Perth Tours

So we were in Perth again, this time in September. This time, we decided to make it a more relaxing trip in the sense that we didn't really have much plans.

However, looking back, we still managed to squeeze in several tours within that few days!

Ok, here are the tours we did:

Tour 1: Free Walking Tour

We arrived on an early Friday morning, which meant we could make it for the Boom or Bust tour which began at 2pm. All we had to do was be at the iCity Information Kiosk at Murray Street. It was being renovated at the moment so it took us a few minutes to locate the temporary kiosk along the same street.

 

The Millennial Man 

It was an interesting tour. We learned a lot about the history of the buildings around the city, how the city was built because of the mining boom. Later when I told my sis-in-law, Yen, who's been living there for more than 10 years about about what we learned, she was surprised and confessed she wasn't aware of the history of the buildings and city either.

This tour is highly recommended!

Tour 2: Cupcake Dessert Walking Tour

What's there not to love about dessert tours, amirite? We stopped over at seven outlets, from San Churros, Ben & Jerry's to Darrell Lea to name a few. 

And we ended with pancakes, by that time we were so stuffed and could hardly take a decent bite out of the many flavours we selected. Being in a like minded group was fun!

Selecting our cupcakes

Macarons, served by a French guy, of course!

However, I felt slightly disappointment as I've already tried San Churros on my own, and Ben & Jerry's were just tasting two ice cream flavours dug with sticks, like tasting the flavours at Baskin Robbins. Considering this is a paid tour, I was expecting just a tiny bit more from the ice cream, not what any normal walk in customer would be able to get on their own.

Tour 3: Whale Watching
This tour departed from Hillary's Wharf with transport provided to and fro the city. The 2-hour tour excludes the ride from the city and because the first place we stopped had little activity, the captain decided to take us to another spot where we saw a little bit more action.

The ride wasn't very choppy that day, thankfully. Or maybe because we took sea sick pills. A poor lady threw up while the boat was stationary for a long period at the first stop while we were trying to watch out for more whales.

It was great to see these huge creatures in their habitats. One tidbit of information, this is also the time when the sharks are most active as they try to snatch the baby whales travelling with their mothers on their way down south.

Anyway, another activity ticked off my to-do list!

Other things we did was to visit King's Park since Jan didn't have the chance to go the last time.

It was also tulip season at Araluen Gardens so we headed there early Sunday morning and were so glad we took the effort to go early! By the time we left at about noon, the cars lining up to get in stretched for miles!

 

Other things to note for this trip was trying out raw food in Freemantle! Raw Kitchen serves vegetarian, non-dairy and gluten free food where nothing is cooked over 50 degrees Celcius. If you know me well, I hardly take veggies but til this day, that meal was the most memorable!

Dehydrated nachos!

Pizza with a dehydrated base and powdered cashew nuts as cheese. The combination of raw ingredients made this my favourite dish.

Spaghetti made from raw zucchini.

And of course, we were there to say hi to the furry residents of my Yen's home. Meet Cooper and Ah Ngiau!

And it was Red, my dragon's first time to Perth!

Trying to be friendly and do what locals do, sunning your wings...

Hello Perth!

It was also cherry blossom season and the tree at Yen's home was still in full bloom.

I've seen so many plastic cherry blossoms it was hard to believe these were real!

Thanks to the hospitality of Yen and Jason, we had a great time again in Perth. Looking forward to our bi-annual visit in 2 years!

Perth to Albany: Pemberton to Denmark

The next leg of our journey was to travel from Pemberton to Denmark where we based ourselves for the next two nights (point A to B), stopping by a couple of places along the way.  

First stop was at Walpole where we bought our tickets to the Valley of the Giants at the Visitor Centre, grabbed a sandwich and headed off to the Walpole Inlet at a picnic spot. It wasn't particularly pretty, just that it was secluded. It was also quite a challenge to eat and not chomp a fly! This is the first time I've experienced so many flies trying to park themselves on my face!

