After a wonderful nights sleep we decided to go to see Whale World, this is a museum of sorts at an old whaling station that was in operation until as recently as about 40 years ago. It was a really interesting place showing videos of the whales being cut up and broken down into pieces. It was a bit gruesome at times but overall worth the visit. When we arrived at Whale World the first thing we had to do was to have breakfast and what a breakfast it was! We got the nicest poached eggs and bacon on toast ive had since i got here, and we ate it on the restaurant balcony on the beach with a view of the harbour in Albany, it was a beautiful morning. Carrying on the theme that Albany was a bit like Ireland, being so green and cooler, the day we were there was lovely and fresh and sunny but cool, this was the best day they had in ages!
We left Albany then to hit the road as we weren’t doing too well for time. We drove through Denmark (Australia, this confused me the first time i was speaking to a girl who was talking about Denmark as home with an Australian accent!) we stopped in the bakery there which is famous, we ate in the park by the river and it was lovely. There is also an amazing chocolatiers there called ‘The Dark Side’ which had the most amazing sweets. Among the varieties were Beetroot and Shiraz, Strawberry gum (from a gum tree), Butter caramel (excellent), Cocoa and lime, pepperpot, and many more I cannot remember.
Our next destination was the tree top walk. The whole area down that corner of the world is full of national parks and forests which are huge. The trees are massive and the forests cover great expanses. The tree top walk is a bridge built along the top of the canopy between about five trees. It is made of steel and moves as you walk on it, supposedly to mimic the swaying of the trees. It was nice to walk up there and i probably would have been more scared to be so high in the air but it was nothing compared with the canopy walk i did in Ghana which was on a dodgy rope bridge 30m above the ground! After the treetop walk we walked through some of the forest that had the really old trees and some were so old they had died in the centre but were still living trees and you could walk through the centre of the trunk!
We arrived in Pemberton and got a hotel room, went to the IGA and got bread, chese and pate and watched tv while stuffing our faces! We watched tv and it was great, ‘the big bang theory’, ‘NCIS’ and lots more. There wasn’t much happening in pemberton so we had a quiet night and got up early the next morning. We did this every night actually! I think NCIS till half ten was the latest i stayed up any night! Its bad here that way, or good really but every night im in bed before ten and up before seven, eleven o clock is unheard of! I have seen a club once since i got here and wont have been in the pub past half ten any other night either!
We carried on from there to see the Gloucester tree. This was amazing and the scariest, stupidest thing i have ever done! It is a tree over 60m which has spikes sticking out the side in a ladder pattern and you climb up these to a platform at the top, theres nothing to stop you falling off and its really scary! But it is amazing and a brilliant view from the top. Ill add in some pictures of the tree, its actually unbelievable! When we went into the park, the attendant at the gate just said that we need enclosed shoes if were climbing and to be careful! There wasn’t even anyone there when we were going up, the worst thing was the couple that were on their way up when we were coming down, two people on one spike at one time is mad! If anyone is in this part of the world they have to do it just because its crazy!
So after this we went on the pemberton tramway. This was full of old people and id say the average weight of everyone there was probably 100kg! Ah thats terrible, it wasn’t that bad really. It was interesting to do it actually, but i could understand how the lady in front of us thought it was ‘boring’. It was a slow old tram that went through the forests of marri and karri trees along an old tramway that had been built 80 years ago to link the small towns of the southwest to perth and was never finished. It went through the forests at the side of the town and past a logging mill which was cool, some of the logs were massive and worth about $7000 each! It carried on over a few old wooden railway bridges which were cool and we went through a forest walk then. Since we had visited the Gloucester tree we decided to go see the bicentennial tree which is another ‘climbing tree’ which is actually taller than the other one. I didn’t brave this one though!
We hit the road then and drove to cape leeuwin lighthouse via a little town called agusta, here we also stopped to go to a bakery, this was the theme of the trip actually! There are bakeries everywhere here! At cape leeuwin the Indian ocean meets the southern ocean. It was nice there but we kept going after a short walk as we wanted to get to Margaret river. This is a big wine district and we had the idea to go on a tour of the wineries. This never happened as we were late getting there, about half four and everything in this country shuts a 5pm without fail! We got a hotel room and surprise surprise we stayed in eating cheese and bread! First we did go and walk around the town, its a nice place, and we did get to the fudge shop before it closed which was most important! I got tasters of vanilla, irish crème, cointreau, chocolate and something else which i cant remember!
What a morning we had the next day! The most productive morning ever! By ten past nine we had, checked out, had eggs on toast for brekkie, had two cups of coffee and a doughnut and blissfully ignorantly tried a winery for some wine to take home, it turns out all the wineries open at ten or eleven. So at 9am we probably looked a bit strange trying to buy some wine but we met the owner outside and he brought us in! It was a bit early to sample it but we got some anyway. All of this by 09.10!
We had a bit of driving ahead of us before we got home but we did stop in a few more wineries. We had a pile of wine in the back of the car! For those of you at home, it is really cool going around the wineries, obviously someone has to drive unless your on a bus tour but you go to the ‘cellar door’ which is like a small restaurant usually and you can sample the wines they have, then you buy some if you like it. Some of them are really nice and its hard to chose! And obviously if you keep drinking all the wine you could have a sore head in the morning!
We carried on to cape naturaliste and around geographe bay, this was beautiful, we had been there on a ship last week so it was cool to see it from the land side. We stopped in busselton to see the 2km long jetty and walked to the end of that and then we came home. It was like we never left!
