This is a fill in from the 18th ofJanuary to my last post when we arrived in Yallingup. We spent a few weeks traveling Adelaide to Melbourne, reconnecting with old friends and seeing fantastic places.
We headed out early for the airport, again forgetting that a 1 hour drive up the coast is a different time zone. At least it meant we were early and not late! Queensland doesn’t partake in daylight savings, and I think this got us every time we went there. Next trip we will get it. We were hoping to meet up with the McPherson’s who we had just exchanged with and all their connections worked out so we had a ½ hour or so to chat at the airport after they arrived and get a feel how they liked BC and to tell them of our time at their home.
Picking up Nathan from his day at the zoo with Bill and Gina
We made it to Adelaide and were greeted by my friend Gina. How fantastic to catch up with her. I met her in 88 working in Banff, and then later stayed with her in Adelaide in 89 when I was there. We lost touch at least 15 years ago, but it really felt like it was nothing to just pick it up again. We had been to some amazing places in Australia already, but there is something so different about those you really connect with. We got to meet her 2 sons, see her cousin and parents that I had met 21 years ago. We got to know a little of her area and took Woody the dog to the ‘billibong’ for a walk. Really they call it a billabong! It is a small river flowing through Adelaide that they have made park all along it. Adelaide has interesting old houses too, character houses. Stone homes, and 16’ ceilings. I remember being so interested in that last time I was there. Gina and her Dad, the zoo ambassador, took Nathan to the zoo one day and gave Tom and I a chance to explore downtown on our own. When we met them after, Nathan and Bill were chattering on about all the animals they saw. Excited!
2 of the apostles
We spent the next few days driving along the Great Ocean Road. This is one place I wished I had seen last time I was here and I have been reminded of this every time Bonnie comes home with 1,000s of pictures of this stretch of road. I can see why, I probably took 600. The limestone pillars and arches that have formed along this coast are incredible. We would pull into one lookout and go see, then 200 meters down the road was another pullout that was completely different. The 12 apostles are the most famous and deserving, but all of it is fantastic.
Lee, Maddie and David with Tom and Nathan
We drove on to Melbourne to stay with Leslie Anderson, now Lee Nelson, and her family for a few nights. She was my closest friend for many years in elementary school. Again it was so incredible to have this history with someone and pick it up. She had moved back here right after grad and has such an Aussie accent now, that it is fun to learn the new words and figure it out. Getting to meet her kids, Maddie and David, after all these years was great, not just pictures on facebook. The kids were so excited to have a young guy around and really kept him so entertained. Lee took us on a tour around down town one day and we got a good feel for the city. It feels very Canadian for some reason. These two stays were where Tom picked up his new favorite food, cheese and fruit platters for dessert every night. He has been making them at our new place quite a bit since Max has been visiting.
Next we drove down to PhillipIsland south of Melbourne. This is the place everyone I met from Melbourne told me to go see and we had the luck to have Bonnie’s great friend’s Wendy and Debbie there to host us. How would they know the enthusiastic ‘come and stay with us if you come our way’ years ago would still be remembered! They are really great ambassadors for their island and it is a real gem. We went the first night to see the little penguins making their way up the beach to their nests. It is all a protected area and it is a well run tourist attraction style place that is a really great way for the masses to see the penguins without disturbing them very much. They have lights, but apparently they are low enough or the right spectrum that won’t bother them. It was so great to see them coming up the beach and following
A parent and a chick in a nest
trail to their nests. Above the beach is a boardwalk area that allows the penguins to go where they need and us to watch. There are no camera’s allowed and everyone seemed to stay with it. The next day Wendy and Debbie took us to a different nesting area where we could see some chicks. Fantastic! We saw a lot of nests and took picture of some great chicks up close. We toured around the area and saw pelican and sting ray feeding, a great bird watching site, a surprise wallaby up close and fantastic different coastlines. Again another great dog, Daisy, stole our hearts. I could have packed Woody or Daisy up and taken them home.
