48 hours and we start for home.

We have been catching up with some last minute sight seeing. Suzanne took us up into the Perth hills the other day to see a dam - reservoir to you and me - at Churchman Brook which is in desperate need of water as you can see. We went on from there to have a look at a garden at Araluen but as it is autumn here there were not too many flowers to see and then to a pretty town called Kalamunda. We have also made our last trip to the sea with Lynne and Aldo and family and got our feet wet - not really warm enough for swimming. We said goodbye to the friends we have made at church and had a farewell BBQ with some of them. On Saturday we went to wish Pete a happy birthday and say goodbye to the family - a sad occasion as you can imagine! Today we took a trip into Perth with two couples from church and spent time drinking coffee, more coffee, eating pies for lunch - then more coffee before we parted. Today is also ANZAC day - the equivalent to our Rememberance Day - lots of services and parades and people with medals everywhere - very moving. Tomorrow we are moving some furniture for Suzanne - so that she can, at long last, have her bed back - and then some final packing before we leave for the airport on Wednesday evening. Jean's cousin John is arriving from Sydney at lunch time and will meet up with us for the afternoon.
We do not expect to have any internet connection while we are travelling in South Africa - so we probably won't be putting anything more on this Blog until we are back home in two weeks time.

Winding Down!!

Since we came back from our trip up to Exmouth we have taken things a little slower! One day we went to Suz's college for lunch- cooked and served by the students, but we purposely chose a day when Suz wasn't serving! It was a good meal in a nice environment. On her day off Suz took us down to Rockingham which had a fantastic beach. We also investigated the coastal road. One day we spent one and a half hours each way on the bus to Ikea - sad aren't we - but we wanted to spend a bit more time looking round. It was smaller than the UK ones and had some different things as well. We couldn't buy anything (except a pudding bowl for Nic) as we are already overweight and have posted 2 parcels home. Jean has met up for coffee with a couple of the ladies from Church which was great. We spent another day in Perth visiting places on the free Red Cat bus route, and today have been to see a couple in Gosnells and then on to Armadale. Pete's brother and family from Liverpool arrived in the early hours of this morning so we had a farewell family visit to San Churros in Freemantle yesterday. They serve lovely hot chocolate and Spanish Donut fingers which are dipped in bowls of chocolate - yummy!(Unfortunately Pete is missing from the photo as he was taking a picture at the same time!). Suz has a day off tomorrow so we hope to go up to the Perth Hills. We then have only one more week to go before we leave for Cape Town!

Pinnacles, Dolphins, Blue Blue Sea & Coral

We have just got back from our trip up the west coast - 3400 km - 8 days travelling up to Exmouth with stops on the way up and back. Some of the roads are very long and straight and empty - you can see about 8 km at a time and the excitement comes when there is a car in sight, or even better a corner, but the ultimate excitement has to be the sighting of a Road Train - a three trailer 120 Tonne truck, or lorry to you and me - Wowie.

Anyway back to the scenery - Our first stop was the Nambung National Park which has the Pinnacles in it, these are natural limestone and give the impression of a moonscape.

Our next point of interest was Monkey Mia best known for the wild Dolphins that come in to interact with mere humans every morning - some of them are fed fish by visitors but not enough to survive on, so they have to go out hunting for the rest of the day. We stayed at Denham 25 km away but with a very clean warm sea which was very welcome at the end of the day.

Exmouth was a very long drive and the town was not the most exciting place in the world, but is on the edge of the Cape Range National Park which has an amazing coastline with pristine water and sand. We spent a lot of time in the water so came out looking a bit like prunes!!

On the way back we called into Coral Bay to go out in a glass bottomed boat onto the Ningaloo Reef - totally different to the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast - the coral is far more diverse in its appearance, a bit more like plant leaves and the fish were not as pretty but some people did see a shark and a turtle. All very exciting.