First Adventure in Oz

It is a 3-day weekend here in Australia because of the Queen's birthday. We thought it would be a great time to get out of town and see some of the coastline north of the city. We packed up the rover first thing Saturday morning and started driving. We stopped for lunch in Lancelin, let the boys play a while in the picnic area, then crossed the dunes to see the beach.

I was totally unprepared for this! It was breathtaking.

This has to be one of the prettiest beaches we've ever seen. Too bad the water hadn't warmed up yet because I was dying to run in.

Ben was having more fun sliding down the dunes and (thankfully) didn't notice the water. Not sure we wanted wet little boys in the car because we still had a long drive to get to our hotel.

We didn't see as much wildlife as I'd hoped but did run across a lot of these lizards. Kind of creepy, in my opinion, but a few less in the world now since they weren't too quick to run out of the road.

We saw lots of sand dunes and in this area there were cars and 4-wheelers having all kinds of fun. We opted to try that another day without the kids!

A few hours north of Perth and beyond Lancelin, the coast highway ends but they're constructing a new road. We saw several other cars driving on it so we just followed them to see if we could stick to the coast and off the beaten track. Check out the lovely bugs on the windshield. In some places it was so bad it sounded like rain.

Our little passengers were very well behaved. As long as we could keep Alex's mouth plugged he was pretty good. He would watch a little TV or play with toys but both days he got very impatient to get out of his carseat and we'd step on the gas to get to our destination.

Ben was loving the DVD player and was pretty quiet the entire trip. He's such a good traveler.

Our trek down the newly constructed road let us to a shanty town. We encountered a couple of these and I have to say they're a bit creepy...they don't appear to have electricity or water and don't seem to like the outside world. We only stopped at this "convenience store" to buy a map (handdrawn) of the dirt roads so we could decide whether to head back to the main highway inland or follow the coast. After talking to several people along the way, we finally decided to test out the land rover and take the tracks. Turns out the dirt roads were all in good condition and we were more than equipped to handle them.

This was an interesting house - never seen a place with whale bones in the front yard.

We followed our hand-drawn map and drove right on the beach for several miles. It was such a perfect day and there weren't even many people out. Granted, only a handful of people could be living within 50 miles of this place but it was really amazing.

We kept getting these views as we went up and down hills along the coast.

And here's Matt's new toy. These things really are made for challenging drives and it did great in the sand, rocks, and dirt.

After seeing lots of roadkill, we finally spotted a wild (and living!) kangaroo! We saw several more on the trip home.

The main stop we wanted to make was at Pinnacles Desert. One small area tucked away in the endless bush is an orange sandy desert filled with limestone pillars. It's almost invisible until you drive right into it but it was beautiful. This area reminded me of a cemetery.

The boys were excited to get out of the car and run around all the rocks.

Pretty fun for a 3-year old to run and climb on everything and not get told "no"!

Ahhh, little tiny footprints!

And little tiny hands! Alex left two perfect sets of prints when he stood up.

Daddy with his boys in front of one of the biggest rocks.

Ben thought this one was a toilet. Pretty funny to pretend except he won't use the toilet at home. Maybe we should go out here every day until he's trained.

Looking over the desert to the sea.

We drove a few more hours to Geraldton, the last major city along the Western Australian coast for hours, to spend the night. And by major I mean it had a grocery store and Target. It was actually a really charming little town with a main street, a few hotels, a nice beach, and this beautiful playground right on the water. The weather was terrific - nice and warm and very low humidity, so we had a great time outdoors.

Alex and I went down the slide together.

Mama and my boys. It was great letting them run and play outside because after a good lunch they both passed out in the car on the way home. Nothing like an hour and a half of peace and quiet!

It was a great weekend and a fun trip for us all. We've never gotten to take a road trip together because it's not exactly an option living on a small island, so it was fun for us to explore without a plan or a timeline. Even better, today was the actual holiday so we still had a day at home to relax and play.

My camera has pretty much died so I'm using Matt's rarely-used camera now. When I was uploading the pictures today I found this old video. I'm guessing Ben was about Alex's age now of 15 months (adjusted, of course) and I thought this was so precious! Enjoy the flashback...