In and around Esperance

We’ve made our way out of the corner of Australia and are heading towards the WA border. We stopped at Esperance overnight, still not being used to the colder temperatures of the southern coast line after being up in the hot humidity over the past few weeks.

We were advised to go and see ‘Sammy the Seal’ in the morning. A sea-lion who is so friendly with the locals, hat he often hangs out by the pier for tourists to come and see. When we arrived down there, we spotted him and Lydia’s first reaction was ‘He looks dead!!!’… One call of his name though, and he raised his head and opened one of his eyes to take a closer look at us. Realising we were another couple of tourists disturbing his sun bathing session, he quickly lost interest in us.

We began driving the scenic great ocean road (not THE great ocean road, down near Melbourne which we would drive in a week or so), but another smaller one which lead us to some beautiful beaches. Twilight beach was a particular favourite along the drive…

Our next mission was to get the perfect postcard picture at Cape Le Grand National Park. We were told if we were lucky at ‘Lucky Bay’, we could expect the picturesque view of Kangaroos hopping across the beach… it did not disappoint! This beach had been voted Australia’s Most Beautiful Beach a few years ago with its crisp white sand, which was so fine that when it was wet, it felt like walking on ice and crunched like frost under your bare feet.

After lingering around the shrub land, the kangaroos finally made their way onto the beach and we grabbed some amazing shots – this is Australia in a photo.

We camped overnight in a small town, just outside the start of the Nullarbor Plain. Snapped a lovely silhouette shot over the campsite as the sun went down.

The Nullarbor Plain would be our next adventure… a 2 day full days of driving through absolute nothingness, crossing the border into our next Australian state, South Australia.

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx

Rainbow Coast – Walpole, Denmark and Albany

So after our eventful few days in Margaret River, we continued driving to explore the ‘Rainbow Coast’, encompassing Walpole, Denmark and Albany, which are in the most southern corner of Western Australia. We settled into a campsite for the evening in Walpole, finally getting around to watching ‘Australia’ on the laptop, spotting the landmarks in the film we’d visited ourselves. Unfortunately, the rain continued to drizzle, but we nearly found the end of the rainbow on the campsite…

We were to cover quite a lot of places over the next few days. Our first stop on the Rainbow Coast, was the Walpole-Nornlup National Park, where we drove through the ‘tingle tree’ forest. The trees towered over us as we winded up through the forest along the orange coloured roads. The one particular ‘Giant Tingle Tree’ was so big, even with us holding hands and stretching our arms out, we couldn’t reach the insides of it.

We visited ‘Circular Pool’ in the forest too, which apparently formed a ‘natural cappuccino’ effect, which after one look at it, we translated to ‘dirty water running over some rocks’… not so impressed with this site.

The next stop was much more impressive though, ‘The Valley of the Giants’ in Denmark. We were able to do a tree top walk here, making our way along a route of bridges high up in trees, with great views over the wilderness. The walk was quite quick, but fun none-the-less making the bridge ways bounce (maybe some of the other people on them didn’t appreciate this so much though).

A short drive away, Conspicuous Cliff standing high above the surrounding heathland, gave a fantastic view of the coast line in this area. It definitely was a bit windy up there though!

Continuing on we arrived in Albany, a port city which had a slight hint of Christmas to it, with Alpine trees lining the coast and a crisp feel to the air. We were told there would be a ‘Christmas Parade and Lights Switch On’ event in the town on the evening, so decided to explore the area a little before heading to that later on. To get in the mood, we blasted some Christmas songs out in the car and it was the unusual choice of ‘Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey’ that got stuck in our heads as we ventured around the sites… I’m pretty sure we got a few funny looks singing and skipping along to this tune.

We drove the coast road and got some great views of the town up on the hill.

From here we drove down to Torndirrup National Park and saw yet some more… yes you guess it again?!... rock formations. The rocks formed natural stepping stones out into the ocean, which were perfect for our ‘skip and sing along’ moods!

We checked into the camp site for the evening and headed to the Christmas event in the town. To our disappointment, it was a little smaller than expected, with the ‘gourmet food market’ being little more than a few baked cakes, a chip van and a hot drinks stand. Nevertheless, the parade was very sweet to watch and the evening’s entertainment of a crazy juggling, sword throwing gentleman was quite amusing!

Off to Esperance next, which is meant to be home to some of the most beautiful beaches in Australia.

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx

Margaret River

Margaret River showed us a different landscape from everywhere else we’d been in Australia so far; winding road engulfed in giant forest trees, it was beautiful. The only thing we didn’t like about the region was the fact it was raining! Rain in Australia… what’s up with that?!

Margaret River is renowned for its many wineries, so after settling into our campsite for the evening, we booked to go onto a wine tour in a day’s time, which we were very excited about.

Our first full day in Margaret River was spent visiting ‘Lake Cave’. On the drive over to it we felt like we were driving through a scene from Twilight or fantasy world. The forest was lush green and looked amazing. Becky exclaimed whilst driving… “This is the kind of place fairies live” and a few minutes later, look what we stumble across…

After exploring the forests, we arrived at Lake Cave. We climbed down the never ending steps to enter the cave and the view was breath taking. The tranquil lake reflects the lime stone formations above it, lit up by gentle lighting. It looked amazing.

We ended the day by heading back to Margaret River and enjoying a nice brownie dessert and a glass of wine at a local pub, prepping ourselves for the wine tour tomorrow.

