The thing with the weather

Friday, October 19, 2018

Gianna has put on her 2 pairs of socks, the sweater, and the tracksuit pants and is now ready for the night! The temperatures are already dropping below 10 degrees at night 🤮, and Gianna is not exactly known for not being cold.

These temperatures don't seem to bother the Australian animals, and at least the sun visited us again while petting kangaroos 😃! Bravely, we distributed our food to sheep, emus, and kangaroos.

The sun stayed with us for a few hours, and we used that time to visit the Pinnacles! The petrified pillars were formed 50,000 years ago by plant roots. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambung_National_Park) Please read it yourself, I can't explain it well enough 😅. You can either drive a 4km loop by car or take a leisurely walk. These natural attractions or national parks cost 13 Australian dollars per car, so actually reasonable prices.

Afterwards, we made a stop in the small town of Lancelin. The sleepy nest doesn't offer much. Or at least not in this weather. Large white sand dunes line the way and lead to an outdoor playground for Australians. The Aussies drove up and down the white dunes in their inflated off-road vehicles, drew circles in the sand, and raced each other. I would have liked to join, but unfortunately, it's not possible with our camper van .😬 So I rented a quad bike and had some fun again! 😎

Since there isn't much to see further down towards Perth, we decided to keep going. We read that the southwest is also quite beautiful, and since we still had enough time, we were drawn there.

Currently, our mood is quite weather-dependent (accordingly 👎🏼👎🏼), and we have been looking for solutions to escape the bad weather. In the form of a shopping trip to Jondaloop, a district of Perth, we quickly found our bad weather program! Gianna went on a shopping spree and I waited patiently 😅. 

The seating benches and chairs where only men seem to gather everywhere in the mall are pretty cool, right? Huh? Don't men like to shop?

In any case, Miss Berger was very, very, very happy. It was the happiest day of the whole trip, she kept telling me. After all, there is even an Aldi in Australia! How exciting!!

I was also happy because I could write a little in peace. I started writing a story because I'm incredibly bored. When it's rainy and stormy outside, we're stuck in the camper van in the evenings. And just playing games all the time isn't really fulfilling, so I'm trying to package my literary musings into a story, making so much money as an author that I don't have to work anymore, and then I can travel around the world again 😜👍!

Giana seems to have understood that we can't go shopping every day, but sometimes when I look at my phone and open the map, the last search entry can be "Shopping Centre"!

In search of sun, we have now ended up in the wonderful southwest. We skipped Perth because we planned to visit the largest city in Western Australia on our way back.

Snow-white beaches with crystal-clear water, caves, wine and beer tastings await us here! We didn't think about the prevailing 15 degrees 🤨. It's a shame because the beaches look absolutely stunning in the sun.

Well, we're here now, and we wouldn't mind the weather that much if the last 2 weeks hadn't been cold and rainy. I found the saying on a matchbox quite provocative: "More snow falls in Australia than in the whole of Switzerland!" Ha ha ha 😠. We don't need snow right now! Gianna turns into a big ice block every day even without it.

But we don't let our mood be spoiled that quickly, we're on a trip after all! So the ice block and I planned a cave tour! 😉 There are about 4 accessible large limestone caves here, and we visited the Mammoth Cave. After a long time, we put on long pants and, above all, shoes and off we went! Usually, we only walk around in flip-flops.

We didn't mind that the cave was even colder (around 11 degrees), as it was very impressive to walk among all the stalagmites (that grow from the ground) and stalactites (that hang from above).

After an outstanding lunch (fish & chips and burgers) at one of the many breweries in Margaret River, we made our way to the coast. The place was called Canal Rocks, and we could watch the raging sea as it sent huge waves crashing against the rocks.

All of a sudden, a group of dolphins appeared, and I was able to watch them playing near the coast for at least 30 minutes. After the first 5 minutes, dear Tschanna lost interest and made a disgusted face. This is mainly due to her new knowledge about dolphins, as explained in the last blog 😜.