Western Australia

Greetings! Hope you are all well. We are currently in Exmouth (the NW of WA) and it is chucking it down with rain! It only rains 3 days a year here on average, so we have done well.

We are loving it out here, but we are both quite surprised at how tired we are. We started off in Perth and spent a week doing the city and local beaches. We really enjoyed Perth - it's really clean and pretty but we were surpirsed at how much beer and chocolate costs! As it was the Easter period when we arrived, a lot of the hostels were fully booked, and we were lucky to get one in the city centre. We also stayed in 2 really nice hostels right by the beach. We then hired a 'Wicked' Campervan, which we have been in for almost 2 weeks. It drives well and is lots of fun. The back of the van converts into a double bed and we also have a sink, cool box (eski!), gas stove and cooking equipment. Dave does most of the driving (and cooking! I am actually not that great a camper yet).

First we headed south to do the Southern Curl, a 1,500 Km road trip from Perth to Albany return. Unlike in England it gets colder the further South you travel; so lets put that into context, it goes from 30 degrees to about 24. Highlights were: amazing beaches and bays, cliff top views, giant trees and widlife. Dave's become very good at dodging kangaroos at night time in the van! The big ones look fairly intimadating when they stand in the middle of the road on their hind legs with their fists up in the dark (Donnie Darko). We also climbed the Gloucester Tree (61m); Dave climbed it twice, first to test the safety of the rungs for me!

After five days we headed up North (30 degrees plus) from Perth to Exmouth another 3,500 Km return. We did the Pinnacles Desert (strange rocks in the middle of the desert); saw some huge gorges, National Parks, Monkey Mia, Coral Bay and Exmouth (Ningaloo Reef). We loved Monkey Mia - we saw ten dolphins, literally a metre away from us; we were ankle-deep in the water with them. We also saw green turtles and dugongs (manatees with a fin tale) on a boat cruise on a catamaran. On Saturday, Dave's birthday, we are going on a snorkel cruise to see whale and reef sharks; we really hope the whale sharks appear, should be a highlight of the entire trip. On Tuesday we return our van to Perth and on Wednesday we fly to Ulura (Ayres Rock) for 4 days.

Our next update will be from Victoria in a few weeks.