The wine tour was an all day tour of three local wineries, a venison farm, a chocolate factory, a cheese factory and finally a brewery. We headed to our first winery, where we’d also be having lunch. We got shown around the winery and they explained all about the process of wine making before sitting down for our first tasting. There were around ten different wines to sample and we soon became wine connoisseurs…

We sat down for lunch with our tour group and indulged in another glass of wine alongside a delicious serving of fish and chips. The restaurant overlooked the rolling hills of the winery, it was a lovely location.

Next, we headed to the venison farm and Lydia tasted some samples of venison, kangaroo and emu. The venison pate came out on top, but still not the food I’d choose off a menu!

We hit another two wineries after this, which meant another two wine tasting sessions. Somehow we were still going! From all the tastings, we’d discovered that ‘pink moscato’, an extremely sweet tasting wine, was our favourite. Feeling a bit merry, we headed to the cheese factory, eating yet more free samples of cheese, yoghurt, breads and dips. Then our excitement flurried as we headed towards the chocolate factory and once side we stuffed ourselves full of the free samples, with Becky literally filling her pockets with it on the way out.

By now, you would have thought the tour bus would have just taken us all home. Instead, we headed to a brewery for one last drink. So we tucked in to an ice cold cider and then finally made our way back to the campsite.

For some odd reason, we both thought that we needed dinner after all this. So we stuffed down the rest of our chilli, nachos and cheese combo from the night before and retired to the car to watch a film for the evening. After a little while, we both started complaining about our stomachs and we both looked pregnant! You can probably guess the rest from here, but the night ended in us simultaneously throwing up… can you tell we’ve been travelling together too long haha!! However disgusting this was, we did end up feeling a hell of a lot better afterwards thankfully.

After the wine fiasco, we left Margaret River the next day and visited Cape Leeuwin. It is on the most southern westerly tip of Australia, where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. It is home to a lighthouse, which funnily enough had many of its parts built in Birmingham!

Walpole was next on the road trip itinerary, more from us soon.

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx

Perth and Freemantle

We rocked up to Perth on Friday 23^rd November, ready to spend a few days in a big city, in a hostel with a proper bed! After having an initial wander around the city centre, we went on the hunt for a hostel, which proved more difficult than first expected! After an hour or so of going back and forth between different places, we eventually came across a hostel called ‘The Witches Hat’.

When we arrived everyone in the hostel was heading out for the evening, so we tagged along! The hostel was lovely and the people so friendly, we wished we had longer in Perth!! Funnily enough, most of our new friends in the hostel were from England or Ireland. Some dubious looking punch concoction made from any unclaimed alcohol from the fridge, sent everybody on their way. The night out was pretty fun in Perth, going to a couple of bars and then onto a club.

We spent the next day totally chilling out and stayed in on the evening with everyone having a drink, which somehow resulted in a bunch of us watching Lion King on the big screen TV in the lounge, party animals!

We took advantage of being in the city and went to the cinema to watch the new Twilight Film, loved it! Spent the day doing some shopping around the town and grabbed some dinner.

The next day was our final day in Perth, we really have enjoyed our time here!! We ran a few errands in the morning and then headed to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. They had an exhibition on called ‘Picasso to Warhol’ and we stumbled across a free guided tour too, who explained all about some of the great paintings.

After some art culture, we headed up to Kings Park, which gives you spectacular views over the city. Why don’t we have parks like this in England?!

The next stop after Perth, was just a short distance away, called Freemantle. We spent a full day there, wandering around the little quirky shops. When we were down at the harbour, we ordered some yummy fish and chips, but Lydia made the rooky error of leaving some chips on her plate as we stood up to leave, bringing on a seagull attack – we escaped though!

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx 

Monkey Mia to 'The Pinnacles'

We made it to the beautiful Monkey Mia, which although only very small, had a stunning beach and of course what we’d been waiting for… the dolphins!! We spent the evening relaxing, watching the final of the Australian X factor (yes, it is better than the UK one!) in the bar, along with some dinner and drinks.

We awoke early in the morning and headed down to the beach for the first of a possible three dolphin feeds that day. We lined up eager to get picked out of the line up to go and feed the wild dolphins on the shore line by hand. Unfortunately, we didn’t get chosen and realised our choice of clothing was far too none descript to get picked out of the crowd. So we went back and adjusted our outfits, adding a pink bandana and black and white cap with large wording written on it, in hope it would work. We were lucky enough that the dolphins came around for a second feed and screamed a little in excitement when the lady shouted out “lady in the black top with the cap”… YES!!! The clothes change had worked, so Becky literally threw her camera at the nearest person and we hurried over to hand feed the wild dolphins.

We hired a tiny glass bottomed boat for an hour and went out on the ocean, just off the shore. We did more catching of rays than anything else, but we were lucky enough for the dolphins to swim right past our feet!

From Monkey Mia we headed south again towards Kalbarri National Park and stopped to check out what they call ‘Nature’s Window’… can you see why?

The next day we decided to visit a different country. Yes, you heard it right! We visited the ‘Principality of Hutt River’, founded in 1970. We got our passports stamped and a photo with ‘Prince Leonard’ the founder. Apart from that though, there wasn’t much there, so we hastily moved on.

As we headed through Geraldton, we passed their famous ‘leaning trees’, simply caused by the strong winds in the region pushing them over.

‘The Pinnacles’ were next, another rock formation! We LOVE rock formations!! This one was brought to life through the vivid colours of the sand and sky. We were able to drive through them with the car too!

From ‘The Pinnacles’ we headed towards Perth, for a few days in the city and a good night out. More from Perth soon,

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx