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| A railway station in the middle. |
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| Our first glimpse of Perth. |
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| What a pretty street leading to the zoo. |
Driving into the south of Perth we were so excited; see the train line that runs down the middle of the highway and then our first glimpse of the city. Mind you we weren’t going to get to explore the city for quite a while yet but still it was exciting seeing it. We managed to get to the zoo easily but moved carparks as the one we had pulled into was $2.20 an hour whereas the Connolly’s one was only $5 all day! Getting in was easy as we had our zoo passes that we bought back in Adelaide. Mind you the first few minutes inside were chaotic and we managed to lose Kayla (without knowing we had lost her) and Jason’s hat.
I had ducked to the bathroom and obviously maybe Kayla had
tried to follow. As I came out of the
bathroom I saw a lady holding a kids hand and I thought gee that kid looks like
Kayla. I soon realised it was my Kayla
and so I thanked the lady kindly (she was taking her back to the information
desk) and picked Kayla up and asked Jason if he had missed anything whilst I
was gone! Jason didn’t even know I was
gone as he was busy trying to put sunscreen on Hamish! Oh well it is all good, and Jason’s hat must
have fallen on the ground and someone had handed that into the information
desk. Okay with that all over and done
with we could continue on with the day.
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| Cousins climbing over the statue. |
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| Best shot I got of the zebras. |
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| A little bogged in the zoo. |
The Perth Zoo is much like the Adelaide one and nice and
close to the city. It is just across the
Swan River and yet whilst it is in amongst the city you certainly don’t feel
like you are. It was great that Jodi and
Sean had been before as we didn’t need to refer to the map and just let them
guide us around. We even managed to lose
Hamish at one stage. He ran off ahead to
the playground and we hadn’t noticed. We
just had a little panic moment until we found him. We enjoyed a delicious morning tea thanks to
Jodi and got to sing Hugh a happy birthday before watching him tuck into the
yummy cup cake.
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| Hugh and his cool cake. |
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| Getting his first taste. |
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| Yep it was a bit hit. |
After a bit more exploring we stopped to have some
lunch. Jason and I made the mistake of
ordering a meal rather than just grabbing something from the hot box. It took forever to be served and then we
actually had to go up and ask for our meal.
Honestly I just ordered the pre-made salad that they had to put it in
the bowl. When Jason went up to find out
what was happening, he found them trying to give the meals to someone else who
was telling them it wasn’t theirs. They
were absolutely delicious meals, but I think there needs to be some sort of
better order put into the running of the café as this also happened whilst I
was lining up.
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| Checking out the displays. |
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| Someone getting a little push around. |
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| Helping Hugh open his present. |
Around two we all decided it was time to head off and try
and beat the traffic out of the city.
This plan didn’t really work as we managed to still hit it due to the road
works and an extra half hour was added to our trip. I suppose it was Friday afternoon and most
people are probably getting away for the weekend. The drive home was pretty uneventful other
than seeing a trike motorbike on fire on the other side of the road. That would have been scary and sad for the
owners. We just went straight back to
the van as we were all exhausted.
Rolling into our caravan park there had suddenly been an influx of
people who had arrived which were mainly tents. It is certainly going to be busy this
weekend.
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| And he is off exploring. |
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| Cuddles with his Mum. |
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| The kids watched this guy for ages. |
After a good night of rest we slowly made our way into the
day with another cooked breakfast, washing, school and a bit of a clean
out. My sister had given me the mail Mum
had posted across for us and so I went through that along with what we already
had in our folders and found we were keeping so much unnecessary stuff. I always feel liberated getting rid of a few
more things out of the van. Well I have
to in order to keep up with the things Jason keeps bringing in. Mind you I am grateful that we didn’t go to
the Perth Caravan and Camping expo as that would have cost us a lot of money I
am sure. I am also making way for the
term two books that will no doubt be sent out soon.
Kayla kept trying to disown us again and join the fellow
nomads behind us. She would sit down and
have a chat with them but eventually I had to drag her away as they were trying
to pack up and leave. She wasn’t too
happy about this idea so moved to the next caravan with some travelling
grandparents and started to proceed to weasel her way in there. Honestly you would think this girl of ours
hates hanging around with us!
Once we were finally ready to go we loaded the kids in the
car and had lunch as we drove back out to see Meelup Beach and Castle Rock. It was a pretty beach but we forgot it was
the weekend, so naturally there were a lot more people there, even a couple
having their wedding photos taken. From there
we headed back out along Caves Road to see the Ngilgi Caves. We arrived just in time for the next tour so
off we headed. I had no idea what to
expect but it blew me away. It was just
so stunning and the colours they had used to light it up were breathtaking.
