Our time in WA is nearly over, we're back in Perth after our road trip up North. We spent a lovely couple of days with Sean's Aunt Kathleen and cousin Nicola and their friends Rose and Derek last weekend visiting botanical gardens, kings park and then dinner at Hilary's harbour. On Sunday we drove up the coast. The towns along the way are all very small, but they're guaranteed to have a tavern full of locals and the odd road train passing through!

We spent the first night in Cervantes and went to see the pinnacles desert at sunset. From there we drove up to Geraldton, a bigger town where we flew a kite on the beach at sunset and, inspired by the film crakerjack, spent an afternoon playing bowls next to the old ladies (maybe we're getting old but it was really good fun!). We stayed in an old hospital in Geraldton and then in a former convent in Northampton, both were pretty spooky, we didn't sleep that well!

From Northampton we drove to the Hutt River Province to meet Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley. In the 1970s, builder Len Casley discovered that he could create his own province and not pay Oz taxes, the government quickly changed that law but he still has his own country in the middle of Australia. They were such a sweet old couple, telling us about their visits to the vatican, and how they'd declared war on Oz for 2 days and then called it off so the UN had to recognise them as a nation undefeated in war, crazy!

After that we went to Kalbarri. We didn't really know what we wanted to do so we went to the visitors centre to get a cheap hostel but as the kids are all on holiday we came out with a hotel room and a horse ride booked for the next morning, random. We rode from the ranch to the Murchison River, I had a lovely horse called Paddy, we trotted and cantered, it was great. Sean was on Mr Edd, a big horse, 2nd in command in the horse mafia apparently. He wasn't really interested in listening to Sean, especially when it was time to go faster, but they had fun anyway!

The next day we drove through the Kalbarri national park to see the big gorges made out of streaky bacon rocks. It was very hot and the bush flies were out in force but the scenery was amazing. That night we stayed in Denham and drove from there to Monkey Mia where we rented a glass bottomed boat. We saw a little shark and a squid, we also beached the boat on a sand bank and were half an hour late getting it back! We managed to fit in more bowls and some mini golf in Denham before heading back down to Perth with a couple more stops in little towns along the way and another night in Geraldton...On Wednesday we fly to Singapore for the last part of our trip. Keep in touch, love Vicky xx