle both found the replica interesting as they have learnt about the Amity and the Redcliffe settlement at school.

Margaret River Region (South West W.A.)

 

Oh Margaret River – thank you so much for your hospitality! We will be back. Driving south from Perth you enter an area of green rolling hills covered with vineyards and dotted with dairy cows and sheep. The area reminded us a great deal of Maleny also parts of New Zealand – we almost felt like we had come home. Definitely a very liveable part of the world. The entire region seems to be purely for the creation of delicious things!

 

Due to forecast rainy weather we booked ourselves into a self contained cabin at the park we had planned on camping at. It was so nice and such a treat to have a warm dry space for a few nights (so good in fact that we stayed for 4 nights). Kids were excited to even have a television and it was a nice surprise that once the initial novelty wore of (the first night) they actually preferred to play with each other. It showed us how wonderful this trip has been for our family. Not that they didn’t get along prior to leaving, but we have all cemented such strong friendships with each other and how much I will miss all being together when we return to school and work.

Our time in Margaret River Region was a time of pure indulgence – which was wonderful! We enjoyed visiting the wineries, breweries and chocolate factories. Not to forget the cheese, olives, jams and fudge. What a shame that we are limited for space and couldn’t fill our car up with all this lovely stuff.

Vasse Virgin (Olive Oil Soap Factory)

We stayed at Taunton Farm in the town of Cowaramup which is about 12km north of the Margaret River township. Taunton Farm is a working cattle property and they have animal feeding each afternoon. They also have a jumping pillow and a playground (but tricky in the rain, but there were some clear times when the kids could enjoy these).

Cape Leeuwin is the most south-west point of the mainland and it is where the Indian and the Southern Oceans meet. We took the lighthouse tour which was great, but was very expensive at $79 for our family to climb the lighthouse. It was super windy at the top.

Perth

 

After 4 nights in Perth we have decided that it is a very liveable city. If we ever decide to have a change of scenery and live somewhere else, it might just be here. The inner city of Perth is very pretty with lots of old limestone buildings with beautiful architraves. We spent two days in the city itself doing the W.A. Museum, the Fire Museum and the Perth Mint. We also enjoyed walking around the malls and eating lunch in the gardens. Perth is also home to the largest inner city park in the world. Someone with a great deal of foresight set aside an area the size of the whole CBD for botanic gardens and green space. It even has amazing views overlooking the city so the land value would be immense.

Perth Mint

CBD (unfortunately it was a bit wet)

W.A. Fire Museum

Playground at Kings Park

Perth

Felix feeding the ducklings at our campground.

Our last day was spent exploring Fremantle. We did the Fremantle Markets, a large indoor market with a great array of produce and products to look at. Felix and Belle enjoyed some chocolate covered strawberries and Harry (with his more sophisticated tastes) had a chai.

We then visited the Fremantle Prison and took the ‘Doing Time Tour’. The prison was constructed out of limestone quarried from the hill that once was where the prison now stands. It was built by the convicts that would eventually inhabit the cells they constructed themselves. The prison was then converted over time to become a more modern establishment and was only closed in 1991. It opened as a museum the following year and has been listed as a World Heritage Site.

Fremantle is also a very pretty city with beautiful buildings. We really enjoyed our day spent there.

The Pinnacles

 

The Pinnacles Desert is north of Perth just near the town of Cervantes. We hadn’t heard much about them before we arrived and were surprised at just how amazing they are. The pinnacles are limestone formations that rise out of sand up to 2.5 metres high. They are the remnants of trees that were covered by a sand blow and have been petrified into fossils. It is easy to imagine yourself in the forest that once existed as you walk amongst the pillars of limestone. As you look closer into some of them you can see the fossilised roots of the trees.

Shark Bay

 

From Carnarvon we drove to Denham. Denham is the largest town on Shark Bay and about 28 km from Monkey Mia. We spent one night in Denham and had a wonderful site at the Denham Seaside Tourist Village with a view of the ocean. Shark Bay was discovered by Dutch Explorer, Dirk Hartog in 1616. Another Dutchman revisited the area and named it Shark Bay due to the number of sharks spotted in the waters.

We made a few stops along the road Denham. First stop was visiting the Stromatolites in Hamelin Pool. The living microbes that build Stromatolites in the highly saline waters are similar to the earliest forms of life dating back 3000 million years. These amazing colonies of bacteria have helped scientists better understand evolution.

Next stop was Shell Beach. The beach has been created by hundreds of millions of tiny sea shells collecting in an area of about 120 km. The shells can be up to 10 metres deep. It is believed that these shells have been deposited here for 4000 years. They are small cockle shells that occur in the super saline waters of the bay.

The view from Eagle Bluff is pretty spectacular!

Our campsite

We also visited Ocean Park while in Denham. We took a guided tour of the marine life and watched the shark feeding.

Sea snakes need to drink freshwater (which they do when it rains over the ocean). They need to breathe every 90mins.

Moray eels find a cave under a rock and most never come fully out for the rest of the lives. They sometimes grow too big for their holes and actually can’t ever get out. They still survive because they can eat, but they can’t reproduce.

Blow fish like bright shiny things and a lady lost her toe a week ago at Coral Cove while snorkelling over the reef. She was wearing a toe ring on the toe that was eaten. We were then told that it actually isn’t that rare for people to lose toes to blow fish – and they always had a toe ring on. They will also take chunks out of brightly coloured flippers. Glad that I didn’t know this before we went snorkelling in our fluro yellow flippers!!

Shark feeding