In perth

Thursday March 18, 2010 A Day at Jill’s
We had a late start to today because I overslept...shame on me. After lunch Jill & I set out for some girl only shopping in Margaret River then in Augusta. I bought some wonderful treasures. Sheldon spent the afternoon with Greg at Greg’s work site. The evening was quiet with a lot of reminiscing of our school days. Oh what laughs we’ve had. I packed all our clothes as we are leaving in the morning.
Friday march 19.2010
We were up around 7 am . I hate saying goodbye especially when I know I’ll probably not see Jill again. We had a few tears actually a lot of tears on my part. What a great visit we have had. Sheldon & Greg hit it off as if they’ve always known us. What wonderful hosts they have been. Anyway we were on the road by 8 am heading south. Jill had given us maps and suggested a sort cut with a beautiful drive though a majestic forest of Karri trees which eventually brought us to Pemberton and we then followed a road thru farmlands of sheep before we finally hit the southern town of Walpole. We stopped at the visitor centre and bought our tickets of the Tree top Walk at the “Valley of the giants”. This is a wonderful walk 40 meters high among the giant tingle trees some of which are over 400 years old. Words cannot express their beauty. We spent over an hour here before we left for the town of Demark about 50 km away. Here we saw the world’s largest barometer which was brought over from Europe when the owner moved here. We then had a late lunch at a street side cafe before we continued on our journey toward the bustling seaside town of Albany. The town is known for its whaling industry in the past but is now a busy shipping port .We decided not to stop in the town as is was well after 3 pm. We then began heading north on the Albany to Perth highway with full intentions of stopping for the night at Mount Barker which is a beautiful town that looks out for the Sterling Mountain Range. We stopped at the visitor centre, gassed up the car and decided to carry on for a while longer as we would still have over 400 km to do in the morning before dropping off our car in Freemantle. The drive was through more farm country. We saw a lot of dead Kangaroos along the way and we saw the sweetest pure white kangaroo. We truly planned to stop along the way but we only saw what looked like flea bitten run down hotels and in no way was I laying my head down in one of these dumps. So I programmed the GPS for the Hilton Parmelia in Perth where I already have a reservation for tomorrow, & Sunday night. We finally arrived in the city after being on the road for over 13 hours. Dun said he was stressed...poor bugger. The only reason we were given a room is because we already have reservations for tomorrow & Sunday nights and because I’m an elite Hilton Honors member. The hotel is completely booked and the only room available was one with twin beds. We don’t care...I’d sleep in the basement at this point. Tomorrow we will need to change rooms to our suite. We ordered room service for supper and after eating we’ll hit the sack. Good night.