Welcome to my final post detailing our two week Western Australia Adventure complete with toddler! Check out the links for my previous posts:
Western Australia Adventure - Part I
Western Australia Adventure - Part II
A short recap before I start - we began and ended our adventure in Perth. Our family (@starthere and our little 2 year old tot) rented a 4WD truck and headed north, all the way to Karijini National Park then slowly made our way back towards Perth. Monkey Mia in Shark Bay is where I ended my second post.
Leaving the World Heritage Area of Shark Bay, we drove down to Kalbarri National Park. We got there around lunch time and explored the National Park in the late afternoon. We went to see the famous Kalbarri land mark called Nature's Window. We took a slow and easy hike about a mile (round trip) to see it.
Looks beautiful and peaceful, right? Well, the calm was broken by some tourists who were playing with a drone. Nothing like the buzzing of a giant flying toy in a place already swarming with flies to ruin the mood. People, don't bring drones to national parks - they're annoying!
Our little family with the Nature's Window. Flies are also included in the photo, see how many you can spot.
The pesky flies are the reason why we didn't explore more of the National Park. They drove us insane. Those insect sprays don't work by the way, at least none of the sprays we used. If you are heading to Kalbarri National Park, I suggest getting a hat with a net that covers your entire face and neck. Seriously! A net-hat would have made it much more bearable.
Rose breasted cockatoos called Galahs were the local birds of Kalbarri. I was pretty amazed to be in a place where colorful parrots are just flying around everywhere.
The rest of the day was spent hanging around the playground fronting the bay in Kalbarri town with some locals and pelicans in the water.
A small town sitting directly on the beach with a great sunset everyday makes me wanna move to Kalbarri.
One of Kalbarri town's famous activities is the pelican feeding. In the morning before traveling, we stopped and listened to a local volunteer speak about the history of the pelican feeding. Unluckily, no pelicans showed up this morning. It was still nice to listen and learn something about the giant birds.
Also on our way out of Kalbarri, we stopped by Port Gregory's Hutt Lagoon where the water was pink. Pink! Pretty amazing. The lake contains a carotenoid-producing algae, which causes the water to turn pink.
We found the perfect lunch spot at Horrock's, dubbed as #1 Mainland Beach in Tourism Australia's Best Australian Beaches for 2018. Surprisingly the beach was empty. We had it all to our self.
We arrived to Geraldton, a coastal city which is a 4 1/2 hour drive from Perth. Another small city that charmed us.
Enjoying our family dinner with the view of the sun setting among the boat yard. The city was very quiet.
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Started the day at the beach, where @starthere was hoping there would be waves for him to surf. Unfortunately, the sea was flat. It was not the day to get wet.
Instead, he and the toddler had fun going up and jumping down the sand dunes.
Drove around the town and saw some of its famous land marks. The Point Moore light house is still active, its fresnel lens was first lit in 1878.
Hard to miss the St.Francis Xavier's Cathedral which is situated in the heart of the city.
If you are a parent like us who has young kids, you would appreciate this playground fronting the shore that is also 10 steps away from a cafe. The playground also has a splash pad and is a 5 minutes walk away from the town shops. It was hard to leave this place.
Stretching our legs from a long drive at one of the Turquoise Coast's beaches of Western Australia. Again, another beautiful empty beach - this one was called Dynamite Bay.
After securing our camp site at Cervantes, we headed to Nambung National Park's Pinnacle Desert, where an out of this world landscape can be found. Thousand of limestone spires formed over a million years ago, which is also a perfect place to let loose a toddler who doesn't quite know how to play hide and seek yet.
Ended the day with a dinner in the desert while watching the sunset paint the sky pink.
Feeling a little sad as we pack up to return to Perth. Here's a last look at the camping life we've enjoyed living for the past weeks.
Back at Perth, we headed to Cavernsham Wildlife Park where we were greeted with a mob of hungry Kangaroos. During our roadtrip, we only saw some roadkill kangaroos (we counted 26 before losing track). The wildlife park has many species of kangaroos from all over Australia.
There is no way you can leave Australia without seeing kangaroos! Both young and old will find joy in feeding these creatures.
With the park experience, we got to see animals which are a native to Australia such as this beautiful owl, emu, lorakeets, cuckatoos, wombat, dingo, koala, quokka, tasmanian devil and more.
We also drove around Swan valley, where you can find a lot of wineries and historic gems like this building.
After we dropped off our "tent car" (as our toddler liked to call it), we spent our last night in Fremantle, a hip little city neighboring Perth. We ended our trip with a nice dinner at Little Creatures, where we pre-celebrated our son's birthday. The next day, we said goodbye to Australia and headed back to Thailand.
We made a lot of wonderful memories during the trip. We were able to spend a lot of quality time as a family. We felt like the days were longer and moved slower than our regular day in the city. We were able to sleep at least 10 hours every night. A lot of that has something to do with not having electricity or internet connection. We look forward to having more trips like this in the future.
I enjoyed sharing our adventures with you! I hope that you enjoyed these posts too and that I somehow convinced you to go visit Western Australia. It is indeed a beautiful part of the world and an under visited part of the country. My family and I would go back there again in a heartbeat. Please do let me know if you have any questions on the details of the trip I would be very happy to answer!