Australian Adventure 2010 (continued)

Diary date: Tuesday 12th October

A very tired Lolli is writing this. The whale watching today was absolutely FAB! We caught train to our pick up point and found it easily enough. Even had time for a coffee before the transport arrived, then it was north along the coast to Hillary's for the boat. We had glorious views over the Indian ocean most of the way and finally arrived at Hillary's, where there was just a few million quid's worth of rather nice boats moored up in the marina. We had about half an hour to spare before our boat arrived, so we went for a drink in one of the cafés around the jetties. It was a Chocolateria and there were simply LOADS of different chocolate drinks available. I just went for an iced chocolate and Peter had a latte, as we are not very adventurous. There were also lots of delicious looking chocolates (think Thornton's Plus!) and chocolate desserts to eat, but with stoical restraint, as we are both watching our waistlines, (GROWING!!!) we managed not to succumb to temptation!

When the boat arrived there were very few passengers, which meant we could all get out onto the whale watching deck. We had been going about 20 minutes before the first one was sighted. It was not, however a very active whale and we mainly just saw its back a few times. Meanwhile, in the distance on the starboard side one of the other passengers had spotted a couple of much more active whales breaching and doing all sorts of acrobatics, so the crew took the boat over in that direction. It was much better and we saw several whales 'breach' (leap up out of the water and land on their backs). We stayed for ages trying to get photos. Unfortunately, I have forgotten how to do video on my camera and went to get my phone but that didn't seem to taking video either and I got loads of sky pictures, but very few whale ones!. Luckily Pete managed much better and he has got some fabulous footage of a whale breaching. There were 3 whales in the final pod we saw and Pete said it was much better than when he first went whale watching. It was wonderful to see such giants 'playing'

After a while we had to head back and it was a very reluctant party that did so. Back on shore, several of us has tickets to AQWA (Aquarium of Western Australia), so we headed over there. It was fantastic. An underwater tunnel with several varieties of sharks, rays and fish swimming above us and Loggerhead Turtles. We went round twice to capture the full experience, then went round the rest of the museum. They had divided it into various sections according to the latitude of the coastline and we found it very easy to navigate. There was also a section on which sea creatures to avoid. I must say, Australia does seem to have more than its fair share of deadly snakes, spiders and fish/marine life, but they are quite welcome to keep them all. There were also large exhibitions of native corals.

It was fascinating to discover so much about the secret life of the sea, and the experience was made much more interesting by one of the young guides who was so enthusiastic about it all and took pains to show Pete and I things we would otherwise have missed (like the tiny sting ray hiding under the sand) We spent about 2½ hours there all together, which didn't give us time to visit the cafe, but did give us enough time to view everything.