BoomerGirl Diary

They say you don’t have a second chance to make a good first impression. Our travels in Australia start with a bit of inconvenience that make us have a near sleepless first night in Perth.

Our flight across Australia to the southwest corner of the country was much later in the day than we had originally planned. We were to arrive in Perth for a one-night stay and then leave on a multiple day tour of Western Australia very early the next day. It was one of those situations where you do not want to think about how much you are paying for a few hours in a hotel room.

Happily, our late flight was on time and our luggage popped up on the carousel quickly. Great, we thought, we would be in our room and asleep in no time. The promised shuttle to the hotel was not to be found, though, and after tracking down our tour company on the phone, we are told that arrangements had been made for us to take the airport city shuttle. Who knows what was going wrong in that shuttle driver’s life, but he tells us that his company no longer does business with our tour company since they don’t pay their bills. We come up with the cash to get on the shuttle, and after much delay, we begin a long slow trip into town.

Upon arriving at our hotel, we are given a smoking room and a long list of excuses why this cannot be changed to a non-smoking room. Maybe it is just our imagination, but we find it difficult to sleep in the nicotine-soaked room; it just makes us jittery as well as stinky. Also disturbing our sleep is the worry that we have perhaps signed up for a long tour with a bad tour company, and that this may be the start of a week of cramped, smelly hotel rooms.

The next day dawns, and everything gets better. We are refunded the cost of the shuttle. The tour company personnel are friendly and professional, and the buses are very comfortable. We head out to explore the farmlands south of Perth and to visit what are advertised as amazing old growth forests.

Our first stop is at the town of Donnybrook, which is famous for being the birthplace of the Granny Smith apple. Known as “apple town,” Donnybrook is in an area that produces a wide variety of fruit, including oranges, pears, nectarines, and of course, apples.

After a drive through the farmlands of the Blackwood River Valley, we arrive at the Diamond Tree Lookout Tower. This is one of the three towering trees in the district once used as bush fire watchtowers. Now these giant trees are mainly used as tourist attractions. There is a stairway that consists of iron bars hammered into the tree’s trunk spiraling up to the top of the tree, where we can see a very small lookout hut has been built on a platform. A couple of the most adventurous folks on our tour make the climb, but we are happy to just sit in the shade and enjoy a box lunch.

Traveling on, we are taken to the Valley of the Giants, which is an old growth karri tree forest. Here we take the Tree Top Walk, a 400-yard elevated walkway constructed through the tree canopy that reaches 125 feet above ground. I had been looking forward to being face-to-face with canopy-top birds, but found out that the purpose of this walkway is mainly to protect the trees from damage due to soil compaction caused by the thousands of tourist feet walking through this area. Birds were few and far between, but the trees were impressively big. Some trees in this forest have trunks over 15 feet in circumference. We then take a quick tour of Mammoth Cave, which is named for its size, not because of any pre-historic occupants.

We spend a much more comfortable night in a lakeside lodge in Karri Valley where we enjoy a foggy lake view and the arrival of parrots on our balcony. Last evening and this morning we see kangaroos and emus along the road, and we really begin to realize that we are in Australia after all.

Our bus takes us to Australia’s most southwesterly point, and we visit Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, where the Indian and Great Southern Oceans meet. Surfers Point is our next stop. Well known to serious surfers, this beach is unusual in that there is a hidden reef projecting out perpendicular to the shore that causes waves to come in at a both a left and a right angle to the beach. Woe to the surfer that ends up in the area where the wave action is colliding against itself!

Our final beach attraction to visit in this area is the Busselton Jetty, which is said to be the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. We spend the night in a beachside resort on Geographe Bay in Busselton where we get a chance to do a bit of wading in the surf. We are excited to spot a large stingray slowly swimming by in the shallow water just a few feet from our feet.

The next morning, we are back on the road to the Xanadu Winery for a rather early wine tasting. Then we weave our way to the Eagles Heritage Raptor Center to see a Steve Irwin-type fellow show us the flying skills of the indigenous raptor, the whistling kite. The literature on this center claims that it houses the largest collection of raptors in Australia, which is surprising since there only seems to be two or three on view.

Maybe a longer stay would have revealed more, but as we are finding out, Australia is a large country and it is a long drive between attractions. Most of our time on this tour is to be spent on the bus. Our final stop for the day is at the Yallingup Shearing Shed, where we see a demonstration of sheep herding and sheering. We are surprised to learn that not only is there the familiar type of herding dog that rounds up the sheep and brings them to the shearing shed, but that there is another type of herding dog that jumps up and walks on the backs of the sheep to keep them moving through the sorting chutes. The very entertaining herdsman giving the demonstration explains that while sheep are afraid of dogs, they are not afraid of people, making it a big chore for the herdsman to get the sheep to continue on through the fenced passageways that separate and sort the sheep into small paddocks. With the threat of a dog on their backs, the sheep keep a moving at a much better pace.

We enjoy the jokes this fellow tells as he quickly removes the wool from a sheep in one big piece. All modern improvements aside, this looks like back-breaking work.

Back on the bus again, we will now explore the area north of Perth ...