On our way back from Cranbourne part of Royal Botanic Gardens we decided to visit McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery. You might think: "Again?". Yep, you're right, we've been there recently. The main reason to come to the Gallery this time was information that I've got from their FB page: the much loved Tree of Life was relocated from the Peninsula Link the to its new home at McClelland.
It is time to tell you about the most family friendly zoo in Melbourne - Werribee Open Range Zoo. Located 30 minutes southwest of the city, it is all about the safari experience which takes you all around the zoo to get up close and personal with the amazing wildlife in a different perspective.
Healesville Sanctuary, or the Sir Colin MacKenzie Fauna Park, is a zoo specializing in native Australian animals. It is located at Healesville in rural Victoria, Australia, and has a history of breeding Australian native animals. The zoo is set in a natural bushland environment where paths wind through different habitat areas showcasing wallabies, wombats, dingoes, kangaroos, and over 200 native bird varieties.
We've been visiting Healesville Sanctuary at least twice a year since we moved to Melbourne, and you what? We still love it.
Couple of weeks ago we had a very enjoyable out-of-the-ordinary and spectacular experience walking through Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria: Cranbourne Gardens (former “Australian Garden”). The Garden is an inspiring and immersive display of Australian flora, landscapes, art and architecture. It is a must for anyone with any interest in Australian plants and/or landscape design. End of winter is a great time to wander around, as most of the trees are in bloom and look stunning!
We LOVE zoos and visit them quite very often: with our friends and guests from other cities/countries, on school holidays and sometimes just for fun on a weekend. However, I found that I don’t have any photos from there - we are quite busy looking AT the animals, not photoshooting them.
Last July we went to the zoo with my mum, who came to visit us. I decided to take a camera and shoot as much as I could to write this post about Melbourne Zoo - one of three wildlife reserves managed by Zoo Victoria.
As I already mentioned earlier, Margaret River region has all types of adventures for everyone. In our case, as we had only few hours before heading back to Perth, it was a real challenge to choose where we’d like to go all together. We decided to visit one of the famous caves in the area.
There are more than 150 caves in the Margaret River region. These caves belong to a series of complex and fragile karst systems which are landscapes formed by the rapid drainage of water underground. The main road that travels along the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge is aptly named Caves Road.
One of the major providers of the caves tours operates three spectacular show caves: Lake, Mammoth and Jewel, but as we’ve been to most of the Australian caves we wanted something different and not to be pressured by crowds or their timetables. The solution came from the Tripadvisor website: there are other caves as well, such as Giants Cave and Calgardup Cave. These caves are operated by the Department of Parks and Wildlife, so it is not allowed to advertise elsewhere except official website. However, lack of advertisements doesn't mean anything. In fact, we were so glad that we visited Calgardup Cave! Unlike the other, well-lit "show-caves" in the Margaret River region, Calgardup is a unique experience below the surface of the earth.
Perth, we are so close to you! Our flight back to Melbourne is tomorrow afternoon, and, as usual, we have lots of plans for the rest of the trip. Our next destination is Margaret River Region, which is located just 3-4h drive from Perth. It stretches 140km from Cape Naturaliste in the north to Cape Leeuwin in the south where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean. It is also one of the famous holiday destinations, as it has everything for everyone: wines and beers, gourmet food, caves, ocean, a lighthouse, forests and walks.
As for us we have major items in our list: visit the highest lighthouse in Australia - Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse and explore one of the famous Margaret River caves.
You are probably noticed that usually we "were lucky as we’ve seen/made/did/walked this/that". So you might think that we always on time, on budget and tick all the boxes in our ‘to do/to see list’. Well, it is not. In fact, this blog post will tell you about the time when we were unlucky.
As you might remember, last couple of posts I kept saying that the weather forecast on our way from Albany to Pemberton, Western Australia, wasn’t the best one for travel. It started raining on our way from William Bay National Park down to Tall Timber Country: area between Margaret River and Peaceful Bay / Bow Bridge. We had a huuuuuuuge list of items in Karri Forests that we wanted to look at on our way, but unfortunately as it was raining cats and dogs we had to skip most of them….
It is day 6 of our WA trip. This basically means that we have just 2.5 days to spend in Western Australia until we fly back to Melbourne. The weather forecast for the rest of our journey is the same as yesterday: rain all the time. However, as we travel between peak-times (and it is not a school-holiday), we are quite flexible. So for today we have a long list of things to see and to do (subject to weather conditions).
The first item in our list is William Bay National Park in 15km west from Denmark famous with its Elephant Rocks and domed boulders of Greens Pool.
The massive ancient granite domes of Porongurup National Park are rising up to 670 metres, giving exhilarating views of the landscape near Albany, Western Australia. One of the highlight of this national park is Castle Rock, Balancing Rock and the Granite Skywalk which are all on the one walk. We decided to give this walk as the weather has changed after our climb to the Bluff Knoll.
What can I say……. The Skywalk is simply awesome and the views from the skywalk are incredible! Absolutely stunning!