Right after that we took a drive along Tingle Drive, a dirt road which led us to view the Tingle tree with the largest gap at it's base. Basically, Tingle trees are very hardy. Despite fires and bacteria attacking the base of the trunk, as long as there's a little bit still stuck to the ground, the tree will continue to grow. The holes can be as large as allowing a vehicle to pass through. Sadly, that tree which allowed cars to pass through died after it's roots were too run over by the vehicles and thousands of visitors. So this one here is currently the one with the largest gap.

A short distance from Tingle Drive was the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk. This is a 400m walk on a suspension bridge as tall as 40m.

That's KS and Yen

The ticket also allows you to walk to another area beside the suspension bridge see more tingle trees.

From here, we then drove to Denmark where we stayed at this lovely cottage along Ocean Drive. This was our base for the next two nights. 

The next day, we took a drive to Albany for a day trip. First stop was The Gap and Natural Bridge. This is where Australia broke off from Antarctica. The rocks here are exactly the same as those found at the northern point in Antarctica. Of course, everything here is carved by the pounding waves.

See the humans at the top? That's how huge The Gap is.

As I approached the viewing area of The Gap, I could hear and feel a thunderous rumbling, very much like a huge trailer passing by but much louder. I was wondering what it was and when I looked over the railings, I was greeted by a frightening but majestic sight of huge waves charging into the narrow gap, slamming into the wall of rocks and spraying a fine mist into where I was standing, about 70 feet high?

We were free to walk around but I didn't dare stand close to the edge for fear of being blown off. KS and I were then told by Yen to walk on to this area which looked pretty easy to walk down to.

We slowly made our way and heard more pounding waves. Little did we know we were walking on The Natural Bridge then and the pounding waves were right beneath us! Later, we heard someone say that there was once the waves were so high that it splashed onto the bridge itself! Thankfully, nothing of that sort happened when we were there.

KS doing the star jump on The Natural Bridge

From here, we went into Albany town itself (a very pretty town) and had a quick lunch before we headed to the Sandalwood factory. We were just in time for their gong session, something about using the gong vibrations to relax. I think most of us fell asleep in that session! We also joined the free tour to learn more about sandalwood. Interestingly, the Indian Sandalwood originates from South East Asia especially Indonesia but illegal logging has deteriorated the trees so much so that there's not much of it left. It takes decades for the sandalwood to be ready for harvest, hence it's price.

After that, we headed off to Emu Point and had a snack at The Squid Shack which is right at the jetty.

Emu Point pier

When we got out of the car, I saw some large birds and thought they were statues. They turned out to be wild pelicans! One was astray from the flock so I hunted it down, going as near as I dared to. Luckily, it was a bit shy so it kept putting some distance from me.

Hello!

KS as a point of reference to the pelican 

So that was our day trip to Albany.

Our final day, we headed off to Williams Bay to visit the Green pools and Elephant Rocks. My goodness! It's such a lovely beach! The rocks beyond the shore blocks the strong waves so that by the time the water reaches the shore, it is calm and clear. How I would have loved to swim in this peaceful bay!

The crystal clear blue waters. I don't know why it's called Green Pools. 

On the way to Elephant Cove

See the strong waves beyond hitting the rocks?

A little walk of about 5 minutes from the Green Pools and we came to the Elephant Cove. Here we saw rocks which looked like elephants and another peaceful bay.

Can you spot the elephant?

After that, we headed to a nearby honey farm and bought honey, wine made with honey and honey ice cream. Yumz!

Our final stop was to have lunch at a vineyard called The Lake House where we had the most unusual lunch of our entire trip, a platter of antipasti, cold cut ham, cheese and crackers, fresh bread amongst other stuff:

The lunch platter

Vineyard jump!

We reluctantly left this beautiful place at about 3pm to head back to Perth for a 6 hour drive.

Bye!

