Western Australia Adventure - Part III

This is the third and last instalment about our holiday to Western Australia.  Haven't read about the beginning of our trip yet?  Read part I here and part II here.

Day 10

Exmouth/Ningaloo

Our plan while we were in Exmouth was to pretty much just go to different beaches everyday and do a lot of snorkeling.  Our first day was spent at Turquoise Bay which is famous for it's drift snorkel.  Meaning you enter the water at a certain point and then you just float in the water while the current carries you across the bay and over the coral.  We had the same problem in the morning here as we had at Coral Bay - there was almost no beach.  So while John went snorkeling first, Alexis and I played outside the campervan.  When John came back he reported that the snorkeling was on par with the best he had ever seen.  He was able to see an octopus, turtle and shark.  I wasn't too keen to go once he mentioned the shark, but I did it anyway.  I'm not as strong a swimmer as John is and the current was a little too much for me.  It probably didn't help that I went in right at high tide.  So I didn't stay in too long (I was too nervous with the strong current, the possibility of seeing a shark and the fact that I was in the water by myself).  I too was impressed though.  To my untrained eye, the coral didn't look like anything special, but John assured me that it was.  My favourite part was the large groups of fish.  Instead of seeing a few of each kind of fish, there were tons of each kind and I also saw a huge unicorn fish.

After lunch, we walked to the other side of the bay and played in the sand.  I am so mad at myself because I left the camera in the van.  And Alexis and John built some great sand castles.  Afterward, Alexis and I headed back to the van so that she could take a nap.  I sat outside and read while John did some more snorkeling.  It was a good day.

Day 11

Exmouth/Ningaloo

First on the agenda for our second day in Exmouth was a glass-bottom boat tour.  We thought this would be a good choice to enable us to do some more snorkeling farther out on the reef and still be fun for Alexis.  We were right.  John and I were able to take turns snorkeling and I was a lot more comfortable because there wasn't a strong current and they provided us with fins, which always help.  And Alexis absolutely loved sitting on the floor of the boat and looking at all of the fish through the glass.  She especially loved it when her daddy swam under the boat:

After the boat tour, we headed over to Lakeside, another beach in the Cape Range National Park and on the Ningaloo Marine Reserve.

We all had fun playing in the sand.

First, Daddy got buried.

And then, Alexis got buried.

After the fun in the sand, I took Alexis back to the van for a nap and John went snorkeling.  It took me over an hour to settle Alexis down for a nap, but I was eventually able to get in a little reading.  Lakeside wasn't quite as nice as Turquoise Bay (it would be hard for anything to be better, it was that nice), but still a good place to spend the afternoon.

Before heading back to town, we drove up to the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse to watch the sunset.  Up until this point in the trip I had yet to see a sunset over the Indian Ocean because I was always in the van cooking dinner.  So I especially enjoyed it.

Being on top of the hill that the lighthouse is on gave us a great view of this:

John and I had never seen anything like it before and when we drove by it the first day (it's located at the end of the peninsula between the town and the national park) we couldn't figure out what it was.  There was a huge barricade at the entrance and 'no trespassing' signs everywhere.  It turns out it is a large Navy communication base to communicate with submarines.  Interesting.

After enjoying the sunset we headed out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Exmouth.  It wasn't anything special, but it was sure nice to have a break from cooking in the van and doing the dishes.

Day 12

Exmouth/Ningaloo

The original plan for today was to make a nine hour drive west to the Karijini National Park.  Karijini is famous for it's stunning gorges and was highly recommended by our friends Peter and Dorothy.  On the return trip from Karijini our plan was to head south and drive thirteen hours overnight.  Once we got an actual road map in our hands that listed all of the petrol stops, we saw that there was no way to make the trip at night (none of the petrol stations were open overnight) and we didn't have enough time in our itinerary to make the drive during the day.  We also thought that we probably wouldn't be able to take full advantage of the gorges and the hiking because of Alexis, so we made the decision to spend an extra day in Exmouth and drive south for an extra day in Coral Bay instead.  We were very happy with our decision.  After all, the main reason for the trip was so that John could snorkel on the Ningaloo Reef!

