Arriving Exmouth

Before arriving to Exmouth we took a detour to check out Coral Bay. A longed for swim in the ocean felt great!

Coral Bay

At lunchtime we arrived to our chalet (or cabin...), the pool just outside. Our research expert Pernilla booked a Whaleshark tour for tomorrow, exciting! Oskar was the head chef this evening, delicious indian food was served.

More driving

Early wakeup call, the drawback with a car compared to a campervan is that you have to carry all your bags back and forth each day you move on. Anyway, the target is set for Exmouth so with Harry Potter on the radio we headed north.

The roads are STRAIGHT

A stop in Geraldton for seasick pills and a quick burger at McD and then out on the road again. We didn't stretch the day too much, instead we stayed for the night in Carnarvon. Time for a swim in the pool and filling up our supplies at the supermarket/bottleshop. At night we could see how many bugs and different creatures enjoys the heat! Klara was the best grasshopper hunter in our cabin!

Heading north for warmer weather

A morning round of golf was planned, but due to rain it was cancelled. Instead we decided to take off and drive north in the morning. Our plan is to drive to Exmouth and the Ningaloo Reef, it is approx 1500 km so it'll take a couple of days before we will be there....

We had to make a short turn into Perth to pick up Pernillas fleece jacket, she forgot it when riding at Wharariki Beach (NZ). But luckily the jacket was sent by post to KEA in Perth, Jippiey!

Before arriving to Cervantes for the night we visited the Pinnacles Desert, thousands of limestone pinnacles out in the desert. We were there at sunset and the scenery was very fantastic!

Golf and Dressage

Oskar and Kalle got up early for a round of golf at Albany Golf Club, a top class links course established 1898.

Vera had booked a dressage lesson, which turned out to be "interesting" according to Vera. Although it is always fun to hang around with horses!

Cruising to Albany

Just a short drive to Albany, we found a cabin close to the golfcourse. Albany is famous for wahlespotting but right now the whales our long gone to the Antarctic. The kids spent most of the day in the pool while the rest of us tried to figure out what to see and do during the remaining days we have in WA.

The bay outside Albany

Greens Pool and Elephant Cove

We decided to go back to Greens Pool so the whole family could enjoy this fantastic place. This time we had our picnic on the rocks (I don´t like sand...). After lunch we visited the Elephant Rocks, just a couple a hundred meters from Greens Pool. Amazingly cool rocks, very much alike elephants. Unfortunately we didn't bring the camera today :-(

Greens Pool

In the evening Kalle and Oskar went out running, great way to end the day!

Riding and Greens Pool

Started off with fresh bred from the local bakery, thanks to mum! Pernilla had an early start and prepared packet lunch for the family. Vera and mum had booked a full day horse riding and the rest of us went to Greens Bay, it turned out to be a stunning place with rocks and sand with crystal clear water. The new freesbee made debut today, great fun!

Saggö anyone?

Denmark, almost home!

After a couple of fantastic days in Margaret River we jumped in the car and headed south to Denmark! On our way we stopped at the Valley of the Giants, this refers to the great trees you can find in the forest here.

Red tingle tree

Red tingle trees can be up to 60 m high and 400 years old! After an informative walk through the woods we climbed up to the tree top walk, 40 meters up in the trees. Beautiful scenery!

Relaxing i Margaret RIver

Another relaxing day at our chalet, today we had PE on the schedule!

Basket!

Perfect climate for drying your laundry

Baking day, Winemaking and Cave tour

I love baking! Its easy and so rewarding to smell and eat home made bread. Every morning I try and make bread for breakfast, one thing you cannot make when you are at home. Time is not enough, or the energy…J Klara was looking for something to spill energy on so today we not only made the morning bread, we also set a dough for making cinnamon buns. With cinnamon in our hair we set off to visit Swallows winery, very small winery, only 5 acres, and 3000 bottles per year. Owned by Tim and his wife and he picks and make the wine himself. They have also built a very nice chapel called The flower chapel. The walls are filled with aquarelle paintings of all the wild flowers in Western Australia and Sue painted them.

Flowers in the chapel

Interesting to know more about how to make wine. Swallow focus on Cabernet Merlot and Cabernet Franc. You harvest the wine, put it in a machine and remove the grapes from the stalks. Then you put it in a barrel and add yeast for 1 week or so, stomping and turning it around before you press it and bottle it.

Oskar the winemaker

(or at least something like that). One wine plant can grow and be harvested for approx 50 years.  After watching the pond with green frogs and more paintings, next stop was Jesters flat, home of horses and offering horse trails.

Frogs in the pond

Almost everywhere we go you can see the traces of bushfires. Trees and bushes are black and if you make bushwalks your feet gets black. The last stop of this tour was the Lake Cave, a small but exciting cave. We joined a guided tour down in the dark, interesting!

Down we go

Staying longer in MR just hanging around

We had a lazy day in our chalet, did some shoolwork, jogging, reading books and baking bread, Super!!!

Yummie

Bunker bay

A daytrip up north to Bunker bay was on the agenda today, after a playing around at the beach we visited the the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse.

Bunker bay

Nice scenery, here like everywhere else you can see the effects of bushfires. We where not alone, millions of flies where our companions during our walk at the cape...

Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse

The trees never give up

Trying out paddle surf

Pernilla, Oskar and Vera spent the day trying to paddle surf, not as easy as it looks!

