We were gone to Western Australia for about 3 1/2 weeks. I am going to divide the posts into four sections: 1) First part of the trip, Perth; 2) Second part of the trip, Eighty Mile Beach and Port Hedland; 3) Last part of the trip, Broome; 4) The birds.
PART ONE, PERTH
JULY 1, 2: We traveled to Sydney, and because of a 3 hour
flight delay, we got to stay in the Rydge Hotel at the Sydney airport. Very nice!
Instead of flying through “our” night, we got a good night’s sleep
before heading to Perth.
JULY 3: Traveled to Perth, about a 5-6 hour flight. We took the bus from the airport to as close
to our hotel as we could, and walked to rest of the way. We stayed at Bailey’s Hotel. It’s a budget hotel, but it was perfect for
us. It had a fridge, microwave, was
clean, had free (but limited) Internet, and was 5 minutes from the free bus, or
a 20 minute walk to the train station.
Also a 5 minute walk to a grocery store and Dominoes pizza.
We discovered that we came during school holidays, so a
transit “family pass” was only $12.50 AUD per day. This saved us almost $100 in transportation
costs for the week we were in Perth!
After we dropped off our luggage, we walked about half way
around Herdsman Lake. Found ducks and
other birds.
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| On the bus! |
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| Herdsman Lake |
JULY 4: Our “big day” in Perth! We hired a private tour guide, Nicolas
(“Nic”), and he took us to the Pinnacles, some sand dunes and Yanchap Park.
The Pinnacles were spectacular! Yellow sand, and fantastical shapes of stone
pillars. We tracked a kangaroo, but he
was too fast for us to catch up with him.
Lots of evidence of many
kangaroos and emus, but tracks and droppings.
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| Notice the very yellow dirt! |
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| John and Nic |
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| One of the largest pinacles in the park. |
Rained on and off all day.
Ate our picnic lunch in the car at the beach. Great view, but no wind, sand or rain.
Sand dunes were the “small” ones, but they were
amazing! The rain had compacted the
sand, so it was easy to climb up. Once
we got to the top—WOW! The wind must
have been 40 mph!
Yanchep: Koala bear family, all sleeping in the trees. We found 6 of the 8 in the family. Kangaroos, a few dozen grays. Got about 3 feet from one.
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| At Yanchep Park |
JULY 5: Freemantle & Cottlesloe
We went first to South Beach in Freemantle. It’s a LONG walk from the train station to
that beach. We found a few good/new
shells, but it was mostly things we already had. It was a blustery day, cold and windy with
occasional sprinkles. It was warmer in
the afternoon and much more pleasant.
Ate lunch at a park while watching the local cockatoos.
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| Perth Train Station |
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| Freemantle beach |
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| From Freemantle beach |
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| One of the hundreds of cuttlebones here. |
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| Fun mural on the park bathrooms. |
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| Our lunch entertainment |
When we tired of the Freemantle beaches, we walked back to
the train and rode back to Cottesloe. I
had my doubts about this beach, because it was a surfer beach. But just outside where the surfers were, there
was a reef/rock cropping. Amazing amount
of shells. We got some nice pin shells
and several other cool shells. We picked
up as much volume wise in 1 hour as we had all morning in Freemantle.
We had planned to go to Cottesloe on a different day, but
with the all day transit passes we decided to stop by and “check it out.” Glad we did!
Cottesloe beach |
| Caspian Tern |
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| Cormarant, drying off his wings |
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| One of the many sponges that had washed up on shore. |
Since our hotel has a little fridge and microwave, we bought
most of our meals at the local IGA.
Their meat pies were scrumptious, as well as their deli sandwiches.
JULY 6, Zoo:
Such a fun day at the Zoo!
They had an “Australian Walkabout: where we were 1 foot from wallabies,
and saw both gray and red kangaroos.
They had lots of birds, too. It’s
a small zoo, but excellent! These are just a few of the photos from today. 20,000 steps today.
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| This black swan wasn't at the zoo, but in the Swan River, on the way to the zoo. |
JULY 7, Rockingham and Cape Peron:
We found some fun beaches, especially at Cape Peron. Some new and some improved shells. 19,000
steps.