So we headed out to a beach called Oyster Stacks, because you guessed it, there are lots of oyster stacks there.  Or at least there are supposed to be; John didn't actually see any.

As you can see from the above picture the beach was beautiful and there was lots of coral.  Also, it was the narrowest part of the reef, so John was able to swim all the way out to the reef shelf which he loved.  Because the beach was all rock, Alexis and I watched the Wiggles in the van while John snorkeled.

After John's snorkeling, we headed over to Sandy Bay.  This beach didn't have any coral for snorkeling, but was recommended as a nice, sandy, shallow bay for families.

Alexis took an early nap and John stayed with her so that I could go lay out at the beach and read.  I couldn't believe my luck, but I had the entire beach to myself!  It was so nice and peaceful.

After lunch, we brought Alexis out to the beach to play in the sand.

We then coaxed her into the water.  Up until this point, Alexis had not gone in the water further than her toes.  Even though Alexis absolutely loves the water, it was a lot more chilly than she was used to (remember she's a native North Queenslander).

Day 13

Exmouth to Coral Bay

We knew our trip was coming to a close when we started heading south.  Up until now, we had always been driving north.  We were so impressed with the beauty of Coral Bay that we decided to spend another night there.

Guess what arrived in town about twenty minutes after us?  That plague of locusts we had seen earlier in the week.

It was amazing to look up and see so many huge insects.  They weren't too bad of a nuisance except when one landed on my head as I was walking to the toilets.  Gross!

John of course was eager to do his last bit of snorkeling.  Alexis took a nap and I enjoyed some more reading time.  I couldn't resist snapping a picture of Alexis' bedhead when she woke up.

There was just so many interesting things to look at out the window (mainly locusts).

Day 14

Coral Bay to Geraldton

Today was our longest driving day.  Up until now we had only driven between 2.5-5 hours a day, but the drive from Coral Bay to Geraldton took us 7.5 hours, including our 30 minute stop for petrol and lunch.  Alexis did amazingly well and never fussed once.  Do we have the best baby or what?  Once we got settled at the caravan park in Geraldton, John took Alexis out to the playground for some much deserved playtime.  The caravan park was at Sunset Beach, so I thought I might as well take advantage of the great location and go watch the sunset.  It was beautiful and very peaceful to spend a quiet 15 minutes on the beach by myself.

Day 15

Geraldton to Perth

We had originally planned to spend the day in Geraldton and then drive back to Perth the following day.  We thought we would need a break from driving after our long drive the day before.  But both John and I woke up with a great urge to just be finished with our trip (mostly to just be finished with our campervan).  So we decided to return the campervan a day early and check into a hotel in Perth for the night.  We spent a good two hours packing up the van and cleaning it out and by 10:00am we were on the road to Perth.  It took us about five hours and we got to the rental depot just before it closed.  Perfect!  We checked in to the Holiday Inn Burswood and enjoyed room service for dinner and having access to a bathtub (we don't have one in our house).

This was the view of downtown Perth from our hotel room.  We were amazed at all of the construction going on!  You can see five cranes in this picture and there were more that were out of the shot.

Day 16

Perth to Townsville

Our flight back to Townsville didn't leave until 11:00pm, so we spent a leisurely day at the hotel.  We enjoyed a wonderful buffet breakfast at the Intercontinental Hotel next door and then let Alexis run around a bit in their ginormous lobby.  We took quite a long walk around the Burswood Entertainment Complex and then went to the playground across the street.  Alexis was in heaven this entire trip because she got to play outside so much and got to go to a playground everyday.

