We arrived in Perth very early Wednesday morning and even though the flight was empty and we had 4 seats each to ourselves we didnt get too much sleep so were pretty jet lagged!! We were greeted at the airport by Jacks Cousins, Georgia and Emily and his Uncle Jeremy which was fab as we havnt seen them since Tom and Ninas wedding! (Unfortunately we wont get to see Annie as she is studying 6 hours away!)

Their house is in Kalamunda which is about a 30 min drive East of Perth city. It's right up in the hills so the views of the city are pretty good! On our first day the girls took us for a sightseeing drive down to Georgias university, then into the city centre to Kings Park which has some great views of the whole city and Swan river where if you are lucky you can see Dolphins! (But we didnt!). We then drove (in our blue 'Dori' hire car i might add!) to Cotesloe beach which was just fantastic! Its the Indian Ocean in WA and as the weather has been so great the water was just beautiful! During the evening the girls mum Allyson kindly came over to the house and made us the most fantastic meal of thai green curry and noodle salad. This was the first time Sophie had met her and she really was very welcoming and just like the girls!

On our second day we decided to take a road trip down south WA and booked a small motel for 2 nights for us and the 2 girls. We drove about 3 hours south down the ocean road to a small beach town called Dunsborough. Its a very pretty town where everyone from Perth comes to during the holidays but as its Autumn over here its pretty empty! The following day we took a drive around the beaches in Dunsborough - Bunkers Bay, Piquet Point and Meelup. We can honestly say we didnt expect the beaches to be so stunning! Its like being in the Carribean! The water is aqua and the sand is white! Meelup was our favoruite so we stopped here for a few hours in the 75 degree heat (which the girls thought was cold!) and did some rock climbing! (Lu we hear you got stuck on the rocks when the tide came in here!). We then drove down the road about 10 minutes to a town called Yallingup where the beaches were just as stunning but were surf beaches so the waves were fantastic! Jack claimed 'Smiths beach' as his own of course!

After our beach crawl we drove about 25 mins further down to the famous wine region 'Margaret River'. Lots of vineyards and the town is quaint with lots of nic nac shops (Lu we found your bead shop but it had closed 2 mins before we got to it!!). We got our first gimpse of Kangaroos on our drive back which was pretty funny to see! On the way back we stopped at Yallingup beach to watch the sunset which was stunning but literally went down within a minute!

One interesting thing we have found out is that many restaurants are BYO (bring your own) so you pay $2 and you can take as much alcohol as you want into the restaurant with you! We think the UK should take note of this!

We are driving back to Perth today and tonight we are heading to the city and casino for a night on the town with George! Should be interesting! Tomorrow we are off to markets at a hippy town called Fremantle and Jack is playing golf with Jeremy in the morning to have some 'boy time' after being with 3 girls for so long! We are very lucky to have had such amazing weather here and understand what people mean when they say Western Australia is a hidden gem. We leave for Brisbane on Monday and i think we will be very sad to leave the Goodhews!