South Western Australia Adventure: Bunbury, Dunsborough, and Busselton

Yesterday Ryan and I got home from our latest adventure in South Western Australia.  We flew in and out of Perth and explored a 1750 km loop in the area, covering everything from treetops to caves and all sorts of great food and wine in between.

We had a lot of great moments on this trip, but unfortunately the first two days weren't fantastic.  Our flight arrived around 1:30pm so we drove directly to Bunbury that afternoon.  I expected Bunbury to be a lot more interesting, but instead it was a large town surrounded by factories.  The main attraction there was supposed to be their dolphin centre, but even if you paid to go there you had no guarantee of seeing any dolphins.  The visitor centre recommended a hotel to stay in, but it was really crappy.  The room had so many drafts it was like a wind tunnel!  Luckily we had a great breakfast included, which was  good start to our second day.

We left Bunbury on Day 2 and headed to  Busselton.  This was one part of the trip that I was really looking forward to because they have a 1.8km long jetty with an underwater viewing platform at the end.  Unfortunately, this is where the day got crazy.  When we showed up at 9:30-10:00am they had already sold out of tickets for the 10am, 11am and 12pm tours because the jetty hadn't been open for a few days due to weather and they also had a few school groups touring that day.  We opted for the 3pm tour thinking we could do a few things in the meantime.  So off we went on the 50 minute drive to Margaret River!  In retrospect that was a bad idea, but we wanted to book a food and wine tour for the next day and get some info on whale watching.  We should have just done this from the Busselton visitor centre, but hindsight is 20/20!  Upon arrival they informed us that in fact the best whale watching in the area was in Busselton or Dunsborough!  Oops!

The trip to Margaret River wasn't a complete loss because Ryan convinced me to check out a hedge maze!  It was called "A-Maze-In Margaret River" which I think is quite clever.  Honestly, I was very nervous about the maze.  I have absolutely no sense of direction and the thought of navigating a maze was worrisome. 

In my hand is a map of the grounds, but sadly they didn't put a map of the maze on it.

Despite Ryan's attempts to run away and leave me fend for myself, we made it out of the maze successfully! 

It was well worth the detour and actually very fun.  The grounds were beautiful too and we were the only people there for most of it.  Before we left there was another puzzle to do where you had to move from once circle to another by following the paths in the order of "white, red, black" to get to the middle.  Turns out this was more challenging than the maze, and I only succeeded after Ryan's help.

As you can see, it was quite an exciting place!

Still thinking we had plenty of time we jumped back in the car and drove another 40 minutes or so to Dunsborough, stopping on the way to pick up some subs for lunch.  We thought we could whale watch and eat lunch, then drive back to Busselton for our tour.  Turns out the whale watching place required a 10 minute walk to get to the viewing area, and we were already running way behind.  We walked briskly to the platform and found a few people there looking for whales.  No one had seen any, but they were looking way far away at rocks where "if you looked really closely you can see some specks that look like seals".  As it happened, I spotted some seals right in front of us on the shore line which no one else had seen yet!  Time for my favourite game: spot the seals in this picture!

Ryan and I each had a possible whale sighting in the 15 minutes we stayed at the platform, wolfing down our subs while peering out through binoculars.  When we left the platform we had exactly 40 minutes to get back to our car and drive 45km to Busselton for our 3pm tour.  We had a bit of a buffer period because the 3pm start was when the train left to take us down the 1.8km jetty.  Our other option was to walk/run down the jetty in time for the actual start of the tour at 3:25.  After driving as fast as I could safely go, we made it to Busselton at 3:10pm.  Our only remaining option was to run down the jetty!

See that tiny bump on the far right??  Yes, that's where we had to be.

Did we make it?  Cliffhanger!  This post is far too long already so you'll have to find out tomorrow!

I leave you with this piece of advice though.  Watch out for shark helicopters.  They'll get you every time.