We all enjoyed a nice afternoon nap and then spent the evening relaxing in our hotel room and packing up the odds and ends.  Alexis got a hold of one of the hotel pens and coloured on herself for the first time.  This is her showing me where she coloured (there was also some on her cheek).

We put Alexis down at 7:00pm, her normal bedtime, since we didn't need to leave for the airport until 9:00pm. The flight back was mostly uneventful, thank goodness.  It took Alexis quite a while to get settled (probably because we let her sleep for two hours before we left), but eventually we were all able to get some sleep.  Unfortunately the flight from Perth to Townsville was significantly shorter than the one going the opposite direction.  The Perth-Townsville flight only took four hours (and was a night flight, so we all wanted to sleep), while the Townsville-Perth flight was six hours (and was a day flight, so we had to fight Alexis to get her to take a nap).  It would have been perfect if the flying times were reversed.  By the time we got Alexis settled on the night flight, it felt like we were landing an hour later.  So we were pretty exhausted when we got home.

 We were exhausted, but happy.  Happy to be home and happy that we got to go on such an awesome trip before we leave Australia.  We know that this is a holiday that we will never forget and always be grateful that we could take.  Forgive me for writing about it in such detail, but we wanted to make sure we remembered as much as possible.  We would highly recommend traveling to Western Australia if you ever have the chance.  We would go back in a heartbeat.  There's so much more that we didn't get to see.

Western Australia Adventure - Part II

If you haven't read part one of our adventure yet, read it here first.

Day 6

Monkey Mia

(pronounced my-ah, not me-ah)

The day we spent in Monkey Mia was John's 30th birthday.  We started off the morning by going to see the dolphins.  They come into shore a couple of times during the day for a feeding.  We thought that we would all be able to go in the water with the dolphins and feed them ourselves.  We learned that this is what they did in the past, but now only the staff go in the water and everyone else just watches from the beach.  It was still cool to see the wild dolphins so close up (and Alexis loved it), but it was a bit of a let-down that we couldn't go in the water as well.  And it was super crowded.  You kind of had to fight your way to the front of the group.  It was nice, just not exactly what we were expecting.

It was windy and cold on the beach (it was only 7:30 in the morning).

After seeing the dolphins, John and Alexis spent some time colouring, while I got breakfast ready.

We had booked a wildlife cruise for later in the morning.  This is Alexis waiting for the boat.  It is one of my favourite pictures from the whole trip.

And this is the catamaran that we went sailing on - the Aristocat 2.

The best part of the cruise was that there was only one other family of four on the cruise with us,  and it was nice to just be out on the water.  The main reason we booked the cruise was because Shark Bay is famous for the large amount of dugongs, dolphins and sharks that reside there.  We didn't see any!  Correction, we saw four dolphins at the last moment before the cruise ended.  I was really looking forward to seeing the dugongs, so it was disappointing.  Alexis had fun though, which is important, though it was stressful for us to keep her away from the edge of the boat.  By the end of the cruise she was so tired that she fell asleep standing up!

Because of her catnap on the boat, Alexis wouldn't take a proper nap later that afternoon, so we went to the beach instead.

There was lots of wildlife around the resort.  By the end of the day Alexis had learned how to say "dolphin" and "emu."

Day 7
Monkey Mia to Carnarvon 

As we headed out of Monkey Mia, the rain set in.  We didn't mind too much because we had about a five hour drive ahead of us and weren't planning on doing anything big.  We had had perfect weather up until then.  We drove through Denham which is the main town on the Shark Bay peninsula.  It was very picturesque and on an absolutely gorgeous bay.  If we ever go back, we will definitely stay in Denham instead of Monkey Mia.  The highlight of the day was stopping by Shell Beach, also on the Shark Bay peninsula.  The entire beach is made up of tiny shells, instead of sand.  We only stayed for about 15 minutes (because it was raining), but we loved it.

