Today’s is a relatively short post as we spent most the day in the car!

We started the day with some wildlife outside the window of our apartment, which was an unexpected surprise. What was really interesting was that one of the Kangaroo had a Joey in her pouch which I don’t think I have ever seen before. Anyway we have around 100 photos of the unexpected visit so anybody who is interested please feel free to contact me and we will be happy to send Kangaroo photos from every conceivable angle.

After checking out we headed back to Green’s Pool for a second visit (and a bit of a paddle) as on the first day it had been quite windy and cold. Anyway much more pleasant now and I was almost tempted to go for a swim…but it wasn’t really that warm (or maybe I am just a chicken). We were equally impressed on our second visit.

We then made a B-line towards Walpole and some very big trees (named “valley of the giants”) which their website describes as “Imagine being able to fly high above lush green tree-tops just like a bird. Being able to skim smoothly past soft leaves while playing tag with life-like branches, and getting to bask in the gentle winter sunlight whilst taking in the sweet scent of fresh country air”. Talk about embellishing the reality! Actually its quite good but it is a number of interconnected ladders through some relatively tall trees. To give you a clue of the amount of danger involved – it is wheelchair accessible. I have been to worse attactions but I have also been through much better. Still at $15 per person it was at least reasonable value and consumed almost a full 45 minutes of our day!

Jumping back into the car we then headed off to Pemberton some 120km from Walpole. Now call this fate but half way through our journey we were forced to brake quite hard when we were faced by a Kangeroo in the middle of the road. I don’t know you don’t see one for days and then three come along at once.

The drive from Walpole to Pemberton is an interesting one as it’s mostly through fairly dense forest but also almost completely devoid of traffic. In 120 km we were overtaken by three cars and did not overtake any ourselves, and that was it. In addition for a large part of the journey there is no mobile phone reception. The Kangaroo incident therefore got me thinking about what would happen if we had an accident or a breakdown and how long exactly it might take to get rescued? Mental note to self, take more water with you on the journey.

We are staying at Forest Lodge Resort in Pemberton but more about that tomorrow.

One thing we are really noticing about Australia is how expensive it seems relative to Europe, with very few exceptions (e.g. Petrol) everything else seems to be very very pricey e.g. a yoghurt in the supermarket is $2, bananas are $6 / kg. I am comparing to Germany which has some of the cheapest food retail in Europe but nevertheless its making me wince. At least it seems so far that we have free wireless in the places where we are staying.