G'day Mate!

We're in Fremantle at the moment, a port city just outside of Perth, trying to stay dry as it is a bit showery this afternoon. However, we don't mind this too much as it is the first rain we have encountered since leaving home!

Perth is a nice city, and we enjoyed exploring it on our first day here. We wandered around the city for a while and then headed up to King's Park for the afternoon. The park is on the edge of the CBD and overlooks the city and the Swan River. It really was beautiful. We had a picnic lunch (we've decided we have to start living cheaply and have had supermarket meals rather than restaurant meals here), then spent the afternoon walking around the park on the bushland trails. We estimate that we walked 10km that day but we really enjoyed it! The weather was sunny and about 20degrees so that helped too!

Yesterday, we had exceptionally good weather, hot with clear blue skies all day, which was lucky as we headed fopr Rottnest Island just off the coast. Rottnest was stunning, it is barely inhabited, just some holiday cottages grouped into a settlement (which you have to enter a lottery to stay in them over their summer holiday!), and the rest of the island is just bush, beaches and cycle paths. We hired bikes for the afternoon and then set off to find our own private beach...which was easy! We lunched and Jo paddled in the Indian Ocean, before cycling around the rest of the island. We really enjoyed this, although Jo was a little scared on her bike at first as it's several years since she last cycled! Oh, also Jo felt very seasick on the crossing over to the island...which David found hilarious because he is mean.

Today we decided to walk to Fremantle from our hostel in Cottesloe Beach. The walk was about 10km and we were very pleased with ourselves, especially after all the activity of the past two days. Unfortunately, when we set out from Cottesloe in our shorts and t-shirts the weather was lovely, but we were a little wet by the time we made it to Fremantle as the rain came in off the sea!

We kind of like where we are staying, it is right on the beachfront and convenient for getting to both Perth and Fremantle, but it is very hostel-ly. We have had ants in our room, we spotted a cockroach in the kitchen, the hot water broke yesterday, and the room gets freezing at night! But it has cost about 9 quid a night so it's fine!

It's really good to be in Australia and we have some brilliant pictures of Perth, hope you like them too. 

And so for now...Goodbye! We'll write again from Cairns.

Much love, Joanne and Dave xxxxxxxx