Once we got to Carnarvon, we headed straight to the Woolworths (grocery store) to get supplies.  Carnarvon looked liked a nice country town, just a bit (or maybe a lot) run down.  But the caravan park we stayed in was fabulous.  It was super clean and we had tons of space.  It was still raining when we went to bed and we were just crossing our fingers that it would pass over night because we were heading to Coral Bay the next day.

Day 8

Carnarvon to Coral Bay
 

We woke up and it was still raining.  We started our drive to Coral Bay and took a detour out to Quobba Point to see the blowholes.  There was also supposed to be a great calm lagoon for snorkeling.  The cliffs were gorgeous, but we didn't actually see any water go through the blowholes.  And because it was so windy and rainy, the snorkeling was out of the question.  Even though it was beautiful, we don't think it justified the additional hour it added to our driving time.

I couldn't resist posting this picture of John wearing his "mantyhose" (that what he calls them).  They're really just a pair of my old leggings.  He woke up feeling a little unwell, so he relaxed in his pj's while I did the driving.

When we got to Coral Bay, the rain had stopped but it was still overcast.  Luckily for me, John was feeling better, because it was my turn to get sick and I mean really sick.  John took Alexis outside to feed the birds and run around.  He was so helpful to take care of dinner for the two of them and then lucky Alexis got to sleep with her daddy up in the loft.

Day 9
Coral Bay to Exmouth

We woke up to sunshine!  And I was feeling weak/tired, but otherwise a lot better.  Coral Bay is a small tourist town located on the southern end of the Ningaloo

Alexis was such a good traveler in the van.  She never fussed in her car seat while we were driving (not even on the long seven hour drive we did later in the week).  On the days we had a long drive to do, we would start Alexis off in her seat and then once she fell asleep, we would move her to the bed in the back because she would sleep longer if she was laying down.  The drive to Exmouth from Coral Bay was only about 2.5 hours, so we decided to just leave Alexis in her car seat.  But her head kept falling down at a weird angle so this is what I came up with:

I just rolled her sleepsak up and tucked the ends into her car seat.  It ended up working pretty well.

On the way to Exmouth we drove through a plague of locusts.  I had never seen a locust before.  They were huge!

We arrived in Exmouth feeling energised and excited.  The main reason we wanted to go to Western Australia was to go to Exmouth to see the Ningaloo Reef.  Exmouth is on the west side of a peninsula and the Ningaloo Marine Park is on the east side (in the Cape Range National Park), about a 30-60 minute drive from town depending on what beach you are going to.  So we just settled in for the night so that we would be ready in the morning.

. . . Western Australia Adventure - Part III (the best part)

coming soon, hopefully tomorrow night . . .

Western Australia Adventure - Part I

I know that we've been home for almost a month, but it has been a busy few weeks.  We had such a wonderful time in Western Australia.  We booked the trip to celebrate John finishing his thesis and his  30th birthday.  We knew that if we didn't get out to Western Australia before we moved, then we probably never would.  John was dying to see the Ningaloo Reef (the largest fringing reef in the world).  It was an adventure, that's for sure.

Day 1

Townsville to Perth

The first day of the trip was mostly traveling.  We flew from Townsville to Brisbane and then on to Perth, arriving in Perth in the early afternoon.  One of the best decisions we made was to get Alexis her own seat on the airplane.  She is such a wiggle worm and the extra room made a huge difference.  We had to wake her up at 4:45am to make our first flight and then she ended up only sleeping for about 45 minutes total for the rest of the day.  Even low on sleep, she traveled well.  We did end up with a few war wounds though.  My toe was first.  I tripped getting out of the taxi at the airport and stubbed my middle toe so bad that the whole toe turned black and I was limping for the next two days.  Alexis was next.  She kept tripping (maybe because she was so tired?) and ended up hitting her forehead twice in the exact same spot.  By the time we made it on the plane in Brisbane she had a pretty good scrape/bruise on her forehead and one on her knee too.  Lucky John made it through the day unscathed.