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| Meelup Beach. |
It isn’t for the faint hearted as there are a few narrow
spots and a lot of stairs, and I mean a lot.
As we found out you have to go all the way down, which took a while as
there were people coming back up so you had to stop in certain sections and let
them past or vice versa. I am really
proud of the kids as Hamish walked the majority of it and even Kayla did quite
a few steps and hated being carried (in the sections we thought were too tough
for her). I was grateful the main
section was a one way loop so you could walk along and enjoy it a bit
more. We did it relatively fast but still
taking everything in.
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| The use of colours added to the experience. |
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| Having a break on our way down. |
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| This was pretty cool. |
They say to allow an hour for the tour and I think you could
easily do this taking it slowly and enjoying it but we decided that we needed
to get out of the main part before the next tour started (which was only half
an hour). We just made it and went and
checked out the other area before making our way back out. I certainly worked off lunch today with all
those stairs. Now I understand why they
have a warning sign at the start if you have a heart condition. From there we made our way back to the
caravan park as Jason had seen some real grass tennis courts in town and found
out they do social tennis on Saturday afternoon.
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| Hamish was pretty impressed. |
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| The roof of the biggest room. |
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| This would have taken a long time to get to this size. |
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| Last photo. |
I could not let him miss the opportunity to play on these
pristine courts and I didn’t realise that he had never played on a real grass
court before. So off Jason went and I
was in charge of looking after the kids.
I thought a simple movie with some popcorn would work and I would get
some rest but that only lasted so long and then we were off to the jumping
pillow and back again. Luckily just near
us were two grandparents who had come away for the weekend with their grandkids
so Hamish made mates with the son and they compared and played iPad games
together whilst Kayla and the little girl played Lego outside.
After a while chaos broke out with Kayla running off to
other peoples’ vans. She just wouldn’t
stay where I could see her and so I set up some painting for her to do. Turn your back for a minute to do the washing
up and she managed to mix all the different paint colours together, ruining
them. So now we have to get some more
for Hamish’s school work. By now I was
wishing Jason home so I could have a break, but we also wanted to get another
school session done so once he got home Hamish and I did the session that
involved making biscuits. So there was a
yummy reward at the end of it. I think
there will be one exhausted Mum falling into bed tonight.
Jason said that he really enjoyed playing on the grass
courts and that he now has an appreciation of how the professionals have to
adjust from a slow high bouncing clay court (French Open) to a fast low
bouncing grass court (Wimbledon)! The ball
bounces very low and skids through the court.
Well what a cold morning that was that saw two kids joining
us in bed to try and keep warm. Mind you
we could have got up and turned on the heater but I think we were a bit lazy. Eventually I did get out of bed to put on the
kettle and Jason hoped up to put on the heater. Once the coffee kicked in it
was all systems go and we managed to get some school done and washing and hit
the road just after 9am. We took some
quieter roads which bought us out just south of Yallingup and we headed
straight to Canal Rocks. Here Hamish was
absolutely taken with the size of an Australia Salmon that a guy had
caught. I think he was a bit of a
celebrity with all of the kids checking out his catch and thinking he was the
best fisherman ever. It was interesting
to hear him say that he didn’t think he would catch one as normally the ‘salmon
run’ (which happens once a year) usually happens a little later.
The Canal Rocks are spectacular and well worth the
visit. You really get to see up close
how strong the current is and the force of the water. I certainly didn’t like standing on the
bridge for too long at all, and we didn’t climb over the rocks as I was worried
we could lose one of the kids. So after
admiring the view and taking a million photos we headed into Yallingup. This took me as a surfer’s paradise along
with a place full of mega expensive holiday homes for the rich. We had planned to stop for morning tea here
but couldn’t find a parking space so continued on. Honestly anyone would think it was the
weekend with the amount of cars around!
We really need to take more note of what day it is.
So we continued on south and came across the Yallingup
Maze. They had a jumping pillow outside
along with lots of different puzzles inside that you could do whilst having
your lunch or morning tea. I really
liked this place as it catered for the kids and had kid size milkshakes and
prices to reflect the size. After
morning tea and doing some of the puzzles we headed out to do their maze. We let Hamish lead the way and after an
endless number of dead ends we decided to take over to make it faster. Obviously the talent for problem solving runs
in the family as we were no better but eventually did find one of the four
towers. By now we were getting a bit
over it but were determined to find all four.
So to speed things up I went to the top platform and
directed the others to the towers. At
first this even proved to be a struggle until we worked out their little secret
(which I won’t tell as not to ruin it).
Once we had that sorted we managed to get the kids to all four of the
towers which Hamish was pretty impressed about.
It was funny just watching everyone going around trying to find their
way and they even provided water pistols to add to the fun. We chose not to use them as it was a bit
chilly and we were already wearing jumpers.
