Holidays, the end

And so came the day we had to go home – boooo!  We’d had a lovely time, but we still had 950km to drive back, so we had to leave early.  We packed everything back in the car remarkably easily, set the chiller bag in the middle seat for the girls to have easy access to food and drinks without having to stop too…

Holidays, part 7 – boats, pearls, dolphins and dugongs

On the last day, we went back to Monkey Mia to go on a catamaran, the Aristocat 2, which sails out into Shark Bay in search of dolphins, turtles, dugongs and black pearls.  It was a beautiful day, in contrast to the day before – we really do have the best luck! The boat sails early, so we got there in plenty of time…

Holidays, part 6 (part 2)

I just remembered that Jay took a video on her iPhone as we were crashing along the track back from Cape Peron The sandy track The claypan Not gonna be doing that in a Nissan X-Trail!

Holidays, part 6 – off road to Cape Peron

The next day the weather wasn’t so good, so we decided to go to the Peron Homestead, an old sheep station in the Francis Peron national park and then take the car off road and go up to the top of the peninsula to Cape Peron. The homestead was very cool – the people that used to do this stuff (and still do I…

Holidays, part 5 – shell beach and dolphins

The next day, we had a poke around Denham, stocked up on food and beer ($50 for a carton of Corona – thats really cheap!) and decided that we’d do a little exploring. There aren’t a great many things to do in Shark Bay that don’t involve some kind of water/fishing/swimming type activity, so we loaded up the car and drove to Shell Beach,…

Holidays, part 4 – Kalbarri Gorge to Denham via Hamelin Pool

It was a long drive between the gorge and Hamelin Pool, long, hot and boring with most of looking like the road below.  For hours and hours. We stopped at the Billabong Roadhouse for lunch – this place is really in the middle of nowhere and offers an oasis of fuel, food and erm, a place for a much needed ‘comfort break’  They did…

Holidays, part 3 – Kalbarri Gorges

Day 3, we set off from Kalbarri early as we had a long drive (again) to Denham in Shark Bay. Stopping briefly for petrol and a quick walk along the beach (we arrived in the dark the night before so we thought we’d at least have a 5 minute poke around), we quickly decided that Kalbarri is a place we’d come back to.  Clean,…

Holidays, part 2 – Lancelin to Kalbarri

We left Lancelin early, as frankly the hotel accommodation left everything to be desired and we couldn’t stand being there any more.  That and we had a huge drive to Kalbarri to do before the end of the day. Before last week, there was no road north from Lancelin, you had to go east inland 30km or so and hop on the main highway,…

Holidays, part 1 – Perth to Lancelin

The drive to Shark Bay is, in theory, too far to do in a day, plus there are lots of interesting things to see along the way.  Ok, so not lots, there are vaaaaaaast stretches of nothing much at all, but there are some worthwhile places to see, so we planned to break it down into 3 stops. The first being Lancelin. We packed…

Back from the North

Sorry for the hiatus, we’ve been on holiday, far beyond the reach of internets and mobile phones and such modern conveniences. No, seriously, there’s no phone signal anywhere near where we went. Australia – its a big place and it doesn’t take much travelling to leave civilisation far behind. So, 2300km (1430 miles for the imperially minded) later, we’re back and I can tell…