The Last Post - Anzac Day and all - for now...

We are done - for now.  We said our 'farewells' to  Perth last week and have spent the past week touring southern Australia and have ended up back at Melbourne - about to fly home.  It has been a fantastic spring (or fall, as the Aussies remind us), completely different from pre-January.  We have decided it is a great place to visit - wonderful scenery and people, but we have not once cursed our ancestors for heading to Canada rather than down under.

Perth was significantly different than Melbourne - maybe 'Dallas-like'?  Lots of growth and wealth - and tremendous coastline and parks....but .....

Joan's older brother Lionel, and his wife Pat, flew to Perth April 12th and travelled about with us to end our adventure here.  They have not been out of North America, so we had a lot of fun touring about.  Coming from a large mixed farm/cattle operation in Saskatchewan, Rich determined that a couple of farm tours were in order.

And after the farm tours, a little day trip to Freemantle, Cottesloe beach, Kings Park, and around various sites of the Perth area.  The weather - as you can see, was still acceptable for swimming, though it had dropped to the mid twenties.  We spent our first three weeks in Perth with temperatures never dropping below 30C during the daytime.

....and we had a little fun.   It was tempting to leave Rich to his own devices - until we remembered that he was the keeper of the car keys.  Anyway, this device seems like it might have some potential - and a simple piece of technology at that.

 The birds are beautiful - lots of colour, and while not beautiful voices, not too terribly bad.....except for the crows!   They sound like they are dying - and are refusing to go out easily.  We woke to them almost every morning.   The magpies, on the other hand, looked similar to ours, but were relatively melodic.

And the trees grow tall!  We did a second tour of Margaret River country, and managed some similar (wine tasting, kanga chasing, and surf watching) and some different activities ( finding the Great Southern Ocean intersecting with the Indian Ocean, and driving into the depths of the forests).

Pat snapping landscape

The thinker?

wave watch

We managed some time to play in the waves - the boys managed some good abrasion from a bit of body surfing in some massive waves.  The undertow was incredible - easy to see how people can be sucked under.



We also managed a small tour north of Perth before our final exit - in search of Koalas - which we found - sleeping as usual - I guess it's hard to get 20 hours of sleep in a day if you entertain tourists too frequently.

And, we found some more agriculture - tomato trees - about six feet tall....amazing what a little heat will do for plants.

Oh yes - and camels.  Apparently Australia has more camels than most places - and export them to mid eastern countries.....from which they once had come.

Adelaide Cathedral

We flew from Perth to Adelaide -Rich now has the Qantas 23 kilo rule down to the last gram....which is good, considering they charge $15 per kilo over their luggage limit.  We're sure we didn't invest enough time in finding out what is wonderful about Adelaide - because it appeared somewhat limited - though we did see a few tremendous pieces of architecture.  The Aus tour book we had with us suggested Adelaide was 'bland' ---and we had some trouble proving the book wrong.  However - our real purpose was seeing the countryside around Adelaide -and that was all we knew it would be.  It was particularly lush this fall, and the vinyards were turning colour, so there were great crimsons and golds against a rich green background. 

McLaren Vale, SA

Surprisingly - Rich found several winneries to tour, managing to meet and have a lengthy discussion with the patriarch of D'Arenburg Wines.  As it turned out - Lionel also seems to enjoy a good red wine - which was quite a surprise to all of us- who new cowboy boots and grenache -shiraz mixed so well!

Wine gods - owners

Grampians National Park

 From wine country we drove to the Grampians National Park - in search of a bit of hiking - and found it.  Rich got some spectacular pictures from the top of this rock.



Unfortunately, most of the roads through the park were still ( as in, for more than two months) closed from flooding that had occurred in early February.  We were unable to get to much of the area we wanted to see....We also managed to get caught in a wicked rain storm - fortunately it was short-lived.  Had it not been, the roads might have been.  The only real adventure was when Rich and a kangaroo got into a tangle - We were driving and fortunately for kanga and car, the breaks worked well, kanga did one full roll, got up and hopped away.  We checked the bumper....no damage...all was well!

 Before getting into Melbourne we managed one last drive down the Great Ocean Road - or at least the Ocean part of the Road.  We don't think we could ever get tired of the landscape along here.  Different light produces a different canvas each time.

Just another site on Great Ocean Road

This time it was a cloudy day, and a holiday - the crowds at the Twelve Apostles were incredible, though many of the other look outs had relatively few people.  We saw different sights with different lighting than on our previous trip.  absolutely breathtaking!

Grotto on Great Ocean Road

 And finally, into Melbourne where we spent our last few days visiting, wandering the coast at Port Melbourne, visiting the Victoria Market in search of a few touristy trinkets....and attending 'Hairspray', a fun 60's musical showing at the incredible Princess Theatre.  We are now on our flight home -looking forward to seeing family - fields and floods - before heading back to Europe in June.

Sun setting over Australia