The End of the Road - or Almost!

After nearly 10,000 miles of trouble free motoring around Australia, our car gave up the ghost just 70 miles from our final destination of Perth!  

But less of our recent woes and back a week or so.   We spent a couple of days at Mandurah, just south of Perth, visiting Ellen's aunt and uncle, who had a couple of other short notice visitors, Ellen's parents.

Having advertised the car in Perth and received lots of interest, we decided to delay the sale until a few days before our flight out and make use of our last week with a tour of the SW corner of Australia.  The Cape Naturaliste and Margaret River area offered more lovely coastline, but surprised us with it's gentle rolling farmland and green vineyards. 

After rounding the most south westerly point in Australia, we enjoyed a couple of days in the karri forests near Pemberton, home to these very tall trees, plus some pretty parrots and lorikeets.   Francesca was most put out that she couldn't join us in climbing the 200' spiral ladder to the top of one of the trees.

 

Enroute back to Perth we visited Ellen's cousin in Bunbury and took the girls to see the local dolphins.   This far south, the water was bitterly cold and Francesca emerged shivering after 5 minutes, whilst Liberty just about dipped her toes in.

Little did we know as we frolicked in the ocean that the car had but a few more miles left in her.   It being a Saturday afternoon, we had little hope of finding a mechanic, but we were lucky to find ourselves near Mandurah again and spent the weekend with Ellen's relatives.  Our breakdown cover was a godsend but some telephone enquiries soon revealed the worst and the car was towed to a wrecker on the Monday morning, with a blown head gasket.

We finally got to Perth in a hire car and spent our last couple of days in Australia visiting friends and relatives and seeing a little bit of the city.  We flew out last Friday for 10 days in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, before returning to the UK next Sunday.