Holiday to Perth and Margaret River

The four of us headed West to Perth and then onto Margaret River for a week's holiday.

I had to go to a conference for a few days in Perth so Amy took the kids round the beautiful city while I was tied up in a dull conference suite. As well as many hours in the hotel pool (which the kids loved) they visited Kings Park which overlooks the city and then spent days at Fremantle and Rottnest.

Rottnest is an island just 20k off the coast of Perth. It's a small sandy island which they reached by ferry. The island has a population of around 10,000 quokkas on it. They are small kangaroo-esque marsupials which only live on Rottnest.

When the island was discovered by the Dutch in 1696 (the Dutch got to WA before Cook landed in NSW) he thought they were rats, hence Rottnest (i.e Rats nest island which has a whole different connotation to it). Fortunately the Dutch were mistaken and the kids spotted a number of them on their trip.

After my conference had finished we hired a car and drove the 4 or so hours south to Margaret River.

It's a stunning part of the world. Beautiful green hills giving way to sand dunes and blue sea. A lot of the coast is protected and development free. White sand and crashing waves, pretty flowers and trees lining small country roads.

We tried to take in a number of vineyards on our trip (wine for the adults, beach for the kids) - there was an incredible number of them. I must admit though a quick trip to the Cellar Door of a vineyard for a tasting or three makes parenthood considerably easier!

We spent a lovely afternoon at Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse a really amazing spot on the extreme South West of Australia. It's a point where two oceans (the Indian and Southern Oceans) meet - you can actually see their waters meeting. It was manually operated up until 1982 - one of the last in the world.

We also visited 3 caves, Mammoth, Lake and Jewel. All full of stalactites and stalagmites. The area is situated on huge seam of limestone and so the caves were breathtaking in their size and stature. All of them involved precarious steps through narrow rocks to get into them (not exactly 'caving' but certainly challenging with 2 children in tow). Audrey and Eli loved the caves. Each trip featured an obligatory 'lights out' session where the guide cut the lights so we could experience 100% darkness (which was VERY dark).

We spent time on the beach in Hamelin Bay, Redgate Beach as well as the beach at Moses Rock, where Audrey and Eli splashed for hours (I'm sure they'd still be there now if they could be) in the rock-pools. I swam in the sea a few times, but to be honest I never got much above my waist. Three people had been eaten by shark(s?) in the last three months in WA - an American as recently as last weekend and so I was a lot more tentative than usual. Even the odd bit of seaweed brushing my legs made me jumpy!

We also visited Busselton Jetty. A huge structure going 1841 metres out to sea (I'm sure it must be visible from space like the Great Wall of China!). Since shipping/logging has died out in the area the end of the jetty has been converted into an underwater observatory where you can view the reef which has formed at the end of the jetty piles. There were huge schools of fish. It surpassed any aquarium. Here the fish were looking out at us rather than us looking in at them!

As well as wine we indulged in ice cream (Simmos Ice Creamery) and lovely chocolate from the Margaret River Chocolate Factory and now back at work I can feel the belt on my trousers is considerably tighter!

The journey home was a sad one. Audrey and Eli who had been incredibly well behaved on the flight out (drawing several comments of praise from fellow passengers) were more grouchy and tired on our return.

I'm not sure when we'll next head to that part of the world (it's a long way from Canberra both physically and metaphorically too I guess) but we really loved our holiday and came back refreshed and happy.

I was going to put a big string of pictures here, but thought I'd put a video instead. Hope you like it.