South West Australia!

Sorry for the silence... we've not had much internet access recently!

Two weeks ago we headed from Exmouth down to Bunbury(a small town a couple of hours south of Perth). Bunbury was very cute, we visited the dolphin discovery centre...twice, in the hope of seeing dolphins, unfortunately we had no luck again!! From Bunbury we hired a car from a local company, the guy we hired from was lovely and very concerned about our safety, he gave us a lovely lecture about how tiredness is the biggest killer! A sweet man really who also threw in a sat nav for free!(obviously we can't be trusted to read a map). When he turned up with the car (we had no idea what car it was as I'd never heard of the make) it was huge! and I mean huge! how do people park long cars??? The car was automatic too and we had to drop the guy back to his house and the first question Tiff asked was... "so I've never driven an automatic before what do I do?" So Tiff ended up with a quick lesson from him!
We hit the road with Cameron(the car!) and headed to Walpole, a tiny town in the southern forests. This forest is made up of giant trees, you've never seen anything like it, the trees can grow to 80-90m! Part of the forest is called the Valley of the Giants and there is a tree top walk which sways slightly in the wind! But was very cool walking among the trees. We then took a scenic drive which took us via the Giant Tingle Tree which you can walk through and Circular Pool- a very calm beautiful pool that slowly moves in a circle! We ended up at mount Frankland and climbed to the summit, the views from the top were amazing and amazingly it was the only place Tiff got any mobile signal! That evening we joined the locals down at the leisure centre for the Zumba class! lots of fun!
Next day we headed to Denmark, on the way we stopped at a few sights, our favourite being Greens pool and Elephant Rocks(check out Iggle Piggle's page to see just how beautiful these were!) Before heading to the YHA we went to Mount Lindesay, we were thinking it would be a good idea to climb to the summit until we got there and realised it was a 4hour walk and it was already 3pm, considering it gets dark around 6.30pm we changed our minds and just had a short wander up the mountain in the hope of a good lookout, unfortunately there were too many trees in the way. We decided to turn back when we saw a snake trail on the path and both got a little freaked out!
For our first full day in Denmark we hired bikes from the hostel (Tiff's brakes were definitely questionable...) and biked down to the beach and then along the coast up and down a lot of long steady climbs....it was really hot and there was loads of flies - i'm just impressed we made it back without any accidents!!! (Lizzy is impressed she survived the ordeal!). In the evening Tiff went for a run by the river and came into close encounter with a huuuuuge lizard thing...thankfully it wasn't a spider and I did manage a graceful leap just in time to avoid collision! The following day was Saturday and we decided we deserved a rest day so headed to the cheese factory, where we happily trialled the testers and then went to a winery for some samples!  Driving home, a little carefully, we settled by the river to make the most of our fresh cheese and bread from the local bakery :)  That evening, the heavens opened and were still going as we headed to church on sunday - a really cute local Baptist church, everyone was so friendly and welcoming.
Our next stop was Pemberton, the YHA turned out to be cottages with fires ready to go which was useful as the rain was still going and it was pretty chilly! We settled there for the afternoon for the rugby and Tiff discovered that there are lots of different freddos over here...exciting times!! 
So remember those tall trees we talked about earlier....well our next challenge was to climb one! The one we chose was 61m and the only way i can describe it is that it has metal spokes coming out of the tree and a kind of net which definitely would not hold if you fell (picture to follow!). With jelly legs, we made it to the top - feeling very proud of ourselves - and the view was spectacular! Coming down, required a bit more coaxing, which we supplied with cheesy singing....you'll be glad to hear we made it safely to the bottom! From here we did another scenic drive stopping along the way - this included a swinging bridge which really did swing and Tiff wasn't so fond of! Our last stop of the South West was Augusta where we went along to Cape Leuuwin - where the Southern and Indian Oceans collide (We think we could just about make it out!). Our final day we drove up the coast via some beautiful beaches and did some whale watching before heading back to Bunbury to give the car back and catch the train back to Perth.