We then flew out to the much anticipated Western Australia! It is the only place that has been sunny the whole time we have been in Australia. The weather was cool in Adelaide and Melbourne while we were there and we felt the weather was following us. We knew it was when Perth and the southern coast were predicted to get a cyclone right after we arrived. That luckily turned to a day of thunderstorms followed by a couple of days of cloud. We really have been in great weather ever since.
In Perth we stayed at Cottesloe beach in Perth with a lovely couple that we met through home exchange. They turned out to be very interesting. She is a home ware designer named Anna Chandler and she has some fun and crazy stuff in her home and in her store. We have seen it in stores all around now that we know it. They live in a great area, just a quick walk to the beach and a short drive to everything else. We did a bit of touring around the general area and had a chance to go to an out door movie theater one evening. It is more of a social event than a normal movie. They make wood oven pizza’s there and serve drinks or you can bring your own food. People come to have a social dinner together and then watch the movie. The last day there we went for lunch with my friend Jane, another landscaper from Vancouver, that I know through CapilanoCollege and beyond. She was on her 5th trip here and was just heading home, so I got a few good bits of Western Australia plant info from her.
We have been at our second home exchange in Yallingup, Western Australia for a week now. I realize now there was much anticipation in arriving here. Ever since we arrived in Australia, Western Australia was the only place with great weather every day. Just like Huatulco, MX the weather is boring, 35C and clear everyday, as we like it. Then we were anticipating it a lot more as we moved around every 2 days for 3+ weeks, just to stay put and unpack. We really enjoyed touring around and seeing so many people and places, but it was time to settle in. This left southern WA with some big shoes to filland our expectations have been met! The weather tried to follow across the country at first and when we stayed in Perth we heard the same thing ‘the weather is never this poor here’. There was even a cyclone predicted. Well that dwindled and we ended up with a thunder storm and a few days to adjust to the heat and here we are at Boring! Yayyy.
I wish I could say that for the rest of the country. With more natural disasters everyday it seems. A huge cyclone in northern Queensland, dangerous high temps in Sydney and now I heard flash flooding in Melbourne yesterday. We have seen too many news conferences addressing the nation since we have been here!
Yallingup and Perth are so different from the other areas we have visited and the locals are proud to be so different. Much more quaint and quiet and it is much hotter and drier. There are fewer plants from home here. The temperate plants have disappeared and the mediterranean ones have appeared.
The town we are in is a small surf town kind of like the size and remoteness of BritanniaBeach. There is a store/ post office/coffee house/gear rentals/etc, a restaurant, and a hotel. The area around here is the area for the MargaretRiver wine tours, so everywhere we go we pass a few wineries, a brewery and a few artisan shops. We have turned into a few and plan on many more!
Our view to Cape Naturalist
We have a big beautiful house on the hill overlooking the surf beach and CapeNaturalistNational Park. The views are fantastic and everything is close. The area is really only 3 blocks of houses and quite a few are vacation homes for people in Perth. We are 7kms from a nice small town of Dunsborough. That is where the grocery store and all the amenities are. I also discovered a raw/whole foods restaurant. Yummy!
Nearr the top of Wardanup Mt
Nathan has been asking to go to daycare for weeks now. We had to wait until we were set up somewhere. So here we had him set up in a place in town for 2 days a week. We are all grateful for the break. He is very tired when we pick him up and Tom and I have a chance to get out and do a few things at regular speed. First day we went out and did a hike up the local ‘mountain’ behind our house. More hill like, it was just a 2 hour round trip.
The first morning here, we had parrots, a raven and a kookaburra show up on the deck looking for a treat. What a treat for us! They come back everyday and I think it is the same kookaburra that returns. It will eat out of our hand and poses for a good picture. They are carnivores and we save a bit of steak or hamburger to feed him. We haven’t heard any laughing around here, it must nest further away because we did hear them in one place we stayed and they go crazy in the morning and evening with their crazy laugh. And they are loud! There are a lot of the grey and pink galahs around also, but they travel in big packs and we have been warned to not feed them or they will quickly multiply to 50 birds. A good warning.
Well that is where we are at now and I will catch you up on the previous few weeks of traveling next. I am not good with chronological.
Cheers,
Lana
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