Loch Mcness

Before leaving Jurien Bay, Laura snorkelled on the snorkel trail there; the current was too strong for me so Solana and I made another shell picture on the beach instead. On our drive South we were passing the Pinnacles National Park, so we decided to pay a visit again to see it in the sunlight (it was almost sunset when we arrived on the way North) - it was great to see it in sunny splendour and to have time to walk around a bit more. We took the next section of the drive carefully as it was where we were done for speeding on the way up! We passed plenty of roadsigns for wildlife but we didn't see much (alive) along the roads today.

We enjoyed Yanchep National Park so much on the way up that we decided to pay a visit again on the way back down; this time we are staying overnight in Yanchep Inn, inside the national park. We arrived in time for a picnic lunch, then we did some walking in the park to see what wildlife we could spot this time, including a wetlands walk around the lake called "Loch McNess"! The smell of the eucalyptus as we walked was lovely. We saw plenty of birdlife, including galahs, black cockatoos (see photo), colourful ring-necked parrots, ducks and spoonbills; we also saw a long-necked turtle swimming in the lake. From about 4pm, the kangaroos started to come out - by sunset there were dozens of them feeding on the grass in front of our hotel; we enjoyed watching them with a sundowner beer (Castlemaine XXXX, of course!). After treating ourselves to a meal in the hotel restaurant, we went for a walk in the dark and saw even more kangaroos feeding all around - we had to carefully weave our way through them to get past! It was amazing to see so many of them all in one place.... We leave Yanchep in the morning to continue our journey South. We have also arranged to meet up with our friends James and Lou again in a few days, so we are really looking forward to that.Read more