Our 2 weeks at Monkey Mia were coming to an end and relucantly we said our goodbyes and headed off in George (camper) back towards Perth stopping off whenever anything interesting caught our attention. The first stop was a view point over a bay where a group of sharks were swimming, you could see their fins sticking out of the water. The area is called Shark Bay afterall and didnt dissapoint. Next we stopped off to see Shell Beach which as the name suggests, it's a beach made of shells, lots and lots of tiny creamy white shells up to 10 meters deep.....lots of shells! It looked beautiful with the blue sea gently licking on the shore. After Shell Beach we stopped off at the Stromatolites which are believed to be one of the oldest organisms living on earth. It was getting hot and there were lots of flies buzzing about so we "stepped to it" with a fast pace and whizzed around the viewing platform quickly looking at odd rock like formations and then back to George.

Back on the road we continued south towards Kalbarri and past miles of burnt bush from the previous summers bush fires. That fire must have been big. Kalbarri is a small sleepy town on the coast south of Monkey Mia. We walked along a sea cliff (Red Bluff) path complete with lots of information of early explorers, whilst admiring the view of red and gold cliffs with big waves beating down below us we noticed a puff of what looked liked steam coming off the water in a spirt about a mile out to see. This turned out to be 3 whales!! We couldnt really see much as they were so far away but we could make out the spurts of water from their blow holes every now and then. We carried on along the coast and saw 3 large pods of dolphins some of which were surfing the waves. "Awesome!". The next highlight was a pink lake! It really was pink, flourecent pink. After rubbing our eyes several times and deciding it really was pink we set about trying to find out why it was pink. The answer courtesy of a lovely little village shop who do great sarnis and a book exchange was that it is full of an algea that is farmed to make orange food colouring (beta-carotene).

The following day our journey back towards Perth took us to the Pinnicles. The pinnicles are odd yellow piller like stone formations in a yellow dessert, 1 theory on how they have been formed is that they are fossilized trees. It really was odd and eerie especially wandering and driving around them when no one was around.

Much of our drive in George had been very relaxed and "steady away" this was untill we left the pinnicles and were desperate to find a place to park for the night before the sun set as we were not insured to drive after sunset. On this particular stretch of road we started to see kangeroos, not the usual road kill roos but real, live, hopping about and looking at us roos. "I don't like it but i do!" I exclaimed with excitment. This was becuase I was very excited to see my first live wild roos but they are known to have an attraction for the bonnet of moving vehicles leaving both the van and the roo in a bad shape after. Who knew roos could go so fast?? After a few minor scares of roos hoping towards us and then changing direction close by along with "Watch out on your right!" or "There's are a couple on the left" we were through the gauntlet and parked up at a campsite of the most grumpiest camp site owner ever (and i thought some of the came site owners in Scotland were grouchy!).

The next day my love for penguins and Andrew's curiosity led us past Perth to Penguin Island. Penguin Island is supposed to be inhabited with little penguins. As we walked around the island we got harassed by lots of noisey seagulls protecting their nests all over the island but didn't see any wild penguins :(. The information building housed some little penguins and although they were incredibly sweet looking and very small we felt like we had been " Asia-ed" and undersold on a trip. We then found out that human visitors were very unlikely to see any of the islands wild penguins as they spend most of the day out at sea fishing and then come back to the dense bush at night when the island has closed. Hmmmm...

Our last night in George was here and we were determined not to pay for camping so we drove around for nearly an hour to find a good secluded spot in an attempt to avoid being fined. We ended up in the industrial end of Fremantle and parked up on a lane surrounded by factories. As we had been moving south over the last few days it had gradually been getting colder and colder untill now at dusk 900km south of Monkey Mia we had most of our clothes on and still felt cold. We quickly cooked our dinner and fully clothed went to bed. It was freezing and also our location put us both on edge most of the night so when dawn came we moved the van next to a beach and had beans on toast for breako whilst watching some Gallahs frollicking about, making lots of noise and looking silly trying to land on things that they are not that agile to land on.

After washing george and handing him back to Wicked Camper vans we headed into Perth for a place to stay for the night. As most of you know i'm a bit of a "Monica" preferring to book hostels on the web so at least you can compare prices, see reviews and not have to wander around in a place you don't know with your heavy back packs trying to find some where to stay. Unfortunately internet had been scarce and Andy had talked me into " Don't worry we'll just turn up, it will be fine". We had a few hostels on our list but when we got there they were charging extra due to some student games happening in a few days time. At about £20-22 a night for a dorm bed it seemed very expensive to us especially as we had been paying £3-5 a night in Asia. So my inner "Monica" comes to my thoughts "if we had booked this online a few days ago they would have not been able to charge us extra and oh great now we have to wander around trying to find some where to stay". So after trying more hostels with no room or expensive rates we decided that we would just have to bite the bullet and pick one. We chose Bam-bu which had very nice wooden interior with lots of carvings and rustic furniture that had obviously taken some one a long time to carve. When we were shown our dorm we found peoples belongings all over and at first it wasn't clear what beds were free. We sat on our beds in shock of the state of the room and then noticed a used condom on the floor.... nice! I had noticed the "no refunds" at the counter and so re-assured myself it was for only 1 night. The room made us feel dirty and was worse then the really basic hostels we had stayed at in Asia. We locked our belongings away and headed off into Perth city centre for a walkabout to get away from the room. It was then the power of the Australian dollar was sent home to us loud and clear when we realised a copy of the Big Issue was over £3 and a bar of chocolate was nearly £2. We needed to get jobs if we wanted to do and see Australia properly. For dinner that evening we had Kangaroo sausages which I can highly recommend. Later that night back in our room the "litter" had been removed and we were joined in our room by very broad loud Irish men and hence we didn't get much sleep that night either although I did enjoy trying to work out what they were saying in their strong accents. The next morning we left as quick as we could for our flight to Cairns.