Down Under – 3/9/14 – Yanchep National Park, Perth, Western Australia

We sleep in at the Ocean Beach Hotel and then wander down to the beach for breakfast at a local eatery, Barchetta http://www.barchetta.com.au/  Great food and a wonderful location!

Cottesloe, the beach town outside of Perth, is where we are based.  It's the weekend and the place is packed with people and the cars are crawling along the streets...but it doesn't seem too crowded and we are enjoying the slow schedule.

We walk up the beach to the Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea area.  Various artists from around the world have come here to build various sculptures on the beach...it's a competition and the winner earns $50,000...the individual sculptures are also sold to art lovers. http://www.sculpturebythesea.com/artists/cottesloe/exhibiting-artists.aspx

Sculpture by the Sea videos
http://youtu.be/PE5r4wScEsQ

http://youtu.be/j1681sE-EkU          Grand prize winner

In the early afternoon Vince met up with us and we headed north to visit Yanchep National Park...about 50km from Cottesloe.  While I am definitely getting the hang of driving here it surely takes a lot of concentration not to make a mistake...for instance making a right turn at a light always has me thinking so I don't go on the wrong side of the street.

Vince takes us on the scenic route, the equivalent of US1 on the coast of California.  We see all the cool houses being built facing the shore...multi-million dollar homes everywhere.

We arrive at Yanchep National Park. http://parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/yanchep  We pull up to the guard booth to pay the entrance fee and I start to BS with the lady about a "Yankee discount" and eventually we discover she lived in Ballwin for several years!  It is a regular surprise how many people we meet who have lived in our fine city!

Our first stop is to visit the 10 Koala bears that they have here...they are incredibly difficult to find in the trees as they blend in so well.

Uh...this is a picture of a poster!

At the same time there are some very noisy birds flying overhead.

Parrots

Noisy parrots:  http://youtu.be/Rjit5kRmyjo

Next we piled back into the van to go to the golf course where Vince promised us BIG kangaroos...he wasn't lying!

Kangaroo golf video: http://youtu.be/1leki4c_z4A

Time for a drink and to watch the Kookaburra birds picking food off the plates left by others.

See the Kookaburra in the background?

Driving back to Cottesloe Vince had us detour to visit Kings Park which overlooks the city of Perth. http://www.bgpa.wa.gov.au/kings-park

Back to Vince's condo where he served us a wonderfully simple dinner...but delicious!