Lilypie Kids Birthday tickers

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Day 4 - Nambung National Park & Lancelin

15th March 2012

It's our last day in Perth today. Mummy packed breakfast and we ate in the car again (to save time). We took a 3-hour slow drive to the Nambung National Park to see the Pinnacles and on the way back, dropped by to see the sand dunes of Lancelin.

On the way out of the city, we made a little detour to the Swan Bell Towers (because we did not get down from the tram to take any photos here yesterday).

The Swan Bell Tower. We were here at 7am and managed to catch the sound of the bells chiming 7 times.

Good morning, swans! The Swan Bell Tower overlooks the Swan River so it is not surprising to spot a few swans here :)

Road trip to the Nambung National Park begins! 

Nambung National Park is home to the Pinnacles Desert, a series of eerie limestone formations sporadically scattered over vast yellow, rippled sand dunes. Source:http://www.discoverwest.com.au

At the Pinnacles Desert... my first reaction was "Wow, so much sand! Too bad I didn't bring my beach toys!" hahaha!

The smooth, fine sand in the desert




At the Desert Viewing Platform

We also took the Desert Drive (following the designated path for cars). It was a fun experience for us and the view was simply magnificent!

Car in the desert

Man and girl in the desert

Girl in the desert

Girl pretending to surf in the desert

Looking at some photographs in the gallery of the visitor's info centre

Some facts on how the pinnacles were formed

We had lunch in Lancelin, a small and quiet fishing town nestled between the ocean and sand dunes. We had fish and chips and daddy also ordered a fisherman's basket that came with fish, scallop, squid and shrimps...

Our unhealthy but quite yummy lunch... mummy painstakingly squeezed (every single piece) to absorb and get rid of all the excess oil using over 20 pieces of serviettes! :p

Next stop was to see the sand dunes. The popular activities here include sand-boarding, sand-motorbiking, buggy rides and 4-wheel drive rides. We did not do any of these activities because daddy felt that they were too dangerous and "extreme" for me. Furthermore, the weather was really HOT, with temperatures hovering above 40C. 

The snow-white sand dunes as seen from the highway

So what did we do there? We just walked around and... and I ate sand! Yes, a strong gust of wind sent some sand into my mouth while I was squatting down, scooping and playing with the sand and talking at the same time. Bad-bad mummy had a good laugh at me when I gagged, coughed and spat them out. When asked how I liked the taste of sand, I said "it's very crunchy but tasteless" hahaha!





The soft, smooth, fine and powdery white sand dunes 

It was still quite early when we returned to the city so after parking our car at the motel, we walked to a nearby bus stop to catch the FREE Cat Bus. We took the Red Cat and went sight-seeing in the city for the very last time...

The Red Cat bus stop

Hugging this big "green thing" just opposite the railway station

We had a simple dinner in Tony Roma's... daddy had the baby back ribs, I had the kiddy pizza and mummy had the shrimp scampi pasta

After dinner, we went for a short drive nearby to refuel before returning our rented car. On the way, we made a quick stop in Kings Park to take in the panoramic night view of the city...

Night view of Perth city from Kings Park. The park was surprisingly very crowded at night!

I had the shortest sleep that night, waking up at 3am to get to the airport to catch our 6:30am flight home. I was awake the whole time and only continued with my sleep in the plane much later. Although we missed Perth very much, we were also very happy to be back in our home sweet home!

-The End-

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Day 3 - Kings Park & Caversham Wildlife Park

14th March 2012

We bought a lot of food from the local supermarkets and kept our fridge very well-stocked throughout our stay there. At the end of the trip, we had so much "leftovers" (we obviously got too carried away with the shopping) that we had to cart home "groceries", including 6 packets of UHT milk, unfinished bran cereal and a whole loaf of bread haha!

This was what we had for breakfast every day... bread, cereal, milk, yoghurt (not in pic) and fruits

This is the motel that we stayed in 

We were given a free half-day guided city tour by the website where we booked our accommodation from. To join the Discover West Holiday tour, we had to walk about 20 mins across the city to get to a bus-stop to wait for the tram.

Riding on a tram again

The "fake" tram... it's actually a bus in a tram's body... see the tyres ;)

First stop... Kings Park in Mount Eliza (it's actually just behind our motel!)
The magnificent view of the city from the park

The many views of Kings Park

This tree is said to be about 750 years old

Enjoying the "tree-top" walk (elevated bridge across one part of the park that overlooks the panoramic Swan River)

We love the lush greenery and couldn't resist lying down and rolling on the grass

Family photo

Some of the birds "lepak-ing" in the park with us :p

 
Kings Park and Botanic Garden is the largest inner city park in the world and we've just "conquered" it. Yes!

After spending almost 2 hours in the park, the tram returned to fetch us back to the city. Too tired from all the walking, we just sat and rested in the tram. We enjoyed almost an hour of sight-seeing and joyride in the tram (with live commentary). 

I missed having rice and was craving for rice so rice it was, for lunch. We picked a casual Japanese restaurant that was teeming with local office workers. The busy lunch crowd was an indication that the food there was good.... 

Our scrumptious lunch at Nagoya Sushi

After lunch, we walked back to the motel and immediately jumped into our car to get to the next destination.  Guess where did we head to next?

A trip to Australia isn't complete without a trip to a wildlife park

The Caversham Wildlife Park

We reached just in time to catch the farm animal "showtime". It was the usual working sheep-dog, sheep-shearing, Billy-tea and whip-cracking kind of show.

Bottle-feeding the lambs... I wanted very much to do this but missed the chance because I was too slow in raising my hand when the "uncle" asked for volunteers...

... but nevermind, I got to touch them after they have been fed :)

And I got to milk a cow too! :)

I also saw, touched and fed many other animals there...

I fed a donkey!

I fed a llama... and it made me very happy!


I fed the same llama again after it was led out to a field

I even touched a bobtail skink (a type of lizard with a very fat and rounded tail) and mummy's eyes nearly popped out when she saw me doing this! She is super terrified of reptiles in the shape of lizards and she didn't allow me to touch her after this (at least not with the same hand that touched the yucky reptile haha)

More animals... wombats, possums, camels, barn owls, and many more!

There were many koalas in this park too

Finally, I was able to touch and gently stroke a few!

Our favourite place in this wildlife park was the kangaroo enclosure. We spent a lot of time here. I simply ADORED the kangaroos because they were very friendly, gentle and tame.

Hello, my name is Chloe. What's yours?

Swarmed by kangaroos! 

We enjoyed feeding the kangaroos very much. We sat down comfortably and kept feeding them for a very long time (and mummy feared that we might have overfed them!)

Shoo... shoo! I told you, there's nothing in my pocket! I could see that the kangaroos loved me very much too... they kept climbing all over me!

Too bad the park closed rather early at 5pm. We went to a nearby Woolworths for some shopping and had dinner at Red Rooster, a fast food chain that we saw almost EVERYWHERE but have never tried it before....

Savouring my BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) wrap in Red Rooster... yums!

Our shopping loot... at the end of Day 3, we have "collected" 8 bags of goodies, weighing about 30kg in total ;)

The Wonderful World of Ruoyi

Feedjit Live Traffic