Kalbarri and back to Melbourne

Kalbari
Early on the road and there are lots of goats nibbling the roadside verges, the best thing is to blast your horn as soon as you see them ,because if they run in front of you they can do a lot of damage to the car.
On the way to Kalbarri we stop at a couple of viewpoints to see the Murchison River gorges, beautifull, but the flys are a real nuisance, we did see an eagle fly over the road in front of us with a 3 foot snake hanging from its talons,
The bush fires are all out, though in one area we drove through, several kilometres of bush were burnt and blackened by fire.

Back to Perth
last leg of our trip bringing us back to Perth.We arrive in the suburbs mid afternoon the traffic is horrendous, after driving on virtually empty roads for the last fortnight its a bit of a shock, still our reliable sat nav gets us there in the end. We have been surprised at the big variation in petrol prices the cheapest was just outside Perth at $1.19 and most expensive in Exmouth at $1.59. The odometre reads that we have covered 4,700 kilometres in the last 15 days – we were on unlimited mileage

Tiger Airways flies on time
Arrive at the airport after a 15 minute drive from the hotel, drop of the hire car, and YES, the flight is on time ,no delays, we were a bit worried after our 5 hour delayed flight out to Perth.
Today is the coolest day since we left Melbourne, the temperatures have been in the low forties by mid morning most days, so its a good job we had A/C in the car,
On The Plane---Pilot Announcement---
Melbourne airport is closed due to thunderstorms,we are on hold for 45 minutes then divert to Canberra to refuel, finally arrive in storm battered Melbourne at 19:30 in the evening, and arrive at Emmas around 10 :30 at night. And hear there has been lots of storm damage throughout Melbourne.

Thank goodness for the sat nav

We hav just been for a four day trip to the Geelong area, with our granddaughter, this is the surfcoast with loads of kite surfing, wind surfing and other water sports, the prevailing wind on this coast almost guarentees good sport to the surfies.. as for us we enjoyed exploring the area, we had a great guided walk around Geelong botanical gardens where the guide pointed out and gave us the history of a lot of the trees, some over 150 years old, there were a row of fan palms, the same as we have in Spain and apparently there is a big debate as to whether to trim the dead leaves of the trunks, hence they have these 20 foot palms with the dead fronds all the way up them. They look terrible.
To get to the Geelong Area we had to go through Melbourne, theres no way without the satnav.... The freeways close to Melbourne are 4 and 5 lanes wide and most of the day are continous heavy traffic with some massive trucks which power along at the maximum speed for the road.

Arrival in Australia

The flight from Gatwick had very few people on board,so was very relaxed, excellent attention from the cabin attendants, arrived at Doha and because we had a five hour wait for our ongoing flight we were given meal vouchers, Mary had chips and samosas i had a curry and rice then we sat it out at this massive airport, the flight was delayed for 40 minutes waiting for the Manchester flight to come in for connecting flights then we set off on this ultra modern Boeing 777-200 with every seat taken, and arrived in Melbourne well on time, It took 30 minutes from landing to be get our luggage and clear customs, so arrived at Emmas around midnight. As we walked up the path to the house there was the possum that lives in our daughters garden sitting watching us no more than 8 foot away. The grandchildren woke up and we had an hour with them before bed.
Slept well,In the cabin that Emma and Warwick have furnished for us to use, Awkke to riotous dawn chorus the bird life is incredible here, after breakfast, a walk to “the Bakery” in Warrendyte for Coffee and muffins , We have had heavy rain showers on and off for most of the day and through last night and its still raining, but it is very warm, almost tropical,in the middle of the night some thing quite large jumped out of the trees onto the cabin roof and walked along it sounded like an elephant to me, but Mary reckons it was a possum!