It was a great day out and I was so tempted to buy the kids some of the
puzzles so as to build on their problem solving logic but avoided the
temptation, instead grabbing some small things for Easter and a cool game for
my Brother In-Law for his birthday. I
just hope he isn’t offended by the title of the game.
By now we decided we needed to keep moving on down and we
needed to get some fuel. So we headed to
Gracetown to check it out before making our way to Cowaramup to fuel up. There were so many beautiful looking wineries
along this road that we could have called into but we thought we would leave it
for today and do some when we move down this way a bit more. Instead we did come across Olio Bello which
sold olive products. Here I stocked up
on different flavoured oil, dukkah, marinated olives and some red pesto. I had to draw a line there otherwise I could
have spent a fortune.
On arriving in Cowaramup we found that their servo wasn’t
open. This is the second time we have
been caught out in WA with small town service stations not being open on a
Sunday. Still Margaret River was only
9km south so it wasn’t a huge detour and we got to see what the town looked
like. We were very impressed.
Now we headed back up towards Busselton taking a detour into
the Silk Shop and of course the Chocolate Company. There we decided to have lunch as they had a
delicious sounding country vegetable soup on their specials board. It was everything we expected and more and we
had a good laugh that we were having a relatively healthy lunch in a chocolate
shop! After our yummy lunch and buying a
few treats for dessert we hit the road and headed back to Busselton.
We were exhausted and decided instead of cooking dinner
tonight we would enjoy our last bottle of wine from the McLarenvale Region and
have some of the nibbles we had bought today.
It was a great way to end the week and enjoy the quiet afternoon in the
van park (after all the weekend visitors had left). I did look up house prices in the areas we
visited and lets’ just say that we won’t be buying anything down this way
unless someone sponsors our new home or we win lotto (if we ever buy a ticket).
After a rushed start due to us all sleeping in a bit we
logged into Hamish’s quiz session just in time.
There are no on air lessons this week as each of the kids have an
individual half hour quiz session to see what they have learnt this term and
what they still need to learn. It was
certainly interesting and there are definitely some areas Hamish needs to
revise more which I already knew but other areas I believe he could have done
better in but wasn’t trying hard, rather opting to say ‘don’t know.’ What can you do, other than just keep trying
and hope it eventually sinks in right?
After the lesson we did a bit of school and then tried to do
Hamish’s reading session but that was a disaster. Yep Hamish was definitely not in the mood for
trying today and was quite rude and not following instructions. So after that disaster we finished off a bit
and headed out for some coffee. I think
we all needed a good break from the work.
Naturally we returned to the really nice coffee shop that had an awesome
play area for the kids. I also managed to duck over to Country Target and get
our stock of Easter Eggs.
From there we headed to spotlight as it has been quite cool
the last few nights so we decided to get another blanket for each of us along
with some flannelette sheets for our bed as we had some already for the
kids. We obviously thought we would
avoid the cold but nope it is starting to catch up to us, and with us only
heading more south for the next month it seemed like a wise idea. We headed home and decided to put the
flannelette sheets on the kids’ beds.
This is where I realised that we had actually only one set for the kids
and one for our bed. Whoops. Oh well at least I managed to hide the Easter
eggs whilst the kids had lunch outside.
So after lunch Jason was set the task of posting all the
mail we had, along with returning the sheets for our bed and getting some for
Kayla’s and finally getting some blocks of wood for the caravan legs. We have seen everyone else carrying these
blocks of wood and wondered what the point was but now we understand. It will be for when our legs of the van are
on a silly angle and it will be like raising the ground a bit so we don’t have
to wind them down so much, and therefore making it more sturdy. Jason also got one for our hydraulic jack
(that sits on the A frame) as that will stop it sinking into the ground a bit
on soft soil.
Whilst Jason and Kayla were out doing that, Hamish and I
were doing some more school. Learning
about what a question is and comparing how big he was to surrounding
objects. We managed to get through it
all with no dramas thankfully but it is certainly hard to keep him focused on
the task at hand. Mind you I do find
some the language and expectations quite high for a little five year old and
have to read things a few times before I understand what is going on.
When Jason and Kayla got home we relaxed with a few nibbles
and a wine before heading out to try our luck fishing. I wasn’t really in the mood for going out
fishing but once we were there it was nice to enjoy the beauty of the beach and
watch the kids have fun. Mind you by the
end Kayla was cracking the biggest tantrum for a reason we will never
know. Gone are the daytime naps unless
we are out driving late in the afternoon.
Even when we got home she refused to get out of the car which is funny
after the tantrum trying to get her in the car.
Oh the two year old tantrums, lucky she is a cutie pie.
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| Madie keeping an eye on Kayla for us. |
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| Going across the suspension bridge. |
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