Hopefully the next few posts will be a little punchier than the previous ones!
We headed back to Perth for a final week and a bit of visiting and site seeing...oh, and the second instalment of my root canal. We were kindly hosted again by Dot and Martin - a great place to be based to do everything we wanted!
We all enjoyed a day trip to the Perth Zoo, which had changed quite a bit since my last visit some years ago. We even 'invested' in one of the resident elephant's paintings! It is a lovely memento from a city that we all enjoyed immensely.
We had a fantastic afternoon at the home of Brett and Jan - the couple we met in Ceduna. They had an amazing pool that easily entertained the kids and the dogs for hours. They travelled around Oz for a year with their super dog, Banjo, so have been a wealth of knowledge about where to go and where to avoid as we continue our lap with our fur babies.
It was also great to catch up with my other cousin and her family, albeit for a short time. Finding a window in between the kids' school commitments, sports and social activities was an inevitable challenge - something very familiar to us! It was a perfect reminder of why we're doing this trip and how nice it's been to step off the treadmill for a while.
We restocked the essentials we've found to be pricey in regional towns such as pharmacy items, replaced some of the kids' battered clothes, washed Bilbo and sent a parcel of 'unused' items homebound. Then, after almost 5 weeks of 'glamping', aided by the generosity of friends and family, it was time to get back to the proper 'rough(er)' stuff.
Photos from left to right
fairy penguins at Perth Zoo
Tasha in the 'rainforest' at Perth Zoo
The elephant creating another masterpiece
up close with a rhino
the kids at the entrance gates of the Colgan homestead