Well, after New Year I embarked on a fly-by trip down the West Coast, South of Perth - this time only covering 1000km - so much milder than my exploits before Xmas!
Headed off towards Margaret River - a wine making region but for once not the focus of my visit!!! Headed down to Cape Leeuwin, mainly because a friend who'd travelled the West Coast before instructed me that I HAD to get a picture of me where the Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean meet!!! (Haha... very poor excuse, I know, but she'd also said the scenery was great so I felt it was justified!!!) It was an impressive stretch of coastline - cragged rocks and aggressive waves... perfect for a miss-timed photo of me trying not to topple backwards into the ocean 'Harold Bishop' style!!!
Further up the coast we reached the famed Margaret River - unfortunately not with enough time to do the 'Bush Tucker Canoe Trip' which sounded like great fun!!! Gutted!!! Although probably a lucky escape as i'm not entirely sure how much of the bush-tucker grubs (yep - just like on 'I'm a Celebrity' - URGHHH!!!) would have been suitable for a vegetarian!!! (Although I would have had sooo much fun laughing at the meat-eaters!!!) The town was nice, and the beaches looked awesome (admittedly - this seems to be a recurring theme in Australia so I appologise for repeating myself!!!) We saw one or two of the huge limestone caves around the area aswell.
Bussleton was our next stop - a town that has a wooden (and slightly wobbly!!) jetty, which is 2km long!!! At the very far end of the jetty is an underwater observatory. The bizarre thing was - apparently there is normally a little train running along the jetty for the elderly / infirm / plain lazy, but it was off the day of our visit - which is a shame as I would love to have known how the rickety little jetty withstood some sort of train travelling on it!!! Crazy!!! I even overheard a few young kids telling their parents that it was 'far to dangerous to be walking on'!!! An over-exaggeration, but I still struggle to envisage that train!!!
Bunberry was where we had the opportunity to swim with some rather shy dolphins!!! (We saw loads following the boat closely, swimming, jumping, diving... but when we were in the water they weren't overly keen on interacting!!!) Admittedly, I'm not suprised... our guide from the Dolphin Conservation Center encouraged us to 'entertain the dolphins'... to duck dive, dance and sing in the water... As our group were from all over the place - we had to find a song that everyone knew the lyrics to... And frankly, I have to admit, if I was a dolphin, I too would probably be pretty reluctant to get to close to a bunch of loonies jumping around in the water singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'!!! But the snorkelling was great fun, even from a distance!!!
Last stop - Penguin Island, where loads of 'little penguins' live!!! The smallest breed of penguin (could you have guessed it from the name?!)they were very cute!!! There is nothing on the Island other than the conservation centre, a few good beaches, great snorkelling, and lots of wildlife, but it's quite close to the mainland, so we opted to wade across rather than catch the little ferry - quite good fun, especially for me - as the tallest I found great amusement in watching the others descend to chest height in water!!! (Although it was calm enough and warm enough to swim, so we weren't too concerned - did however hear a small child talking about the 'shark attack on the sand bar' - hoped they were just joking!!!)
Anyway... only a few days left in Perth now, which is quite sad... I've had so much fun... but i'm sure the rest of my adventures will be great... and my sister will probably be relieved to have her house back, minus house guest and alot tidier without me!!!
