Life on the open road

Today we picked up our new hire car (a Toyota Corolla sedan) and left Perth. After having spent the past 2 weeks in cities, it was nice to be out on the open road, with our own 4 wheels, again. We visited Laura's friends Claire and Josh and their 2 children Lewis & Charlie, who live in Kinross, half an hour North of Perth. We had a nice lunch with them and Solana enjoyed playing with the boys for a couple of hours too.

We then continued North and visited Yanchep National Park. There was some great bird life there - including water birds, parrots and galahs (rose-breasted cockatoo). We finally got to see some cute koala bears here too. Although koalas are native to Eastern Australia, they have been trying to introduce them here in the West and these ones are part of a breeding programme. It was in Yanchep that we saw our first kangaroos in the wild too - a small group of them feeding on the grass as we were walking back to our car - we were all very happy to finally see kangaroos, especially Solana. We saw a couple more kangaroos by the side of the road as we drove later in the afternoon too - they tend to be more visible around dawn and dusk, when it gets cooler. However, it became apparent that we were enjoying the wide, relatively straight, open roads a bit too much when we were stopped by the police this afternoon for speeding... A hefty $200 (approx. £120) fine meant that we had to settle for take-away fish & chips for dinner, rather than sampling the lobster that this area is famed for... This evening, we visited the Pinnacles Desert, an area with hundreds of limestone rock formations. We arrived just before sunset (delayed by our brush with the law!) - so the light was good but unfortunately didn't last very long. We're spending the night in the small town of Cervantes (population about 500 people), in a B+B recommended by Laura's Uncle Bob & Aunt Angela (thanks Bob & Angela - it is lovely).Read more