We had to be up early this morning as we were meeting up at 7am for today’s run to Rockingham and Mandurah. Our Caravan Park is about ½ hour away from the meeting point, so our alarms were set for 5am. It was still very dark and it was hard to wake up William. We were in the cars by 6.15am and luckily didn’t hit much traffic on the way.
We headed down to Rockingham via the coast road so we would avoid getting stuck on the highway with peak hour. We made it there by 9am where there was a lovely morning tea set up for us. We over indulged in scones with jam and cream in the park, which was right on the water. Just out from the mainland was Garden Island, which is a Naval base. There is no public access although there is a big road and bridge linking it to the mainland. You could see a few ships in dock there. We were back on the road at 10am and arrived at Mandurah after 11am. Our boat cruise was at 12pm and we were all on board well and truly beforehand. As we headed out of the canal a few bottlenose dolphins joined up with the boat and they swam with us for a little while; William liked this a lot – I’m surprised he didn’t think they were sharks.
We picked up lunch from a local fish and chip shop and enjoyed this while we cruised the Mandurah canals. We were taken through a rather expensive area which housed very large and extravagant houses. Once through all those we were shown the original settlement houses of the area which had a small cottage, a larger homestead and a farming shed. The land used to be where they ran their cattle. We headed out a bit further and were shown a few different bird species and the lovely sights. We sat on the top deck and it was rather cold with the breeze and over cast sky. We turned around and headed back to the jetty. It went for an hour and a half and was a nice relaxing trip. Once we got off we spoilt ourselves to an ice cream from the local ice cream shop before heading back to our cars. We then headed home. We got back to the Caravan Park just before 3:30pm, so was nice to enjoy a few hours off. The bays washed their cars, as we have a Show and Shine in the city tomorrow. The boys and Tamara headed off the Camberwell Park again tonight as they were having a book presentation. Kelley, Jean & the kids all stayed behind as it has been such a big day and they kids were exhausted.