Summer holiday '09, part 1

Last Friday we flew out for our long awaited/planned/deserved holiday. First stop Perth.

This was the first time the boys had flows (a bit of a sad reflection on us) and they LOVED it. Callum was the first to discover that you could rock out to music with the inflight head phones and enthusiastically caught Rowan up-to-speed. With food and games to keep the kids quiet the 3 hour flight was quite enjoyable.

Coming into landing at Perth airport we hit a little turbulence. Rowan thought that this was fantastic and jokingly yelled out a few times "we're going to die! we're going to die!" While I saw the humor in it I could appreciate that there probably were some people that didn't so I quickly put a stop to his commentary.

After a brief catch up with Ewan's family, we left Perth on Saturday morning and headed up to Geraldton - about a 4 1/2 hour drive. The kids were exceptionally well behaved on the journey thanks to Nintendo, namely the kids DS's.

Arriving at the motel the kids each sorted out who was sleeping where and then grab their towels and went swimming at the motels pool. For the next 24hrs the only decision we had to make was whether to swim in the pool or at the beach - we did both numerous times.

Geraldton is such a family friendly place. The foreshore has so much for the kids. There are a couple of playgrounds, a free water park and in the sea there are a couple of floating pontoons that you can swim out too.

Overlooking Geraldton is a spectaculor monument to the HMAS Sydney.

Next we went further North to Monkey Mia - about a 5 hour drive. This is a very remote holiday resort that is famous for it's local dolphins.

On arrival we were told that the dolphins hadn't been around for a few days - "What the!!" don't the dolphins know that we've travelled some upteen kilometres just to see them. Luckily as we were settling in they returned to the resort and we got to see them each of the mornings while we were there.

With no where to be, we just relaxed, swam, collected shells & hermit crabs, walked the beach, played tennis, swam in the pool, ate & slept.

Monkey Mia was truly beautiful and totally worth the long drive.

One of our favourite activities at Monkey Mia was the boat cruise we went on. First of all the cruise took us out to a local pearling farm. Here we where learnt how pearls are made and got to look around. On the back of the boat is a net that they let down and you can hop in an enjoy a somewhat bumpy/wet ride. Understandable the boys didn't enjoy the net ride all that much, I think the possibility of me letting go of them and then ending up in the middle of the ocean with their limited ability to swim wasn't really their idea of fun.

We got to see Dugong's and big Ray's. And the scenery - breathtaking.

Sailing around on a beautiful blue sea with the blue sky above and not a care in the world - I could get use to that.