Sunday, April 26, 2009

West Oz – Pt II: Albany

A four and a half hour drive from Perth to Albany and not a lot in between. We made a brief stop in Williams and had lunch in Kojunup. Pies and a playground for an hour. Both Luca and Scout were great in the car and slept a lot of the way. We arrived in Albany late in the day, Kelly had booked a really cool house right next to the beach. The beach was beautiful so we took a walk before dinner (pic below). A notable night because Luca spent his first night in a “big boy” bed.

The next day coffee (bad) and some shopping behind us we set out to explore Albany. Albany is an old whaling town and was the first town settled in W.A. – a lot of history and a lot of old buildings around. Albany is on the Southern Ocean so it is hit by winds and wild seas straight up from Antarctica and as a result of this it has some very cool coastline and a massive windmill farm. The highlight of the day for us (Kelly may be torn on that statement given she found “bargain” fabric at a local store) was the windmill farm. I know it sounds very boring but with a fog in and the way they sit on the coastline they were very eerie but looked very cool at the same time. On the way out to the windmills, driving along a dirt road, a joey kangaroo jumped out in front of us and it’s mother was right behind it. As they bounced off down the road Kel and I both turned around to see if Luca had seen it and he was sound asleep.



Another great thing about staying in a house is that it has cooking facilities which saves us from multiple nights of take-away which would be the only other valid option with Luca and Scout in tow. On our last night in Albany we went to the local Dan Murphy’s bottle shop to get a bottle of wine to enjoy with dinner and there were crazy scenes! ... lots of people with multiple shopping carts full of booze at the check out getting ready for the Easter holidays – they do things a bit differently in rural Australia, chocolate eggs on the rocks.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

West Oz – Pt I: Perth

We had a lot of fun last year road tripping around the south east part of Australia so we decided to head out again, this time around the south west part of the country (Perth to Esperance through Albany and Margaret River). Scouty’s first big adventure!

Luca had been speaking about visiting his cousins Corey and Emilly for weeks and was excited to be going on “holidays” in an “airplane” and taking “suitcases”. The first hurdle came up before taking off when we had to check bags. Luca wanted the suitcases to literally travel with us and wasn’t happy when they were taken away. After that he wasn’t about to surrender his back pack without a fight at security - we got him through but he was unhappy until Kelly took him up to the Qantas lounge and he got to pick out some food and drinks. The 4+ hour flight to Perth went well, mainly thanks to on-demand entertainment service and the novelty of wearing a “music hat” (head phones) for Luca – through all this not a peep from Scout.

We spent the first four days with my sister and her family in Perth. Luca loves hanging out with his cousin’s and they are great with him. We checked out the city, went down to Freemantle, picked the kids up from school and watched Em play volleyball for the school. Of course we also hit a number of parks so that Luca could play on the toys, the highlight being Kings Park with awesome views of the city and a great kids area (see Dinosaur pic below). Perth is a nice city, great outdoor facilities (parks, river area and cycle ways), it is growing quickly but definitely feels (and is) much smaller than Sydney.



A fully loaded car, the kids in car seats, snacks all packed and Kelly’s meticulous planning behind us we left Perth and headed south along the Albany Hwy.