From Aussie with Love.

Count our blessings in midst of the tighten border controls worldwide arising from Covid-19, we managed a short 6 days leisure holiday in Perth with the Seah family in early March. With a 8-seater rental car, we embarked on a road trip a long the western coastline of Australia chasing waves. 

With an average temperature of 20-30 Celsius, the weather are sunny in the day but made much bearable with the coastal wind and low humidity. We booked our accommodation via airbnb and got ourselves in few really spacious apartments throughout the trip - sunlit drop down windows, individual lawn and BBQ area. An idea living space that's too luxurious to own back in Singapore. 

Taking away the travelling, we essentially had 4 full days for sightseeing from day 2 to day 5. With a slower pace travelling in large family, we typically start our day with cafe brunches, visit two place of interest in the day and wrap up dinner with Asian cuisine, and end the day by swing by their gargantuan supermarket (Woolworths) for some groceries.

Thanks to the Seah brothers' effort in doing researches, the cafes we went to comes with both great ambience and yummy food. The cafes generally integrates a lot of greens with some rustic themes. The kind of places that you will want to spend a lazy morning at. Generally the main ranges from AUD$20-30 but the portions are huge.

 Taylor's Art & Coffee House

For Day 2, we spent more of the day in the Caversham Wildlife Park, going from one meet the animals session to another animal shows. Meeting adorable native Australian faunas. 

Butt-scratching Koala

Sleepy Wallaby lying around

Singapore couple visiting

Gentle farm animals getting harassed 

Squeezing a cow's udders

 Superb Fairywren & Pink Cocaktoo

short legged wombat

Managed to made a quick visit to Elizabeth Quay in the city centre before ending our 1st day of visit with some local fish&chip. Just as told, the amenities in Perth close as early as 5 and there are hardly much people on street after our dinner at 7pm~ 

Started Day 3 with the best furnished and decorated cafe we visited during the trip. A perfect blend of Balinese with nature vibes~ 

Perfecto seating for two pax for a slow brunch on the weekend~ 

And mains comes in huge servings. :') 

 Moving on we started the road trip going north and stopped by  Yanchep beach for break while en route to Pinnacle. The clear and calm water definitely made it a great place for a swim and perhaps snorkelling.

 Had some fun building the 'giant foot seah' on the beach with our nephew. Throughout the trip, I generally find myself dealing a lot better with a 4 y.o kid than a 2 y.o toddler. I felt that being able to establish a two way communication with a kid made things a lot more.. fun? There was lots of experience to deal with different situations, which I find the responsibility an enormous one, knowing that how you handled them may somehow shape that one kid's future.

Was surprised to find Toby's Estate by the beach for our lunch, though I really shouldn't be since I knew that the Toby's Estate at Robertson Quay was a Australian breakfast concept. After another hour we landed ourselves in the middle of Lacelin Sand Dunes and try out sand boarding and quad bike. Sand boarding is something new to me but it turned out to be a great deal of fun to slide down  the soft white sand. Would have loved to spend more time there if given the chance~ 

Also had an pretty memorable solo quad bike experience travelling through the sand. It started off with me gripping onto the handles nervously, and off I went disappeared into the vast sand dunes. All was well and fun until 5min into it I did not manage my speed well and got stuck in the sand. The quad bike just went deeper each time I tried to restart the engine. Despite how easily the safety instructor demonstrated to us before the ride, but quad bike turns out to be freaking damn heavy?  It took all my might and an eternity to lift it off an inch from the depression. But would I do it again? Certainly~

 Another hour drive later, we arrived at the last destination of the day - Pinnacles. Formed by agglomerates of crushed shells beneath a soil on which forest used to grow, when the forest disappears, the soil around the pinnacles was eroded leaving the later exposed as a natural spectacle today. The place was serene with warm evening sun casting over the whole place when we arrived. quite fortunate that throughout the trip there weren't much crowd anywhere. 

On the 3rd day, we spent half day making our way down to the south of the coastline - Margaret River region. Due to the limited tours and time we had on hand, we skipped some of the planned attractions and took a walk around the Busselton jetty instead.  

Squeeze in  a short visit to the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse before heading to our new Airbnb for the night. Quite a cute and well maintained limestone light house by the Indian Ocean. Could have been a good reference for a watercolor painting someday~

Highlight of the 4th and final day of sight seeing was visiting the Hamelin Bay and we were lucky to spot multiple friendly giant stingrays coming to the shallow water in the morning (typically 9-10am).

Stingray brushing against my legs gently

Followed by a visit to the Mammoth Cave - being one of Australian's important  digging site, it is home to ancient fossil remains of extinct giant animals. The scale of the cave was enormous, hence it's name. It still amazes me when I travelled through various landforms that I used to read off textbooks as a teenager. How amazing mother nature is in sculpturing every bit of details around us. 

 Had a delightful lunch at an Italian restaurant/bar which served really good pork belly (surprisingly) and gnocchi pasta. Would like to say that the food we had along the way were mostly exceeding expectations, thanks to online reviews and efforts put in by the seah brothers huehue.



We stopped by at a natural rock pool - Indijup Natural Spa. Unlike Hamelin Bay in the morning, the waves were wild and thick. A make shift small waterfall was formed behind the rocks, forming a treasure of rock pool.

Top view of the rock pool

A pity that there was no washroom in the area for me to change into swim suit and take a dip in the pool sigh. But still, dipping my legs inside was better than nothing at all. 

With that, we ended our trip and travelled back to Perth city, trying to catch our early morning flight the next day. Many cautioned us about how boring Perth is prior to the trip. But I would think otherwise, I am totally infatuated with the ocean, the wind and the nature there. It totally makes a perfect destination for camping and road trips. 

Maybe next time. Till then, may you stay bluest like this, always.