Up north in 'Lano'

We're now in Lancelin and have survived a storm that tore away at least 6-10ft of the coastline, and somehow our new tent is still in tact.

After our last post, we explored more of Denmark and discovered that the place is totally beautiful (in particular Lights beach), that roos hang out everywhere, and that you should never walk the bibbulman track (about 1000km of walking trail from near Perth to Albany) in spring/summer as the flies get up your nose, in your mouth, and generally make you want to throw yourself off a cliff into the sea! We had tried to walk to greens pool but after sampling wine and beer at the local brewery (nice beer garden in the vineyard, but we found midday drinking in the heat made us feel pretty rough) we discovered you could drive to the pool so we did just that before leaving Denmark and had a very pleasant swim in the sheltered lagoon, where Phil realised he was pretty unfit at swimming and couldn't keep up with my old lady-style breaststroke!

Following Richard's excellent itinerary, we moved onto Albany, and straight away drove down the flinders peninsula and visited the natural bridge, "the gap", and some blowholes. Apparently they've found proof that the rock on the coastline there matches that of those in Antarctica, as the two were once joined however many millions of years ago! The gap was pretty spectacular with he ocean rushing in and out but unfortunately not enough swell to make the blowholes perform. After all this hard touristy travelling we chilled out on frenchman's bay, an isolated relaxed place where we swam and sunbathed, bliss.

The next day was a bit grey so ideal for visiting the whaling museum (after testing some more local cafes of course!) which surprised us by being totally fascinating. We must have spent about 3 hours there, and whaling was only banned in 1978 so it all felt so very real and recent.

As we had to return our camper by midday that meant a very early wake up (4.30am) for the 400+km back to Perth but it was pretty stress free (I wasn't driving!) as the roads are so empty. We had a fight with the rental place as to the cleanliness of the van but eventually made our way back to Richard our ever generous host, and then out for our first sign of a social life since we got here - Liss and Dom invited us over for supper!

L&D live in a nice flat in Maylands and we spent all night drinking Dom's homebrew and picking their brains about living in WA (they've been here for nearly 3 years). The advice was much appreciated, and we chatted until the early hours so stayed the night... Unfortunately the homebrew didn't agree with Phil though so it came back up again the morning after...

We walked off phil's hangover at the local street 'festival' (complete with local school recorder group) before heading to Anaconda (like Millets) where we spent enough to keep them in profit for the next 3 years - so thanks Mum and Dad (Hazel and Cutter) for helping us kit ourselves out with some decent camping gear! We decided a 4x4 plus camping gear would best for our weekends away rather than a van (Phil just wants to justify a 4x4). Then we finally managed to go windsurfing!! Liss and Dom very kindly lent us some kit and we went off from Pelican Point in the city - it was pretty amazing windsurfing with the city skyscrapers in the background. I got a bit creeped out by being bitten by something on my toe (I'm telling myself it was a crab) but other than that it was so good to get out on the water.

We've now been windsurfing again this time in Lancelin ("Lano") as it was too windy to use the surfboards we'd hired, so we got a cheap deal from Werner who has a van of kit for hire on the beach. Also randomly bumped into someone Phil went to uni with (Nick) and his girlfriend Sarah who invited us over to dinner which was lovely. We have some friends in Perth!
Now on our way to Yanchep national park as the storm still hasn't subsided so wasn't looking great for windsurfing, apparently they have koalas...!