Once we were in Perth we headed straight to the depot to pick up our campervan.  We were a little nervous to start driving such a big vehicle, but John did great.  The smaller size vans we were originally looking for didn't have allowances for a car seat, so we had to get a larger one, but in the end we were happy to have the extra wiggle room.  Here's a look at the van:

(We set up our dinner table over Alexis' car seat and the front seats swiveled around to face the table.  Alexis and I slept in the double bed in the back and John slept in the loft over the front.  The net in the picture stopped stuff from falling out of the loft while we were driving.  Even though we had our own toilet and shower, we tried to use the bathrooms at the caravan parks when possible because cleaning out the toilet was not fun!)

We made a quick stop at the grocery store on the way to our first caravan park in Coogee Beach (just south of Fremantle).  Our priority was familiarising ourselves with the van and getting settled in so we had pizza delivered to us at the park.  The lady at the local pizza shop was so nice.  Their delivery driver didn't start for another hour, but we were starving and tired, so the lady delivered us our pizza herself.  How's that for service?  And the pizza was delicious.  After our yummy dinner we headed straight to bed.

Day 2

Perth/Fremantle

Alexis woke up at 4:00am Perth time.  We couldn't be too upset because it was 6:00am Townsville time, but we were pretty tired from all of the traveling the day before.  The biggest problem was that it was still dark outside and wouldn't get light for another three hours (and it was freezing)!  Trying to keep her happy in the campervan was a big challenge.  We were grateful for the extra room that the larger campervan provided.  And thank goodness that it had a T.V.!  We couldn't get any reception for the channels to work, but we were able to play the Wiggles DVD that we had brought with us.  It was a lifesaver and would continue to be throughout our trip.  I think that John and I now have that whole DVD memorised.  But, the sunrise was well worth the wait:

This was the sunrise at Coogee Beach.  It was my first time seeing the Indian Ocean.

As you can probably gather from looking and us, Alexis and I were freezing!  I had both of the sweatshirts on that I had packed.  I definitely didn't factor in the wind when I was packing.  Everywhere we went was windy, which made it feel a lot colder.  Thankfully, the farther north we traveled, the warmer it got.

Later that morning, we met up with our friends Peter and Dorothy who live in Fremantle.  They picked us up at Coogee Beach and were our tour guides for the day.  We started off with a driving tour of Fremantle and Perth.  We stopped at the Swan Bell Tower:

The Bell Tower was built to house the twelve bells of St. Martin-in-the-Field.  A gift from the UK and the only known royal bells to ever leave England.

We also stopped at Kings Park and the Botanical Gardens.  We saw the famous boab tree and Alexis had tons of fun running around.

One of the views of the Swan River from Kings Park:

There were some absolutely amazing views of the CBD, but unfortunately I didn't get pictures.

A trip to Fremantle would not be complete without a lunch of fish and chips at the famous Cicerello's.  They had great fish tanks inside the restaurant (and even in the toilets).  Alexis loved them.

After a stop at  at Cottesloe Beach and Mosman Park, Peter and Dorothy dropped us back to Coogee Beach for a much needed afternoon rest.  It happened to be Dorothy's birthday, so that evening we met up again for a birthday dinner at the Mexican Kitchen in Fremantle.  It was nice to go out to reasonably authentic Mexican food, especially compared to what we have available in Townsville.  We had a lovely time sightseeing and spending time with our friends.

View of the Swan River from Mosman Park.  That sandbar is a amazing!

Day 3

Perth to Cervantes

Day 3 started off with Alexis waking up at 5:00am throwing up.  Lucky for us she was only sick for a few hours.  Unlucky for us, a sick baby in a campervan makes for a very gross mess.  Before leaving town, we stopped to do some more extensive grocery shopping.  Which was lucky, because I forgot to get laundry soap and when we got to Cervantes, the town was so small they only had a small  (and I mean small) general store.  It made me wonder where the residents got all of their food/supplies.  It took us about three hours to drive to Cervantes from Perth (on the beautiful and just recently finished Indian Ocean Drive).  But it was a very picturesque town right on the ocean.  On the way to Cervantes, we stopped to see the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park.  The coolest part was that we were allowed to walk right through them.

