Western Australia!

Friday 17 September 2010 was the last day of term 3. Yay! I made it. The last couple of weeks I was so busy, I was barely keeping up with everything. Just barely.

The very next day, we flew to Perth. We had been a little concerned because we couldn't check in on the web on Friday evening (the first hints of trouble to come for Virgin Blue), but I did manage to check us in early Saturday morning. In any case, it was an uneventful if long and boring flight (just under six hours).

Arriving in Perth, we collected our hire car and drove away from the airport. The sky was overcast and the light therefore a muted grey, and the air cool with a brisk breeze blowing. We knew that Perth was 2 hours behind Brisbane, but of course our bodies and minds hadn't adjusted to that yet. It felt to us like it was dusk and 5pm for several hours straight! We basically had no real idea what time it was.

We stopped briefly in Maylands for some groceries, a few bits of cutlery from a charity store and a couple of falafel kebabs. Then we drove east into the Perth hills. For our first night we were booked into the Travellers Rest Motel in Mundaring. This was a lovely, restful villa spread around a large, landscaped yard.

Part of the villa

Our hire car (the white Barina), parked outside our room

Our room for the night (note the very necessary ugg boots!)

One of the many lovely gardens

After checking in, we drove out to the nearby Mundaring Weir. The road there from the town is quite a long downhill drive. The cold wind was really starting to pick up by now, and we were glad to have our coats. We found some very pretty wildflowers beside the road and around the weir.

Eventually the cold (and our tiredness, remember the two hour time difference!) meant we returned to our room for a simple dinner of 2-minute noodles and an early (by Perth time) night.