The Pinnacles desert near Cervantes

Here we are at the beginning of our journey through Western Australia.

To put you in the picture - the Pinnacles is a small desert area near the town of Cervantes, 120 km north of Perth.

It's an amazing place where there's only red sand, stone pillars and wind blowing into the sunset.

A definite 'must-do' for those of you who'll come up here one day.

 

Eva on holidays - Part 2 ...

Caught in the net

Walking on the 1 mile long jetty at Carnarvon

Shell Beach in the Shark Bay World Heritage Reserve. This beach is made entirely by the shells that accumulated over thousands of years there. They are so tiny that they look like sand in the picture.

The water is cristal clear, altough cold, and there are lots of medusas and fish right by the shore.




 

Ionut on holidays :)

Eh oui, I'm on holidays as well, altough you wouldn't think so looking at my face on this first picture.

But in my defense, it was almost 5 a.m. on a Saturday and we were waiting for our plane in Perth, so I guess it's understandable ;).

But life got better after that, I started enjoying the wildlife (or wild flowers more exactly) and discovered new and exciting beers in the western Australia like Little Creatures, Red Back, Swan and Emu !!!

And nothing better than drinking your beer while laying on a net in a catamaran that floats around looking for dolphins, dugongs or even sharks :) ... in the end we saw just dolphins, a bit of a rip-off really, but that's tourism industry for ya !!!

 

Eva in Australia - Part 1

Here's Eva in the Pinnacles desert near Cervantes and later proudly presenting our nice Toyota that has served us very well in these last 8 days.

Kangaroos - alive and jumping

After a long wait, here are some pictures of real, live kangaroos living free in the wild in the sunny North-Western Australia.

They are very curious animals, looking at the cars that drive around and as you see, they pose nicely for the photos :)

But this also proves to be their downfall - at sunset lots of kangaroos get hit by cars as they start to move around looking for food and pay no attention to the cars that pass on the highway.

Every morning you see lots of dead kangaroos by the side of the road being eaten by the crows and eagles.

Fremantle

Here we are, at the beginning of our adventures in Western Australia in a ... prison :)

This prison was built in mid 1800s to house the convicts sent from England to help build the town. It was operational until 1992.










































And here's Eva trying to run away with some poor fisherman's fish down at the harbour.

Here we go - Again :)

Ladies & Gentlemen, the discovery plane is rolling out of the station !!!

We have left Melbourne on cold Saturday morning @ 4:36 AM to boldly go to what we thought would be a summery destination, Perth.

Little did we know that Perth experiences its own kind of winter, altough milder than Melbourne :)

Anyway it's a great city, lots of flowers and animals all over the place, it's really great to chase after the birds that sing all around.

More to come, so stay tuned !!

Your fearless Australian explorers :)
 

World Cup Final @ the Turf Club

For those of you in Europe, you can't imagine what a tough time the World Cup has been for all of us here down under.

Waking up at crazy hours like 4 AM to watch the games and then going to work wasn't an easy proposition.

Let's just say that the world cup final came like a liberation for us and the fact that France against all the odds made it into the final was even bigger excitement.

So here we were, at 3 AM in the Turf Club, one of the few places in the centre that would stay open for the game.

Of course we could have gone to Lygon Street, which is the heart of the Italian community but I'm not sure it would have been very healthy for us ;).

We lived through the game and was heart warming to see the support of the australians for the French, but still it wasn't to be ...

So we ended a nice football adventure by going out into the cold morning at 7 AM, and thinking with relief that we would finally be able to get some sleep from now on ...

 

Skydiving !!!

Yeah !!! Skydiving !!! I have to admit that it is one of the more exciting thing I've done in my life so far :)

Together with Jin Ha & Sharon we went for this extraordinary adventure on an overcast Saturday morning.

Now for those of you who are not in the know, it works like this: we jump in a tandem together with an experienced parachute jumper. They have to have at least 1000 jumps before they can apply for this 'tandem' licence. When you jump you look a bit like the gentlemen in the first picture.

We jumped from 14,000 feet (4267 metres), the highest one can jump in a tandem in Australia and go in free fall for 60 seconds. Once you reach 5,000 feet the parachute opens and the you slowly descend back on earth.

From the moment we arrived there everything went really fast ... we got on our special jumpers and harnesses, did a bit of training on how to jump from the plane, and more importantly, how to land - You can see Jin Ha demonstrating the manouver, basically feet up @ 90 degrees and we slowly land on our bottom with the feet acting as brakes.

In the next picture you can see my tandem, a very knowledgeable guy, who explained me a lot of things about jumping as we were going up to the jump altitude. The jump moment is really awkard, because since I'm strapped in front of him i basically had to step out of the plane and hang from him while he was getting prepared. I think that was the moment when I actually realized what I was about to do. But too late ...

The jump was awesome, as we fell we turned on our backs to watch the plane going away ... a really unforgettable sight ... then we turn back, head down speeding towards earth at more than 200 km/h. The 60 seconds went by too quickly and all of a sudden the parachute opened with a sudden jolt as we were in the middle of the clouds.

The rest of the descent was nice, I was given a birds-eye view of the Nagambie lakes but couldn't compare with the thrill of the free fall.

Definitely something to try again !!! 

Animals in Mornington Peninsula

Here are some animals we've met in our travels throught the Mornington Peninsula.

Starting with the dog in the Morning Star Winery continuing with the albatros @ Mount Eliza beach and ending the huge cat and the dog at the Gunnamatta horse farm.

 

Horse Riding @ Gunnamatta Beach

Here we are, riding high in the Gunnamatta Beach area, in the Mornington Peninsula.

Great day for horse riding, not too hot, not too cold and the trail through the bush was a great view.

We were supposed to have a little gallop on the beach as well, but unfortunately the tide was too high, as you can see, and there wasn't enough space to run.

Everyone did really well, especially since it was their first time on a horse :) Well done guys !!

And I got talking with the instructor about the good places to ride over here, and I found out --- pay attention all you kangaroo lovers out there --- that teh Kangaroos are actually pretty mean creatures, that attack horses and people alike, punching, kicking or just plain jumping over you.

The horses are so afraid that when they see a Kangaroo they just run like mad.