Many thanks to David for a great day at the beach in Gracetown.

Colin and David

Another great day at the beach

Surflesson no 2 was on for today, this time Joshua and Lockey were our guides. Great fun for two hours, this time all of the family managed to stand on the board cruising a wave , even the old dad :-)

High five

Mum in control

Vera cruising the Margaret River Mouth

Klara with her yellow rocket

After this fantastic adventure we went over to Gracetown for a visit to an old friend of Pernilla, David with family. They had a fantastic house with an amazing view out over the Indian Ocean, the kids were playing hide and seek while the rest of us had a couple of beers and watched the sun go down, nice...

Surf alone

We wanted to surf but we couldn’t take a lesson because they were fully booked with a girl school from Perth. So Mum, Vera and I went down to the beach and rented boards for about 2 hours. 

Finally catching a good wave!

It went far from good, at least for me. The big experience I will remember from my early surf hours is that you paddle around with a sandpaper in your mouth. But really, surfing is great! 
/Oskar

Feeding stingrays in Hamlin Bay

Yesterday we found a new great accommodation, Margaret River Chalets. The manager, Lewis gave us a tips to visit Hamlin Bay. If you´re lucky you can see different species of rays close to the beach.

The leftovers from an old jetty

Hamlin Bay turned out to be a magnificent beach, and we were so lucky to see stingrays and eaglerays. They took the fish we had directly from our hands!

Exciting!!

Pernilla with a stingray

 After a refreshing swim we returned happy to our cosy chalet.

Fun :-)

Surf Premiere

I dag lärde vi oss surfa.

Först fick man en våtdräkt sen en surfbräda

Och sen ner till stranden !!!! Josh var surf tränaren

Så han hjälpte alla så klart.Det va stora vågor och små.

Klara med perfekt balans

Klara som fick den första vågen .

Pappa är äldre så han har det mycket svårare att komma upp

på två ben så han surfar oftast in på knä.

Oskar

Två timmar surfade vi ,det va en skolklass som surfade breve oss

Dom va lite I vägen men det gick ändå.

Klara, Josh & Vera

 

/Klara

Margaret River

After the late arrival in Perth last night we crashed in a Comfort Inn motel at the airport. A refreshing morning swim in the pool and then breakfast at Hungry Jack (Burger King) and we were all up and running again. We took the bus downtown to pickup our rental car.

Our new blue friend

It turnet out to be a blue Ford Falcon, after a short stop at a mall we set the direction south towards Margaret River. The house we had booket didn´t really satisfy our expectations so after a quick search we found a chalet at a campsite outside Gracetown. A late pasta carbonara and an episode of Heroes finished the day

Leaving Melbourne for Perth

Today we are packing our bags and head west to Perth. Before lunch we took a look at "London Bridge" a beautiful stone formation at the tip of the peninsula.

London Bridge

Melbourne is famous for quick weather changes, when we took the ferry it suddenly started to rain and the wind picked up. Felt good to leave and take off to sunny WA.

Car ferry on the way to the airport

Cape Schanck

Another sunny nice day, temperature is definitely warmer than South island NZ. Target set on Cape Schanck and Gunnamatta beach.

The lighthouse at Cape Schanck

Cape Schanck

Beachlife in Melbourne, Gunnamatta beach

Visiting a maze and playing golf

Unfortunately our lovely house was booked for the weekend, lucky us we found another house not too far away, a bit older but nice and full of toys. After a house transformation it was excurtion time!

I never thought a maze could be so amazing J.  Ashcombe maze and lavender gardens, if you have seen the Harry Potter movie… this one wasn’t as big but still you could really disappear in it! 

Hiding in the maze

Lovely park but not so many flowers since it is autumn here. A nother tricky maze is the rose maze, took us a while to figure it out! Kalle and Oskar went for a round of 18 holes of golf at the Dunes and girl team relaxed at home.

Golf day at the Mornington Peninsula

Bikes were in the garage just waiting for three energetic girls, Kalle and Oskar went to the golf course the Dunes. By many considered one of the best public golf courses in Australia. 

The Dunes Golf Links

Bike tour passed the play ground and ended up at the beach. There we saw a pelican!

Melbourne here we come!

Flight leaving at 6:15 am means waking up before the earliest birds. This is our second early flight in a row. Crazy sleeping hours makes the whole family a bit edgy but we managed without major rows. Picked up our little Nissan with a huge trunk and set for the nearest shopping mall. 

Our Nissan racer

On the list was to fix, mobile phone card, internet card to iPad, map and guidebook. Mobile phone rates and internet is really expensive in Australia, rate is about 6 SEK/min! In my groggy mood I couldn’t understand why I need to show a passport when I buy a prepaid mobile phone card or pay 30 AUD but receive a 300 AUD credit. Strange… Finally all stocked up we could head out to the Mornington Peninsula, an area about 1 hour drive south of Melbourne. Melbourne is a big city compared to small NZ so it felt strange with all the cars and houses. We drove and drove and it never ended. This was also the first time we didn’t have any accommodation booked so Pernilla spent most of the time on the new mobile phone and finally we got a house in Rosebud. T Cottages, good value for the money, nice location, bikes included and close to golfcourses and the beach. A small summer house can feel like a castle when you have spent 5 weeks on 10 sqm!

Our little castle...