We spent most of our six-week stay in Western Australia in Perth. Perth is the most remote city in the world, and the sunniest city in Australia. We were really impressed with Perth, especially its wonderful climate. We opened our apartment curtains to clear blue skies nearly every morning. It only had rain once while we were there. It is a very clean and well-organised city, in fact it doesn’t feel much like a city due to its low population density, but is the size of Greater London. It is a cosmopolitan city with excellent restaurants, pubs, cinemas and cafes (so unfortunately lots of things to spend our money on!). We really enjoyed the open-air cinemas, where you can bring a picnic and enjoy a bottle of wine during the film. We also made use of the free BBQs in Kings Park (electric and conventional BBQs with free wood) - another thing you don’t get in the UK.

We splashed out a bit on an air-conditioned apartment in the Kings Park area of Perth. (Well…, we spent less than we expected in South Africa.) 

Below is a picture of where we stayed and the car we hired for the duration of our 6-week stay in Western Australia.

We joined in with the Western Australian Marathon club in Perth. We ran with them on Monday evenings through Kings Park.

 Below is a picture of the Perth skyline taken from Kings Park.

We also joined them on Wednesday evenings, for their Wednesday night club run from their clubhouse at Burswood. 

Below is a photo of their clubhouse. 

We joined them for a drink after the run, but unfortunately, we found them a bit more serious about their running than their drinking.

To counteract this we thought we would explore the hashing possibilities in Perth. (Hashers describe themselves as ‘drinkers with a running problem’.) 

We found 18 hash groups in Perth on the web, which were a mix of men and ladies only, as well as mixed hashes. We joined the `Thank God it’s Friday’ mixed hash group. We found a few differences to the hashing in the UK. One was the hashes were run from somebody’s house and they provided food for everybody afterwards. Another difference was they only had half-pints for down-downs and the down-downs were done with ‘splash’, which is a mix of beer and ginger beer.

Unfortunately they knew the new shoes rule, which Graham and I fell victim to! Below is a picture taken at a joint hash event in Perth.

Western Australia is renowned for its strong wind, which isn’t much good for paragliding. And after our 3 months of flying in South Africa we were happy to give the flying a break for a while, especially as there were so many other things to do in Perth. Belinda learned to Windsurf at Matilda Bay in Perth. There are perfect windsurfing conditions around Perth, with a reliable winds and flat bays (and of course wonderfully warm water and sunshine). 

Below is a picture of Graham windsurfing at Matilda Bay.

Perth has several lovely beaches, which are great for surfing. The water is warm and incredibly clear. We often hired body boards and spent the afternoon on the beach. We also enjoyed using the Olympic sized open-air swimming pools in Perth. (Perth has excellent sports facilities.)

We also spent some time with the Davies family in Perth, mostly with Ivor Davies (Belinda’s cousin). Below is a photo taken on a boat trip with Ivor and his friend Oli (who owns the boat). We also went rock climbing with Robert Davies (Ivor’s son) and his wife Jenny. Ivor arranged a meeting with Robert Southern in Perth. He is a retired Meteorologist, who spent most of his career forecasting cyclones, along with many other projects. It was interesting to meet and talk to a fellow Meteorologist. We also obtained a signed copy of his newly published book as a gift from Ivor.

We completed our advanced open water scuba diving course with a diving school in Perth. (We had started the course in South Africa, but didn’t quite finish it before we left.) We went away with the school for a diving weekend to Dunsborough. Dunsborough is a small coastal town about 300km south of Perth. We went out on a boat and did a deep dive (down to 30m), and then after lunch onboard the boat we did a wreck dive of the HMAS Swan. With 25 degrees C sea temperature and 25m visibility the diving conditions were near perfect. Below is a photo of us with Therese, our instructor, after the dives.

From Dunsborough, we travelled about another 100km south along the coast to Margaret River. Margaret River is a popular holiday spot due to its proximity to fine surfing and swimming beaches, some of Australia’s best wineries and spectacular scenery. Being further south than Perth it was cooler and greener than Perth. Here we did some cycling to the wineries, had some surfing lessons and did some hashing with the Margaret River hashing group.

Firstly, apologies for the lack of photos here, but it took us a while to buy a new digital camera.

Before we started our year away from home, we decided that we would go to a few countries and stay in towns/cities for longer periods of time. With the aim of trying to get a feel for each place, especially getting to feel what it would be like to live there, rather than just travelling though all the time. The only downside to our approach to travelling is we may get home and regret not seeing much of the countries we had visited. So we thought we’d adopt a different approach to our travelling in Eastern Australia. We hired a campervan for our six-week stay in Eastern Australia to drive along the East Coast. Below is a picture of our van.

We collected the van in Sydney and drove south to Melbourne, where we met up with Bill Physic (a fellow Meteorologist, who worked at the Met office in the UK for a while) and his wife Irene. We also enjoyed the Melbourne comedy festival, which was on for two weeks while we where there. We then headed north to Bright in the Australian Alps, where we got back to the usual paragliding, running and walking. After a few days we carried on north, along the eastern coast of Australia. The drive got more pleasurable as we travelled north. We moved from the cooler Mediterranean climate, to a warmer and more humid tropical climate further north. The scenery became more spectacular too - lush green scenery with mountains and rivers. We passed miles and miles of sugar, mango and banana plantations. We drove as far north as Cape Tribulation where the rainforest meets the coast. We did a total of over 9,000km in the camper van, so we certainly got to see a lot of the country.

We saw some wonderful wildlife on our travels too (in the wild). The list included kangaroos, koalas, wombats, possums, huge spiders, lizards and toads, and bats the size of large birds. We also saw some wonderfully coloured birds too, lorikeets, kookaburras, kingfishers, galahs, black swans, pelicans and emus. Luckily we didn’t come across any deadly spiders or snakes!

At Cairns we did an amazing scuba diving trip. We spent 3 days and 2 nights aboard a boat on the outer Great Barrier Reef. 

The picture below is of the boat we stayed on.

Below is a picture of Graham in our air-conditioned en-suite cabin on board the boat.

We did a total of 9 dives including 2 night dives. The boat moved to different parts of the reef, so we got to dive at different sites. The diving was absolutely fantastic. We saw hundreds of colourful fish and corrals, as well as sharks, turtles, giant colourful clams (well over 1.5 metres long), giant moray ells, and much more. We had 25-30m visibility and 28 degrees C sea temperatures, so we couldn't ask for better conditions. It really was a wonderful experience.

We also met up with Amanda and Dave (friends from the Met Office who are also travelling for a year) in Port Douglas (see picture below).

We also arranged to meet up in Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is a very remote place in the wet rain forest area. It was a hot and humid place and full of mosquitoes. Not surprising we had lots of rain too, but it was very spectacular and worth seeing. We did some walking through the rainforests by day (see photo below) and did a guided night rainforest walk.

We saw lots of huge spiders, tiny leaf frogs, owls, bats, and luminous fireflies and glowing fungi. 

Below is a picture of a corrupted sign we saw while travelling to Cape Tribulation (which we found very amusing).

We managed to pick up a speeding fine, and a fine for not paying a toll on a toll road (which we didn’t realise was a toll road). We had to replace the windscreen and a headlight plus we used lots of fuel (6km to the litre), that made camper van travel quite expensive. We also found it a bit isolating and difficult to fit in any running, plus six weeks is more than enough in a two berth camper van, so it was good to hand it back and have some space and to start sleeping in a proper bed again.