Day 21

Today's the day our holiday transforms from explorative to therapeutic activities.  All we have to do is drive the 2 hours north up to Perth, meet up with our Perth friends and stay with them for the next 3 nights.

Rather than drive the boring freeway to Perth I thought we'd follow the Old Coast Road through Australind - much more scenic.  I thought we'd do one last explorative activity and check out the Leschenault Conservation Reserve.  There's a dozen or so paid camps here and a few bush walking tracks.  The reserve harbours a number of birds - both water birds in the Leschenault Estuary and land/tree birds in the conservation park.  We saw 28's and kookaburras and Morgs found a rock with a shell in it, which she suspects is a fossil - very sciency and therefore very cool.  I found another sandy track onto the beach, which I suspect is a popular fishing spot as there were plenty of wheel tracks onto the beach and a steepish gradient into the ocean.

Back on the main highway again we saw a sign "Vineyard 28" with a parrot on it's logo.  So we thought we'd have to try at least one winery considering we had passed through the Margaret River area without even stepping into a bottle shop let alone visiting a vineyard.  Morgs assessed the bottles to find the one with the most parroty label and lucky for her it was the Sav Blanc - her favourite type of wine.  Even luckier for her it actually tasted pretty good so she bought a couple of bottles of it.

Again, rather than following the boring freeway, we took the Old Coast Road through Mandurah, although I was beginning to regret doing this after the umpteenth set of traffic lights or road works.  We made it into Perth city about midday and went straight for the shopping mall that Morgs most wanted to go to as it had the shops she needed.

After Morgs had caught up with her retail therapy we headed on up to the northern suburbs to spend a couple of days of R&R with our friends Mat and Natalie and their two kids.  We're very much looking forward to seeing them all and seeing how much the kids have grown.