Mount Lofty

On Thursday my neighbour Bec invited me on a morning hike up Mount Lofty, located just east of Adelaide.  It's really hard to get there by bus, but I've been wanting to go there for awhile so of course I accepted!  I've been taking "sculpt" exercise classes 3 times a week, so I was feeling pretty good about myself and ready to tackle a challenging hike...boy was I wrong!  The hike was only 8km round trip, but it was quite steep and my legs were not happy with me afterwards.  Bec didn't warn me until we had started about all of the hard bits (not that it would have stopped me), but she also didn't warn me how beautiful the hike would be.  It was depressing because there were many very athletic people running past us on the way up...and down...but let's not focus on that part.

The hike starts by walking through Waterfall Gulley, and it definitely lives up to its name.  We passed 3 waterfalls, but also heard water running for most of it so there might have been more.

 The best part about the hike (other than the burning muscles) was a koala sighting!  I don't think I'm allowed to get excited about koalas after this since it's my third time seeing them, but at least give me this last one!  This guy was really cute and moved around a lot, which was more exciting than the others I've seen.  We saw him on the way up and again on the way down, so that gave us a valid reason for two fairly long breaks.

When we finally made it to the top, we were rewarded with a delicious lunch (yes, you can technically drive to the top) and this beautiful view.  Overall, a very productive morning!

Our house is over there somewhere!

 That afternoon Ryan got home and we have been enjoying a relaxing few days ever since.  Tomorrow we are headed to Perth, so I won't be posting until we get back.  We're gone for 8 days so I'll have plenty to write about when I return!

KI: Hanson Bay and American River

To conclude our trip to Kangaroo Island we had to drive back to the east side to catch the ferry, so of course we stopped in a few places along the way.  The first stop was Hanson Bay, which was just a brief "get out of the car and look at the pretty coast" stop.  Also there is a very expensive luxury resort around that area and we were trying to see if we could see it!

From there Ryan took over the driving to Kingscote, the largest town on KI.  Turns out the reason I'm so bad at navigating is because I get really carsick when reading a map (or anything) in a car, so despite Ryan's good driving I had to take over again after half an hour.  Needless to say there was nothing to do in Kingscote, but we had to stop so I could recuperate before continuing on to American River.

The guidebook said that there was an endangered colony of black cockatoos in American River "usually found between the post office and general store" so we stopped to see if we could find them.  Turns out the post office and general store were pretty far apart and we weren't able to track them down.  We couldn't hear any birds, so we assumed they were somewhere else that day.  But it wasn't a complete loss, since we saw an adorable echidna up close!  We had seen one on the side of the road before, but didn't get any pictures.

And that concludes our trip to Kangaroo Island.  Shortly thereafter we arrived in Penneshaw for our ferry ride home.  I was dreading the ride since the waves were really big that day, but somehow I made it through.

View of Penneshaw, then mainland Australia in the distance.

KI: Koala Walk

And now, finally, we have come to the most exciting part of our trip: the koala walk!  Surprisingly, not because of the koalas, but more about the surprise later.

All of the travel guides said that it is rare to see a koala in Australia in the wild, but if you are going to see one then Kangaroo Island is the place to do it.  Awhile back when koalas were running out of natural habitat on the main continent, someone decided to relocate some to Kangaroo Island where there was still lots of eucalyptus for them to eat.  As you might know, koalas can only digest a limited number of eucalyptus species so it seemed like a good idea.  This move was so successful that KI became overrun with koalas and they started to decimate the tree population, so fertility control was used to try and regulate the population. 

Despite that, we didn't see a koala anywhere for the first day and a half of our trip so we decided to go on the "koala walk".  It was basically on someone's farm, but they had a beautiful pathway lined with blue gum trees and they "guaranteed" koala sightings.  It wasn't technically the wild I guess, but they were certainly not captive.  It was more just a convenient place to see them I suppose.  First we ate our lovely picnic lunch under the gum trees, just getting the lay of the land.  Then the koala spotting contest began!  I must say, Ryan is good at bird spotting, but I kicked butt at koala spotting!  Of the 10 koalas we saw, I found 9 of them and Ryan found 1 (which might have actually been a duplicate sighting, but I gave it to him anyways!)  I have to give him credit though, because all of the beautiful pictures in this post are his.