Those black things are flies.  They would not leave us alone!

After our stop at the general store, we set up the van in the caravan park.  John took Alexis to a playground that they had right at the beach while I made dinner.

Day 4
Cervantes to Kalbarri

On our way to Kalbarri, we stopped in Geraldton to have lunch at the beach.  Alexis was in heaven because there were swings.

This was our view of Kalbarri driving into town:

When we got to the caravan park in Kalbarri, they had a nice playground and pool.  John took Alexis to the playground so that I could make dinner, but once Alexis saw the pool, she didn't want anything to do with the toys.  That girl just loves to go swimming.  We knew it would be cold, but she was persistent, so John got changed and I put Alexis in a swim diaper.  It was hilarious; she put one toe in and wouldn't go near the water after that.  It was freezing!!

Day 5
Kalbarri to Monkey Mia

After waking up at 5:30am asking for milk, Alexis went back to sleep until 7:30am!  It was heavenly.  She probably would have slept even longer than that, but John got up to use the bathroom and she woke right up.   Before we left Kalbarri in the morning, we made a quick stop at Back Beach.  It was beautiful.

We also stopped at the park in town for Alexis to go on the swings.  The Murchison River meets the Indian Ocean at Kalbarri and the park was right on the water, so that was fun to see.

On our way to Monkey Mia we drove through Kalbarri National Park.  We stopped at the Ross Graham lookout.  Alexis had fun walking down the trail:

The view of the Murchison River from the lookout:

Monkey Mia is located on the Shark Bay Peninsula.  Also on the peninsula is Nanga Bay.  We stopped there for lunch.  It was a beautiful beach, but there were so many flies that we ended up eating inside the van.

This picture is deceiving because the beautiful turquoise water looks so warm and inviting.  The weather was quite a bit warmer than in Perth, but the water was still freezing!  At this point, we were just crossing our fingers that we would be able to go in the water at Ningaloo.

Once we got to Monkey Mia, we wasted no time in setting up the van (hooking up the fresh water, waste water, power and gas) so that we could explore the beach.  The Monkey Mia Resort was a huge let-down (way overcrowded and dirty), but the beach was beautiful.

I'm so glad that I brought those sunglasses for Alexis.  I've had them for a long time, but she's never wanted to wear them.  I just threw them in the bag while I was packing.  Once she saw John and I wearing our sunglasses all of the time, she wanted some too!

 . . . Western Australia Adventure - Part II coming soon . . .

Me, cute!

When John went to get Alexis up this morning, she started yelling at him "me, cute!" over and over again.

Other fun Alexis things:

• She has also started to wiggle her pointer finger at us while saying "come here."
• She likes to yell "coming" when she is going somewhere.
• She is obsessed with scrapes.  Any time she sees a mark on her (even if it's just a freckle), she says "scrape" over and over again.  If she really does get a scape (for some reason it's almost always over her birthmark on her right knee), then she takes every opportunity to point it out to us.

29:2011

Picture of the week:

Taken during John and Alexis' daddy/daughter date to ReefHQ.

Alexis and I drove up to the top of Mount Stuart this afternoon.  We went to see the peacocks that roam around the lookout, but when we got there, there were no peacocks!  This was our view:

We will miss living here.

Funny Girl

Every morning without fail, after I get Alexis dressed for the day, she will go and look at herself in the mirror (her closet doors are mirrored).  "Ooooohhh" she will say in a sing-song voice as she turns her head back and forth, "pretty."  This always makes me smile.  Then yesterday and again today, she started doing something new.  After looking at herself, she started blowing herself kisses in the mirror and waving and saying "bye" as she walked out of the room.  Oh that girl makes me laugh!