Brisbane
Our last couple of days on the East coast were spent in Brisbane. Our first day there was St Patricks day and I spent most of the day trying to keep Eoin out of the pub til the evening and most of the following day recovering from aforementioned evening. The Irish pubs were putting on a really good show, lots of Irish music, dancing, singing and pissed people, but we had to save ourselves for the big match (not on til midnight our time) - Portumna in the all-Ireland hurling final. It was all a bit of a drama and I had to practically beg the barman to put the match on, he did and it cut out about 15 minutes later leaving Eoin agonising and waiting for text message updates. Anyway, of course, they won (hurrah!) and he spent the rest of the night dancing (well, kind of jumping up and down on the dancefloor, anyone who's been to a wedding with Eoin will know what I'm talking about).
Perth
On to Perth where we stayed for a few days with my old school friend, Blair. What a tough life he has there, beach on the weekend and after work, sailing every Monday evening, deep sea fishing on the weekend. He took us to the beach on our first day and tried to teach us to body surf. You just hurl yourself forward into a big wave and suddenly you're flying through the water til you get washed up on the sand. You should never try to breathe in while doing this as I found out and ended up crawling out of the water on my hands and knees, choking and coughing, not a good look.
Pinnacles Desert
From Blair's, we went on a little day trip up to the Pinnacles. It was a round trip of about 320 miles but everything is so far apart in this country. Easy driving though, just put your foot down and wait to get there - the road was dead straight with hardly anyone on it. Even I was brave enough to overtake people here, at home I can barely pass a milk float. I'm not sure how to describe the Pinnacles, it's like a desert with sand dunes etc but lots of big rocks sticking up everywhere. I never really took in the scientific explanation for it all. Strange place, see the photos. The flies there were something else though. Hundreds of them and the just fly straight at your face / ear / arm / back and land on you. Anyway, apart from the flies it was a great place and we even saw an emu wandering around on a sand dune nearby.
Margaret River
We left Perth and headed south for a few days. It acutally rained for the next four days, I know I shouldn't moan because you're all freezing back home. We visited a couple of wineries, the best one was run by a french guy. I don't think he'd spoken to anyone all day when we turned up that afternoon because he spoke to us so enthusiastically...."I think you love ze wine so I speak freely wiz you"...He ranted about the Aussie love of beer drinking and about people who call themselves wine drinkers but only drink 8 litres a year. He made us try pretty much all the wine he had and i've never felt so under pressure to come up with comments on the smell and taste of the wine, i only managed a pretty weak "mmm, lovely" every time because i thought he might start ranting at me if i said the wrong thing...
Family
We also looked up some more long lost relatives, this time on my dad's side, the Silverthornes. We turned up for a cup of tea and left after a great evening, a lot of laughs, our first roast dinner since Christmas and some apple pie for good measure. So thanks Shelley and Kevin for your wonderful hospitality, it was lovely to meet you.
Big Trees
The weather as it was, the beach was out so we went underground to visit some limestone caves. Fortunately the guide was not so evangelical as the one in the Blue Mountains caves and they were beautiful. Then onwards south to see the big trees. They were huge. Eoin climbed a 60 metre fire lookout tree, it had spikes all the way up and a little cage thing around it but I didn't fancy going up myself. I did manage the 40 metre high tree top walk which is suspended through the canapy of the forest but this was actually wheelchair accessible so I can't really claim any bravery there. Still, it did wobble a lot.
No dolphins
According to our guide book and to Nicole who was there a few weeks ago, there are friendly dolphins who come into the beach every morning in Bunbury. There's not much else in Bunbury and everything closes really early but we stayed the night there, got up early and sat on the beach fending off conversation attempts from over enthusiastic dolphin volunteers for over two hours and didn't see a single poxy dolphin. Couldn't believe it. Have totally gone off dolphins now.
Rottnest Island
We returned to Perth in time for a fab fish dinner, caught by Blair himself on a deep sea fishing trip that day. Our last excursion in WA was to Rottnest Island with Nat, a friend of Blair's. It's only 11km long so we hired bikes and cycled all over the place, brilliant fun but I have a really sore ass today and can only sit on soft seats. We saw lots of quokkas there, they look like a cross between a rat and a wallaby. Quite cute but could do with losing the tail.
So we've torn ourselves away from Perth now, big thank you to Blair for putting us up (or putting up with us), what a legend and what a great barbeque.. Now we're off to taste some more wine around Adelaide...