Now finally I can reveal the amazing surprise!  As we were leaving the farm we walked by a mama kangaroo and her young joey.  We thought they were pretty cute so we got up close and started taking pictures of them, but then we noticed the mama actually had another baby in her pouch!!!!!  I must say, I never expected to see that in my whole life so I feel really lucky.  The baby didn't peek it's head out too much, but when it was inside we could still see the mom's belly moving around - so weird!  She was being very protective and they ended up hopping off shortly after, but it was quite a special thing to see.  For that reason, this was certainly the highlight of the trip.  Enjoy the pictures!

You can sort of see his tail sticking out too.

KI: Admirals Arch and Remarkable Rocks

Probably the two most iconic things on Kangaroo Island are Admirals Arch and Remarkable Rocks, which are on the furthest south-west side of the island in Flinders Chase National Park. 

Admirals Arch itself was a bit underwhelming, but the location was incredible.  The day was extremely windy and a bit stormy, so consequently we saw the biggest waves I have ever seen.  It was really interesting because the waves were coming in at least 3 directions, so they were colliding in the middle of the ocean creating massive sprays.  We also had a nice surprise to find that the entire coast around Admirals Arch was inhabited by New Zealand fur seals!  We definitely enjoyed watching the waves and the seals, and even the seals surfing and diving in the waves!  Time for my favourite game: how many seals can you find in this picture?

Surprise!  They're not rocks after all!

The "arch" we came to see.

   

Unfortunately my cute seal video doesn't want to upload.  Sorry!

Next we went just down the road to see Remarkable Rocks.  They were quite impressive and we had lots of fun sneaking in and out of all of the nooks and crannies.  Again, ask Ryan if you care about the geology.  New game - let's play "find Ryan in the rocks"!  (Hint, he's not in all of the pictures.)

Remarkable Rocks from afar

This is one of my favourite pictures, but Ryan gets the photo credit.

The really beautiful vegetation all over the island

KI: Kelly Hill Caves and KI Wilderness Retreat

To finish off our first day on Kangaroo Island, we went to the Kelly Hill Show Caves.  I won't lie, I didn't really pay attention to what the guide was saying about them...this was more Ryan's thing.  If you have any questions about them, ask him!  They were really cool though.  One non-geologically interesting part was when the guide shut off all of the lights and lit a candle.  It was really insightful to see how difficult it would have been to explore the caves in the late 1800s without a flashlight.

Like I said before, KI is the first place here where I actually felt like I was in a different country.  Everywhere else has reminded me of either California, the Yukon, or Northern Ontario.  I think it was the shrubs and the red dirt on the side of the roads that made it feel real.  It's the closest I've been to the Outback so far.

We spent the night at the Kangaroo Island Wilderness Retreat.  The property was over 100 acres and very beautiful.  At check-in the receptionist gave us bags of food and there were wallabies waiting by our patio door to greet us!  I know they were tame, but it was still super fun to feed them! 

To finish off our amazing day, we had the most delicious dinner at the lodge.  I don't usually talk about food on this blog, but boy was it good!  Ryan had macadamia nut crusted salmon with some sort of chutney and I had a tomato crab pasta.  For dessert, we had warm white chocolate raspberry bread and butter pudding with vanilla bean custard.  Seriously, to die for!  Next on my cooking adventures is learning how to make bread and butter pudding!  They even made us a picnic lunch for the next day.  Definitely glad we didn't go on the pre-packaged tour!  

KI: Little Sahara

Little Sahara was the second major stop on our trip, and probably my favourite stop.  I've always been fascinated by sand dunes (like desert size ones) so I was really excited to go here.  I had absolutely no idea how cool it would actually be!  Here you are, on a small island covered in lush shrubs and trees, and there is this massive sand dune!  I really can't convey how strange it was.  Anyways, I read that you could "toboggan" (or "snow"board )down them by renting sand boards.  I hate tobogganing and Ryan was on the fence about the whole thing, but we both decided to suck it up and have the super unique experience.  I am so glad we did!  The pictures will speak for themselves, but it was crazy fun and I found sand in my ears still 2 days later.   I put us in all of the pictures to try and convey scale.  The dunes were gigantic!

The unflattering facial expressions are me realizing that screaming with your mouth open is a terrible idea with sand flying at you!

So much sand on our faces!  I should NOT have put sticky sunscreen on before this event.

See how abrupt the contrast is between desert dunes and green pastures?  Weird!