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| Rockingham beach |
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| Close up of part of beach. Lots of shells! |
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| Someone had made a heart, so I added J + R to make it ours. |
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| Magpie Lark. This is the female. They are all over Australia. |
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| This nice seagull was asking for a handout. |
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| At Cape Peron |
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| More Cape Peron. This was the only place I found sea glass, and I found a lot of it! I brought it home and will put it in a jar. |
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| More of Cape Peron. One of the funnest beaches in Perth. |
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| Our shell haul for the day at Rockingham and Cape Peron. |
JULY 8, Church and temple:
The church website said church started at 10 a.m., so we
took a bus and got there about 10:01.
Sacrament meeting was in full force… then we realized it was the end of the meeting, not the
beginning! Someone saw us in the hall,
and came out and explained that it was a youth conference, and the regular ward
for that day only was meeting at 1 p.m.
We were grateful for the all-day transit pass, as we took the bus back
to the hotel, then came back at 1:00.
After church we took a few pictures of the Perth Temple,
which is next door to the meetinghouse, then went back to the hotel. Spent 2 hours on the bus that day. 😊 Nice relaxing day.
JULY 9, Rottness Island:
Prior to our trip, we had gone back and forth about whether
or not to spend our money going to Rottness Island, and finally decided we’d
regret it if we didn’t. We are very glad
we went! Nice ferry ride (35 minutes) to
the island from Freemantle. (It was much
cheaper to ride the train to Freemantle and pick up the Ferry there than to
pick up the Ferry at Perth.) Even though
there were a few hundred tourists on the island, we saw few of them where we
went. We decided to do out exploring walking, so we saw everything there was to
see on about ¼ of the island. We walked
around to beaches and the lakes (small salt water lakes). Only 2 beaches, lakes or ocean, had decent
shells, and only in small areas, but we still found about 7 new species.
Saw quokas, the recident rodent that is like a small
wallaby, an osprey, pelicans, and lots of other birds. We even saw a skink! The quokas are very friendly and used to
people. You’re not supposed to touch or
feed them, but we sure could have. One
came up to John while he was filling up our water bottles and started sniffing
him, like a dog would to a new person.
When I came up, he sniffed me, too, before he went away. There are about 10,000 of them on the island.
Got fish and chips at Freemantle for dinner.
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| Map of Rottness Island |
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| A very curious quoka. |
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| Pelican |
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| Stilts |
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| Skink |
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| I believe this was Herschel Lake. :-) |
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| Our ferry |
JULY 10, Laundry, catch-up and King’s Park
Our motel has laundry, and supposedly it was coin operated,
but they had changed it to a tap-on credit card system. None of our credit cards have the tap-on
ability, so we had to lug our laundry a couple of blocks away. We lugged it in one of the suitcases. John
went back to the hotel while I stayed with the laundry and worked on my
cross-stitch, then he came back to help me get it back home. Very lovely laundrymat.
I folded laundry, John worked on getting shells ready to
take on the plane, we went shopping for our food, had lunch, then went to Kings
Park.
We spend a relaxing afternoon at Kings Park. It’s HUGE!
We only went to part of it, mainly where the botanical gardens were, as
well as the Reflection area, and the Pioneer Women Memorial. Fun plants and flowers, although many were
not in bloom because it was winter. But
plenty still were.
We expected to see different kinds of birds, but mainly saw
red waddle birds and some lorikeets, until we were headed out of the park. Then five black cockatoos flew into a tree
right in front of us! Got some fun pics!
Home on the Red Cat bus. The Cat busses are free, and go
mainly around the center of town. One of
the stops is less than 5 minutes from our hotel. Besides food and laundry, today was free!
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| Boab tree |
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| Grass tree |
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| Black cockatoo |
JULY 11, Pack, Monger Lake, and fly to Perth:
Packed up, then stored our luggage at the hotel, then took a
train to Leedsville, and walked to Monger Lake.
We walked around the whole
lake. Saw pelicans, swans, cockatoos,
etc. It was a beautiful, fun walk. Then
back on the train and bus to the hotel to pick up our luggage, then walked a
few blocks to catch the bus to the airport.
Whew!
We got to the airport way early, and ate our lunch there. After a few hours plane ride we arrived in
Broome! Saw the sunset from plane
window.
We stayed at the Ochre Moon B&B, with hosts Frank and
Mary Ann. Frank picked us up from the
airport, and we spent the rest of the evening resting, watching TV and eating
dinner.
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| Monger Lake, small but beautiful and lots of bird life. |
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| Sun has set. |
Amazing!
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