Rab & Lesley's Big Trip

Days 94 - 98 - Perth to Albany

Day 94 - 3rd March 2016
Perth

Our Aussie cousins took us on a tour of the Swan Valley visiting wineries, breweries, distilleries, chocolate and cheese producers.
But we started with a visit to All Saints Church claimed to be the oldest in Western Australia

Then the serious business of tasting - Cane sugar rum

At the top of the valley you get a distant view of Perth

And before we returned to their house we had a few minutes on Burns Beach just before sunset

Day 95 - 4th March 2016
Fremantle

We will depart Australia from here in two weeks time but paid a visit today so that our hosts could check out where they need to drop us off in the port.

There was a yacht race on when we arrived

Lots of old buildings

And converted trams

Day 96 - 5th March 2016
The Wheatbelt

Cousins kindly loaned us one of their cars so we are traveling again but in the wheat belt with limited mobile signal (and internet). We were heading for Southern Cross where our daughter worked for 3 months while she was backpacking around Australia 7 years ago.

Stopped for lunch in Merredin where we saw this old signal box

Lodgings for the night was a cottage on a farm
Our porch:

Water supply:

Sitting room:

Dining room:

Bedroom:

Indoor loo complete with reading material

Entertainment centre:

Garden furniture:

And our neighbours...

Day 97 - 6th March 2016
Wave Rock

Early start at the farm with an early morning call from our neighbours

Went for a walk before breakfast and found a lot of retired farm vehicles

and a parrot I hadn't seen before - a Ringneck type decked out in Jamaican colours.

The locals call them 28s and they are are very shy taking flight as soon as you look at them

After breakfast our host took us on a brief tour to see some of the farm workings and machinery It is a wheat farm and these are the grain silos

The pink and whites took the tour too. This was only about a quarter of the flock that followed us around.

We finally made our farewells and drove down miles of dirt road

to Southern Cross where we had lunch in the hotel where our daughter used to work

And then down more dirt roads to Wave Rock at Hyden where we are tonight (with no internet)

Day 98 - 7th March 2016
Albany

Leaving Hyden this morning we passed an art exhibit that depicted the towns history in scrap metal

On the drive south we passed a number of salt lakes, this was the largest

Finally arrived in Albany on the south coast where the Australian and NZ forces mustered before shipping out to Gallipoli
It is not a large town but retains a lot of its original architecture