Alex

Hello!

I’ve just experienced the saddest time of my whole trip… waving goodbye to Sooji at the airport as she heads off back to Korea via Singapore and Hong Kong. The farewell was tearful, but we have had a great time together and will meet up again soon.

To mark the end of our holiday, we took a scenic flight around Perth this afternoon! It was a great experience, although Sooji felt a little ill due to the turbulence. For me though it added additional enthusiasm to my goal of getting my license in the next couple of years.

I’ve embedded a short video below, and have added some pictures for those of you that are just scanning over them!

We’ve been taking it easy here in Perth, just wandering around, dining at cafes and restaurants (including a magnificent gourmet buffet at Miss Maud’s) and went for a drink with Sooji’s friends.

I’ll be heading back to Karratha tomorrow so this will probably be the last of the ‘regular’ blog posts, as with working 50 hours a week as well as cracking on with my business endeavours I don’t think I’ll have a great deal of time to get up to much of blog-worthiness!

Hillarys Harbour

Alongside Cottesloe Beach

Approaching Perth CBD

Hope your all well,

Alex x

Hello hello!

Flying over beautiful Tasmania at sunrise

Well me and Sooji are back in Perth now. We left Tasmania after a nice day looking around a great art and craft market where we bought a few bits, and had a delicious dinner on a cruise ship down the river. Sadly the flight and river tour was cancelled again due to the weather, but we had a great time anyway.

Melbourne was nice, although I think the constant travelling was begining to take its toll as we were very tired. We decided to also not do the Great Ocean Road trip as Sooji got extremely travel sick on the flight over, and the tour is famously bendy.

Sooji and Skyscrapers

We chased the idea of a helicopter tour which I really wanted to do, but after getting a call back from them it turned out the price was a tad over what we could afford. The advertised price was $170 each, but after landing fees, an extra hours flight to pick us up in the CBD, and that there where 4 seats – they quoted us $1,750. A little over what we were hoping.

Melbourne as seen from the 88th floor of the Eureka Skydeck!

We did have a very fancy meal in a luxurious restaurant – think chairs drawn for you, candles and small portions of gnocci and braised duck artfully served in ginormous plates. Delicious, and thankfully the cheque was on Mum!

A decievingly cute looking Tasmanian Devil - these creatures can chomp through bones! (3 tonnes of bite!)

We decided to at least do something, and found a great tour to Phillip Island the next day which took us down to a wildlife park where we got to feed some big kangaroos – including a wizened old Grandpa and a mother with an albino joey in its pouch – and then onto a tour of the cliffs. We stopped to take pictures of some great rainbows around Pyramid Rock and saw some wild wallabys!

The rich cliffs of Phillip Island

The real reason we were there though was the penguins! ‘The Penguin Parade’ is apparently the largest natural attraction in Australia, with 2m people sitting out on stands on the beach at sunset to see great crowds of these tiny little penguins waddling ashore! It was great, despite raining, as they all turned up at once on the shoreline and rallied each other to build up the courage to cross the sand. As soon as one little guy made it they all crossed, and then went crashing around the dunes amongst the boardwalk so we could watch them up close. As their official name ‘Little Penguin’ suggests, these guys are tiny! Fully grown they reach about 33cm!

Sadly photography was banned, but Google shall provide...

After a good hour of penguin watching we headed to the warmth of a cafe for pizza – and then on back to Melbourne. Despite both having very early flights me and a great guy named Rupesh Tailor went out for a beer and had a facinating conversation and swapped some big ideas.

'Pyramid Rock' - a typical example of Australian creativity in naming things

After only 2 hours of sleep we were up again and on our way to Perth, where we were greeted at the terminal by a very wide-smiled African taxi driver who enthusiastically discussed British politics all the way to our hostel.

Only a couple of days left now until I’ll be waving goodbye to Sooji and heading off back to Karratha and the pizza shop thats waiting for me, but we have some interesting things planned so its not over yet!

Cheers, Al

What a day!

We had to reshedule the scenic flight for tommorow as the weather was terrible further south, with very strong winds.

Looking down over Hobart

We found out just how strong they were at the top of Mount Wellington – a 1,250m high mountain next to Hobart – when we went up in the morning. It was incredibly windy and very very cold! But as you can see if you click the link below, the view was incredible – really, really stunning.

This afternoon we decided to go up to a Zoo not far from the town and it turned out to be great. We saw some tigers and very rare white lions – which were only young adult cubs and very energetic and playful.

Sleepy Tiger

We went on a ‘Safari Bus’ which took us into the emu, ostrich and camel enclosures – the birds were a bit scary close up and very eager to get their food (which we were supposed to be feeding them out of our hands!).

Roo Girl

Some kids got a very close encounter with the camels too as they put their heads right in the bus amongst us all. Me and Sooji had great fun feeding and petting all of the Roos too which ate from our palms.

Just thought I’d put up the pics – hope your all well, Al x

The spectacular view from the top of Mount Wellington

Click on the panorama for full size (52kb) – the view even stretched way to the left, and behind the rocky outcrop on the right it stretched for another 60 or so degrees! Beautiful.