We flew Virgin business class (only virtue being it’s not Qantas) and arrived in a wet and extremely cold (13°) Perth just as it was getting dark. The house, in a quite lovely neighbourhood with many parks, looked quite unassuming from the front, but was in fact on three levels down the slope of the block.
The heating was not working. We could not get it to work. The instructions were just wrong and the system was in error. The best we could do was collect all the spare throws and knee rugs in the house and put them on the bed, but it was only 11° in the house the next morning. Fortunately I found a single oil column heater in the kids’ room, which meant we had heat in our bedroom, but the rest of the place was like a bloody damp, freezing cave. I sent an email to the management and spent the day getting silly answers and writing back when I wasn’t driving, but declined to spend the entire day huddled inside. Thought it was still very cold with heavy showers, we managed to get out for a few hours to drive up the north coast, looking at beautiful but stormcloud-shrouded beaches, as far as Joondalup where we had some coffee and cake to warm up, and answer emails 🙁 (I won’t get into the saga of the house more than that here, but I left a snotty review when we left. )
After coffee, we dared to make a quick visit to Yellagonga Regional Park, and got about thirty minutes worth of walking in before the rain returned. I wish we’d had time to go back because it’s gorgeous, but we were out of luck on that.
(Click here for my post on Yellagonga)
Though the weather forecast was not promising for Monday, I booked us on a ferry from Hillary’s Boat Harbour to Rottnest Island. While we were out for the day, the heating at the house was fixed, and the weather on the island was utterly gorgeous (apart from the trip over, which was really, really rough from the rain and wind you can see coming in the photos from the harbour and your correspondent was 🤮🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢 most of the way over). The journey back, by contrast, was sunny and smooth, and we saw whale spouts! (Little did I know these would be far from the last whales we saw while in WA, though we didn’t get any photos of them.)
(Click here for my post on Rottnest Island)
It would be hard to beat Rottnest on any holiday, but it was time for me to socialise with two dear friends, and for Doug to go exploring on his own in Perth’s jewel in the crown, Kings Park. I didn’t see much of the park myself because one of my friends is pretty immobile and because the park was heaving with visitors and tour buses. We decided to decamp for lunch to a nice pub near my other friend’s home in Victoria Park. I hope to go back one day but not during wildflower season!
(Click here for my post on Kings Park)
For our last full day in Perth, we had very cold but fine weather, which meant we could attempt Yanchep National Park before we headed back to the holiday house to pack for the next leg of the trip.
Click here for my post on Yanchep National Park
And then it was onto Albany.
That really sucks about the heating. I hate the cold, especially indoors 🙁 The only good thing about cold outdoors is when you know you can come back in and get warm! And yeah, houses without zoning can be annoying. Our current house doesn’t have zoning, and it’s always too cold on the lowest floor because the heat rises. That’s one of the things we’re fixing in the remodel…
You only got half an hour in Yellagonga? That makes the amazing photos you got there all the more impressive – it really looks like somewhere you spent a few hours.
Okay, this time I did get an email notification of your wordpress reply, so it seems to be hit and miss. But now that I return to the post, I don’t actually see your reply that I got the notification about. It’s not showing here. Weird.
What a pain! I’m sorry you had to deal with lousy climate control at your accommodations, wasting vacation time send emails is truly the worst. I don’t think your review was snotty at all, that owner needs to learn some customer service…a broken heater is not a quirk!
Your photos are fantastic! I enjoyed clicking through all of your posts to see the whole trip—and I really appreciated all of the information you included to identify the plants and animals. The banksia seed pods are so wonderfully alien, and the adorable quokka, and the fairy wren!!!