Today we decided to have a day out to Rottnest Island. However, never ones to waste time with excess syllables, the locals simply call it Rotto. Rottnest Island is about 11 miles to the west of Fremantle, so to get there we picked up the Rottnest Express ferry (Go Rotto!) from Barrack Street jetty at 8.45. This took us on a great run down the beautiful Swan River for...
We woke far too early – hardly surprising given the jet lag, but with a nice sunny (and hot!) day in prospect we decided to head off early. We took the very handy ferry from South Perth across to Elizabeth Quay which is very handy for the city. Our destination though was Kings Park, just to the west of the city centre. Kings Park is one of the largest inner...
We rashly decided on this occasion to take the non-stop flight to Perth. Slightly alarmingly, when you look at the timings, it appears to take over 24 hours and the thought of a day in the same seat didn’t really appeal. However, once you take account of the time difference, it comes down to sixteen and a half hours – not quite so bad. Even so, wedged in...
Our last day today, so we headed up to Palm Beach to walk up Barranjoey Head to the lighthouse. How appropriate then that we walked past them filming Home and Away at the Surf Lifesaving Club. Chatting to the security people it seemed that we might have recognised one of the actors there from when we watched 30 years ago, but we haven’t watched it since living...
Today was market day in Avalon – the once a year market held here. So, with various roads in the area closed, it seemed easiest to just go to the market! The range and selection was huge, but after a while we just went cross-eyed with choice, so headed for a coffee on Avalon Beach. A notable resident of Avalon is apparently Yahoo Serious. You may not be...
A driving day today. We headed off first thing from Port Stephens and drove down the coast to Avalon Beach. Avalon is named after Avalon (!) – the final resting place of King Arthur, though we can be fairly sure he didn’t make it out here. According to Celtic legend Avalon is an earthly paradise and though it is nice here, earthly paradise may be...
This morning we thought it was time we tried canoeing. OK it was just a sit-on recreational canoe, but it did involve both of trying to coordinate our paddling to avoid a circular route. This we did with moderate success! We rented the canoe from Shoal Bay and managed to paddle across the bay to Nelson Bay lighthouse and back without falling in. The main thing...
A boat trip is always good … So we headed off on one today. We decided to take the ferry from Nelson Bay across into the Myall River to a small town called Tea Gardens. A slightly bizarre name, but there is little information as to how it got its name. It might be because the Australian Agricultural Company (which owned the rights to 500,000 acres in the area...
The coast around Port Stephens and the bay is protected as a marine park. This makes it a great dive site and good for snorkeling. We did one snorkeling session yesterday and decided to head back to the same place today – Fly Point. We had to go there around high water because of the tidal streams, so we headed down shortly after 8.30am aiming to hit slack...
So who was responsible for this? The camel is definitely not a native to Australia – even my limited scientific knowledge extended to that, so whose fault was it? Well, it turns out it started in 1839 with Lieutenant-Colonel George Gawler, second Governor of South Australia. He thought it would be a good idea to import camels to work in the semi-arid parts of...