White Around The World

Spent the last week or so in the Perth area. I decided to stay in the swan valley about 20km from Perth, so that I could camp rather than stay in a hostel. The swan valley is a big wine producing area, so the campsite is surrounded by vinyards which all do a lot of free tasting, so I've been taking advantage of that. As I haven't been to a vinyard before, I decided to do a wine tasting tour which was good fun. Went to 5 different vinyards and tasted a few different red and white wines at each one, suprising how different they acually taste, even from just a small area. Although towards the end of the tour after all those wines, a brewery, lunch with champagne, cheese, chocolate and nougart tasting, I wasn't so bothered about the different flavours anymore.

I've spent a couple of days in the centre of Perth, looking round the city and seen a few of sights. Seems a really nice place, not too big, very clean and easy to get around. Also spent a day in Freemantle, an area to the south of Perth a bit further down the coast. Had an interesting tour of the prison, which was originally where convicts were sent, so learnt a bit more about the history. The prison didn't actually close until 1990, so it was shocking to see the conditions that people were kept in that recently.

Had a day walking in the Perth hills. A lot of the places around here are named after places in Bucks like High Wycombe, and from where I went walking you could see why. Really reminded me of the countryside around there, except there were loads of kangeroos around.

Yesterday I went to Rottnest island, about an hour off the caost from Perth. It's a really nice little island where there are no cars so hired a bike for the day and cycled round it, stopping off a few times to go snorkelling. Theres a coral reef about 100m off the shore so there was amazing snorkelling there, hundereds of fish, different types of coral and even saw a dolphin.

Flying over to Melbourne tomorrow and spending a couple of weeks around that part of the country.