Diane

After doing our laundry and visiting a quilt store, we are sticking close to the hotel to rest and relax. It was pretty painless to do the laundry after we found the pharmacy that would sell us laundry detergent. The laundry machines don’t take coins but use contact less cards to pay.

Our first try for a quilt shop ended up at a yarn shop that had a tiny bit of fabric for sale. They gave us the name of a ‘real’ quilt store. It’s too bad I don’t knit because the yarn shop had some amazing yarn.

We found the quilt store and enjoyed our time there and of course ended up with some fabric to take home.

So far both Jennifer and I have had to purchase another suitcase so we could carry all the goodies we’ve purchased. Since we’re coming up to the end of the trip we shouldn’t need to buy any more.

We drove to Perth today after walking to the end of the Busselton Jetty. It’s the longest timber-piled jetty in the Southern Hemisphere at 1.8 kilometers.

We stopped near Preston beach in Yalgorup National Park for a short walk trying to find some Thrombolites but it was too dry. We did get to see the Thrombolites at Lake Clifton in Yalgorup National Park. They are amazing. The park had to put up fences along the boardwalk because people didn’t follow the signs and walked off the boardwalk onto the Thrombolites which pretty much kills them.

We had Rainbow Lorikeets in the trees outside of our hotel room in Perth and then we had a double rainbow- what a great welcome.

Today is Monday after Easter and it is a public holiday with 15 percent surcharge on services.

Today we went to the Capes Raptor Center and walked the their trail and enjoyed the bird show. We also found the painted cows that we saw yesterday so I could get a picture. It’s Easter Sunday so many places are closed or have reduced hours.

On the way back from breakfast we took a different route and found a craft fair where we found some more fun souvenirs.

We’ve seen kangaroos & emus in the fields and an emu running alongside the road and I didn’t think we’d see any!

Today we drove to Busselton via the scenic Caves road. Along the way, we stopped to look at the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse and went wine tasting at Edwards winery near Margaret River.

We picked up wine at the winery and were happy to see that they had sparkling wine that we liked.

We had a wonderful Fish & Chips late lunch/early dinner at The goose on the beach in Busselton.

We went on the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk in Walpole-Nornalup National Park. After the tree top walk, we were excited to drive to Denmark Western Australia thinking we’d get some good pastries but they were the worst pastries we’ve gotten on this trip.

We did have a wonderful lunch of Macon lobsters aka blue lobster(even tho they are really crayfish).

Today we took the Karri Forest drive scenic tourist drive. It was wonderful even tho it was rainy. I got to drive for a bit. Jennifer has been doing all the driving so far.

We packed up the car in the morning and spent the day driving to Pemberton. As usual we stopped a couple of places along the way. It was pitch dark when we arrived at our lodging. Difficult driving on other side of the road on narrow country roads in the dark but Jennifer handled it like a pro

We put our toes in the Indian Ocean at Kangaroo Point near Cervantes, stopped to photograph the amazing white sand dunes, visited Yanchep National Park where we saw koalas and kangaroos, had lunch, and were too late to stop at the various fruit stands along the way.

We tried to miss the traffic in Perth but enjoyed our time at Yanchep National Park too much to leave early. We ended up in a traffic jam on the way out of Perth.

We left from Taipei yesterday about 5:45pm. The layover in Singapore was 1 hour and 50 minutes- just enough time to deplane, change terminals, use the facilities, find the gate and board the plane for the leg to Perth. Arrived Perth about 5am. Nice flight, exited the plane and left lots of spices at the customs office before collecting the rental car and driving to Cervantes where we spent the night.

At the customs area, there were lots of signs asking folks to declare any food items to help protect Australia’s agriculture. Jennifer and I each had a suitcase full of goodies that we showed the customs official. We got to keep most of our tea and coffee and ground spices but all the spice seeds that were not ground weren’t allowed in. Neither was the tea that wasn’t labeled with the scientific name. We were not surprised we had to leave items. We were both happy with how much we were allowed to bring in.

Along the way to Cervantes we stopped at a number of lookouts, rest areas and parks. Many areas along the way were burned either recently or not so recently. We had lunch at Cervantes (fish and chips for me and lobster soup for Jennifer)before checking in. After unpacking we went out to see the Pinnacles of Nambung National Park at sunset. Jennifer had seen them earlier in the day but I stayed in the shade because I was getting overheated. I wasn’t super impressed with them this evening. I thought they would be surrounded by water but they were just in the sand and folks were walking all around them so it wasn’t as natural as I expected either. Unfortunately it was a place I was looking forward to seeing and one reason we went to Cervantes.

Some of the rest areas & stops were:

• Breakfast at Lil’ Sistas in Yanchep
• Poseidon statue
• Nilgen Nature Reserve
• Lake Thetis at Namburg National Park to see the stromatolites (microbial communities that look a bit like rocks)
• Pinnacles of Nambung National Park