Perth to Albany: Via Busselton and Pemberton

Our first part of our journey was to travel from Perth to Pemberton, via Busselton and Augusta:

We stopped by Busselton for lunch and took some time to appreciate the view at the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere. It also has a slow train that takes you from end to end.

Busselton Jetty

Train at the Busselton Jetty

We then headed off to Augusta to catch the last tour of Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. I actually was hoping to see the line waves clashing when two oceans meet since I missed the one at Cape Reinga in north of New Zealand.

Visitor information

The lighthouse!

The tour took us up the lighthouse with a bit of history thrown in.

Just to inject some history, there were over 200 shipwrecks in the area, all but one happened prior to the building of the lighthouse. The one that happened to sink after the lighthouse was built happened in 1910, a luxury cruise liner whose captain thought he could navigate closer to the shores on a calm day. Ironically, the ship was built in the same shipyard as the Titanic and it was also it's maiden trip. No one died, thankfully.

Also, the lights from this lighthouse blinks every 7 seconds, it's thumbprint for captains to know which lighthouse they're looking at. And the custom made crystals which reflect the light is worth a LOT of money now.

See where to waves are clashing? It's not where the official line of where the two oceans meet though. And it doesn't form a continuous line. Darn.

From Augusta, we rushed to Pemberton, racing against the darkening sky. The ride was one of our more interesting rides because we were going through the southern forests with immensely tall Karri trees with their straight trunks hugging the side of the roads. 

At one point, the most beautiful sight of my entire holiday came as we were navigating out of darkened roads due to the tall trees when the left side of the road continued with a line of trees while the setting sun cast it's last rays from the right. It was like coming out of a tunnel with a golden light at the end. Aiyah, I don't know how to describe it but I wished we could have stopped in the middle of the main road to take that photo.

We also passed by several kangaroo families hanging out on the middle of the road. So, quite an eventful ride. We arrived at our place of stay Lavender & Berry Farm at 7pm, in time to start a roaring fire, cook dinner and get plenty of rest.

The Lavender & Berry Farm, Pemberton

Their famous pancakes. We ordered 2 servings for 5 of us but they were so huge we had to feed the birds around us.

A bright blue bird grabbing our offered pancakes

KS looking past the lake to our cottage

View from the cottage on the other side. The lake was steaming in the cool of the morning at a very bright 5am on our first morning.

Beautiful rose bushes at the farm apart from the lavender bushes.

They also had sheep and an Alpaca which we fed. Didn't manage to see the horses/ponies/miniature horses (?) on the other side.

Some chicks trying to get into the feeding action.

First thing we did in Pemberton was to climb the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree. The pins that are stuck to the trunk carry you up to 76m high (that's over 200 ft). These are fire trees where folks climb up to see which direction a fire is coming from. There are three of such trees in this area and this is the tallest.

Looking down from the 25m station

Climbing the tree

I stopped on the way down to take this video. See the gaps between the pins? There's nothing to stop you from falling through, well, except the pins below. So far no one has died. But KS and I still only made it to the 25m station. My hands were starting to sweat from fear, which created more fear of slipping! A cheeky sign at the station said "That was the easy bit".

For lunch, Jarrah Jack's Brewery was highly recommended by Yen's boss so we headed there. The view was simply stunning! We ended up sitting there longer than we anticipated enjoying the atmosphere that we missed our plan to go for the tram ride. If I were to go back there, the tram ride will be in my next itinerary.

We then went back and were going to spend the rest of the evening sleeping when the farm's owner Pete bumped into us and encouraged us to visit the Big Brook Dam. Pushing aside any tiredness, we gamely got our snacks packed and headed off.

It was a beautiful serene place. We were the only ones there for about an hour taking in the setting sun, enjoying the breeze, gazing at the tall trees... I could have sat there for ages!

That's my mum-in-law at the bottom right in white.

I didn't want to leave!

The next day, we decided to head off early on the next part of our journey to Denmark as we had much more to cover. This will be covered in Part 2.

Family picture in front of our cottage.