Instead of doing my usual blogging for my Australia trip back in March, I’ve decided to do a summarized photo-log of my trip.
While doing research for Perth, I realised that the recommended places to visit is pretty much the same and if I’m gonna write about the same things, it wouldn’t value-add anything. The only not so popular hidden gems that I have visited is Hamelin Bay, where you can get up close with wild stingrays. You can read more about in this entry. That’s pretty much about it.
For food-wise, my cousin who studied in Australia recommended using Zomato (a mobile app, iTunes App/Google Play) which is pretty much similar to Openrice or Hungry Go Where. While driving around places, we use it to decide what’s for lunch/dinner and often read the recommendations and reviews.
For my full itinerary and accommodations recommendations, you can refer to my previous entry.
If there are any questions that you wish to ask about my trip, feel free to comment below 🙂
Perth
Twilight Hawker’s Market
Once a week pop-up food market at Perth’s CBD area. Do check their Facebook for updates. There were many different cuisines and we tried a variety but nothing was to die for. The music (solo guitarist) that night was decent but the crowd was pretty dead or perhaps too engrossed in queuing and eating. Nevertheless, it is a good hangout place where the locals visit. Do note that the traffic there may be quite bad as there were some works going on and parking was a bit of issue for us. We parked at a place about 5 minutes away after circling around the area for a while.
And I ended buying this artisan roasted marshmallow which looked pretty fancy online. Don’t know if that one bite was worth the $3 AUD I paid.
Caversham Wildlife Park
The highlight of this park is definitely the Koala exhibit. Last year, I visited the zoo to see the 4 Koalas that came to Singapore as part of our SG50 celebrations. It was a painfully awkward exhibit as the staff were “shhhhh-ing” guests non-stop rhythemically and you were barricated about 1m away from the Koalas. Furthermore, all 4 Koalas were asleep when we visited around lunchtime. Right. On the other hand, the exhibit here is totally different! There was no “shhhh-ing” from the staff (people were allowed to make reasonable amount of noises and the Koalas’ can sleep through it), no barricades between you and the Koala (you can abduct it anytime and runaway) and there was actually an awaken Koala (Watch the video below)! You can even touch a Koala bear (with staff’s supervision) with the back of your hand too to feel the fur!
The next interesting thing would be the Kangaroo enclosure where I hand fed baby Kangaroos with the free food provided!
There was also a petting enclosure where you can interact all you want with the baby animals!
Just to show the comparison in height.
I didn’t really enjoy the Farm Show which was mainly about the Shedding of Sheep Wool and hands on milking the cow (the poor cow must have felt terrible with hundreds of hands there..) Urgh. Nevertheless, this wildlife park is quite suitable, especially if you have children.
If you’re around the area, you can check out Mondo nougats & House of Honey too.
Penguin Island
This was one of the more disappointing parts of our itinerary, but it could be due to our lack of research. Just by the name itself, we were expecting to see a lot of penguins or at least wild penguins but we were surprised to find out that the feeding session was only for ten in-house rescued penguins. We paid $8 extra ($40 for 5 adults) just to see a 10 minute feeding for 10 penguins. The only consolation I could get was that I was making a donation to their animal shelter.
The island is no doubt beautiful, with its clear waters and fine sand but we were just very disappointed because the name “Penguin Island” (We were thinking of Philips Island in Melbourne) was totally not worth our $23.. We spent the most time on the island sitting down on a picnic bench under the tree eating the food supplies that we brought.
I should have researched a bit more before putting this into our itinerary but seriously their website has no mention of their super small penguin facility..
Fremantle Market
Bought nothing here but fruits and food. I was swept away by another only-instagram-worthy purchase known as muffle.
Cottesloe Beach
This place wasn’t originally in our itinerary but I found it by chance while searching for happenings in Perth. There was an ongoing Sculpture by the Sea festival (4-20 March 2016) happening and it looked pretty cool from the website! Furthermore, there were many beautiful photographs of sunset at the beach too! Since we were visiting this place on a Sunday evening, it was quite crowded but we were lucky to find free parking at the carpark near the beach. I shall let the pictures speak for itself. The pictures were quite badly taken because of the harsh sunlight and crowd. It was just people mountain people sea everywhere (even the recommended fish and chips shop that we wanted to have dinner at).
There was a well-paved breakwater that you can walk towards too, if you can get past the crowd.
There were 2-3 sculptures along the pavement too.
Definitely a romantic spot to watch the sunset.
Cloudless sky – perfect for sunsets and star trails.
By the way, I used the Weather app to check for the sunset timings and invited the family (who were eating fish and chips indoors) out to the beach to watch the magical moment.
Finally, the sunset time lapse video I took while holding up my iPhone 5s for 5 minutes. This was taken during my pre-tripod days.
On the drive down from Perth to Margaret River
Bunbury Lighthouse
Busselton Jetty
Margaret River
Margaret River Chocolate Factory
Don’t be fooled by its name – it is more like a chocolate shop (built for tourists) with free chocolate buttons. I was expecting some kind of factory tour or something like the Hersheys world I visited back in USA but nope – it is just a shop.
After our purchase, we were given a voucher for some wine sampling at Providore which was a short drive or 5 minutes walk away. There were free sampling of tapas dips and I ended up buying some onion marmalade paste which I eat it with bread for breakfast on some days..
Cape Lavender
Random Lavender Teahouse with zero sightings of lavender plants. The only lavender we saw were on the cakes and ice cream that we bought.. Nevertheless, it was a quite okay place to chill and take a break and sip on some lavender tea with pretty teacups.
Laurence Wine
Beautiful garden + playground but the wines were not to our liking..
Eagle Bay Brewing Co.
Canal Rocks
That’s all I have for the photos!
If you have any questions about my trip, feel free to question below 😀