I write this blog today from a very humid bedroom at the lovely Hayley Brock's house, having arrived safely in Queensland. You can definitely feel the difference here from WA, things stay very sticky here even at night and Michelle's hair is just getting bigger than ever! As Hayles, would say - shes WILD!!!
Our last day in Perth was a great day though as we had a truely wild experience going swimming with dolphins down in Rockingham. We'd had to get up at an extremely early hour of 6am to drive down there for a 7.30 start, so with a very grumpy Zannah in tow (due to me making really rubbish coffee as I had a slight mishap with the very complicated coffee machine) we managed to find our way down the freeway to the jetty.
Annoyingly we didn't actually end up leaving on the boat until gone 9am by the time we had gone through safety briefings, the awful experience of trying to get a wetsuit on - they really are the world's greatest leveller, I defy anyone to really look good in one - and waiting for a bus of japanese from the city to arrive.
However, we eventually got kitted up and were ready to go:
Trying to pretend I wasn't scared at the the thought of sticking my face in the water!
So you drive around on the boat looking for groups of dolphins and then they send you into the water in groups, where you snorkle along as most of the action with the dolphins is under the water. Its very important not to splash and kick as this disturbs them, so you sort of form a train and are pulled along rather than swimming, so its actually very easy. After a couple of false starts where the dolphins swam off before we got to see them, which gave me a chance to get used to snorkelling again and not having a panic session whilst telling myself that I was being pathetic (Naomi it was snorkelling in Mexico all over again!) we went in and swam with the most amazing group of between 30-40 dolphins, mostly young males. They were playing around underneath the water and were so close you could see the scars on their backs from fighting each other, although you had to resist the temptation to touch as this can harm them.
Not hugely clear I know but gives you an idea how many there were!
Flipper!!
As the first group in each time we seemed to get the better part of the deal. We had another really amazing swim with a different group of dolphins that were feeding. One of the techniques they use to find food is by following bull rays around and basically stealing the food from them. So we swam above the rays (which were about 5 and a half feet across) and with the dolphins too.... the only problem with this was the constant mantra of 'Steve Irwin' running through my head, which spoilt my enjoyment somewhat!!! But it was amazing and a great experience, including when the dolphins would follow the boat and play in the wake, jumping in and out of the waves and generally having fun - I fully recommmend it!
In the evening we had a lovely final meal out with Mark and Jodi and a couple called Tony and Christine out in Freo, at a place called Little Creatures, which has its own micro-brewery! It was a great place and I particularly enjoyed the Pipsqueak cider! It was a brilliant way to end our time in Perth and we were sad to say goodbye to everyone, including Zannah, who we safely saw off to NZ, and then we got the chance for an impromptu tour of Perth by night as MZ managed to go wrong on the way home from the airport, inspite of the route being one single straight road (don't ask!!). So thank you again Mark and Jodi for your great hospitality, we'll probably be back in a couple of years!!! And now its time for the east coast to get a bit of Ziebart love... xx
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