We've made it to Perth, yay! Over 9,000kms later and after 57 days on the road, we've bought Brucey home to his final destination.

After our last night at Cosy Corner beach, we decided to head around the bay slightly to Shelleys Beach (well we had to given the name!) and just like its name-sake, it was beautiful! (It's Alex here by the way!) We stayed there all morning enjoying some rare sunshine, until the cloud and rain inevitably found us and we knew it was time to hit the road again. We made our way to Denmark and were on route to a bush-camp at Parrys Beach, when we decided to stop in at the Forest Hill vineyard for some "cool climate" wine tasting and a run in with a huge kangaroo! We propped up the cellar door for about two and a half hours and til way past their closing time, talking to our host Adam about travelling the world and "lingering berry tannins on the back of the throat" (or something like that!)

On our way to Parrys Beach bushcamp we had passed a few places that we were tempted by and Adam had also recommended a winery to us, so the following morning, we headed back into Denmark to visit the Harewood Estate winery (well-regarded by James Halliday, an Oz wine writer), a cheese factory, a meadery and a cider farm. Chelle was in her element surrounded by all things Cornish and got even more excited when she found out that the owners of the meadery were also Cornish. In her excitement at the meadery, she failed to notice that one of the honey bees had latched onto her neck, until we reached the cider farm! No harm done luckily! After lunch we drove onto the Valley of the Giants, our first encounter with WA's huge Karri and Tingle trees. These are truly ginormous and the conservation park have built a tree-top walk 40 metres up, so that you can walk around literally in the top of the trees. There's also a ground walk that's great for hide and seek - the hollows in the trees put Leicester's Bradgate Park to shame!

After a scary night at Fernhook Falls bush-camp (we were the only ones there in the middle of a huge forest), we made our way over to Pemberton - home to two giant karri trees that are used as fire lookouts and that you can climb! The first one we went to was the Gloucester Tree, with a 65 metre climb up spikes that have literally been nailed into the tree (as one guy put it who'd just been up, it's one of the few things you can do these days without supervision, where one wrong foot leads to inevitable death or serious injury!) Chelle made it quite far up before her vertigo kicked in and after a stern "man-up" talking to half-way up, I made it to the top! We then did the even taller (75 metres) Bicentennial Tree, which is so tall, it has a platform about a third of the way up so that you can have a breather. Staggeringly, Chelle made it up to this point with me, before letting me go it alone to get to the top. It was hard to capture the height in the photos, which when coupled with the knowledge that there is literally one piece of bendy steel between you and certain death, explains the other thing I couldn't capture - how much I was shaking! You will be able to see in the photos however Brucey and some very small people at the bottom of the tree if you look hard enough! We then drove on into the Margaret River region to Alexandra's Bridge - our bush-camp for the night.

Sunday was a chance for us to take in our first encounter with the Indian Ocean (we both reckon our first ever encounter with this vast sea). Our first stop was Redgate Beach, with huge swells that come crashing in on small rock outcrops, funnelled into worn crevaces creating booming explosions that sends seawater tens of metres into the air (Chelle's just commented that she thinks I'm reading too many Wilbur Smith books!). We then carried on up to Grunters where there were a few surfers out, but it all looked a bit too hardcore for us (one guy had a professional looking photographer with him taking photos of him surfing from the beach with a massive zoom lense), so after a brief encounter with a huge lizard we spent the rest of the day just sunbathing before heading to Conto's Beach bush-camp.

On Monday we carried on with our tour of the Margaret River beaches and ended up spending the day at Smiths Beach outside Yallingup. Again the waves were a little ferocious for us, but Chelle braved the surf for a bit, wiping out very impressively at one point! After the beach, we visited a few of the choice wineries. As there are about 80 vineyards in the region, we narrowed down our choice to medal winners on a specific route to our campsite for the night - a rest area on the main highway! (This still meant we visited 5 wineries!)

The following day was spent at Bunker Bay, on the north coast of the region (part of Geographe Bay). There was no surf on this beautiful sheltered beach, but some excited fishermen running up and down the shore chasing a shoal of fish kept us entertained! We spent our final night in the region at a campsite in Yallingup.

On Wednesday we travelled around the rest of Geographe Bay, visiting Meelup Beach, Bussleton (with its 2km long jetty) and Bunbury, along with a final cheeky wine tasting on route! We then headed to Belvidere bushcamp for our final night in the van. Signs into the campsite had warned us that mosquitos in the area carry the "Ross River" virus and as we had no idea how this virus manifests itself, we decided not to find out and went into "van lock-down" - a VanCon status reserved for such emergencies!

On Thursday we drove the final 180kms up to Perth and scouted out all the city beaches, ending up at Brighton Beach, where Chelle had another dramatic wave-dumping surf incident (she's getting a bit too brave for her own good!) We then checked into our hostel in Perth before dropping Brucey off at the rental depot at the airport with a tearful goodbye. Luckily we managed to share a taxi back to the city with a lovely English couple as we're getting a bit short on cash (very short in fact - that night I reflected on how in a few months, we'd gone from being homeowners with decent jobs to lying in a bunkbed in a hostel with only $15, or about 9 pounds, cash to our name!)