On the road.....to Augusta & back!

It has been fab to have a bit of freedom and space to ourselves this week....we hired a car (on impulse), and left for South West Australia! We drove to Albany and explored the beaches....including seeing a flock of Pelicans up close and flying above us, and having a snake crawl over my foot while walking on the cliffs!!!!! A small black one.....i didn't hang around to get a better look! The sand was as white as you can imagine, and squeaked much like silicon! We saw the 'Gap' and the 'Bridge' - two well sold cliff sites that mark where Australia used to be joined to Antartica many years ago as part of the great continent! We even saw two kangeroos in the road....what looked like a mother and joey!!! In honour of Ali, Christine and Christina we drove through the Valley of the Giants (huge million year old trees), and walked the tree top walk - we were up in the canopy, 40m and more above the ground! And, especially for Ros, we stopped to look at (and photograph) some llamas!!! Our drive took us onwards to Augusta (and yes, in true blonde fashion i did think Mark wanted to go there for the golf course - to start with!!!!), but no, Augusta, AUSTRALIA - is the most southerly tip of the country, and where the Indian and the Southern Oceans meet - you can almost see the different currents (if you look very very hard!!!). We also spent some time underground at Jewel Caves - deep underground, about level with the water table!! The caves are full of staligmites (might reach the ceiling)and staligtites (have to hold on tight), of all sorts of shapes and sizes! While we were on our tour of the caves....the guide wanted to point out a particular staligtite.....he asked the group..."what do English people have for breakfast?" Mark was keen to join in, so answered "cereal"!!!!! hehehehehe, the answer he was actually after was bacon, as this particular formation looked like a bacon rasher, but it was a very good effort!!!!!! ;-)