The Nomadic Explorers | Australian Travel Blog

It is fifths day of our Western Australian trip and here we are, in the rainy Albany. Yesterday after we checked in into apartments, we spent almost 2 hours trying figure out what should we do next. The weather forecast for the rest of our trip through South-West Coast clearly says: “windy, heavy rain all the times”. What should we do? Should we stay here and hope that the wind changes? Or should we go further, hoping that the it will not be THAT wet as bom.gov.au says?

Next morning the forecast is slightly better. It is not raining in Albany and there is a small chance that the weather will be warmer tomorrow as well. So for today we decided to stay in Albany for one more night and explore Stirling Ranges and Porongurup National Parks located nearby.

Fitzgerald River National Park in Western Australia is one of the largest and most botanically significant national parks in Australia, with approximately 15 per cent of the state’s described plant species. The park protects magnificent scenery and is one of the most flora-rich conservation areas in the state.

We visited the park on our way from Esperance to Albany in August 2014. Although it was raining all day, we were stunned with the scenery: beautiful coastline, sand plains, rugged coastal hills and beautiful wildflowers…..  

Last weekend we went to McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery to test new lens. Since our last visit McClelland presented a new sculpture exhibition called "The McClelland Sculpture Survey & Awards 2014". Finalists works are on show from 23 November 2014 to 19 July 2015, and the exhibition is worth to visit.

Continuing my description of the trip to the Bellarine Peninsula…. So, where was I? Ah, yes, the Queenscliff town….

We might call ourselves lucky, as we finally found a good company to cycle with (hope that they enjoy our company as well :)). As winter with its unpredictable weather is coming, it is quite hard to plan ahead. So our latest ride was spontaneous - I’ve monitored the weather and the forecast was ‘sunny with no rain’, called out our friends, discussed all the details and, here we are, ready to cycle on the Bellarine Peninsula Rail Trail from Geelong to Queenscliff (~32-36kms, depending on where are you going to start).

As you might noticed, my posts are not so frequent as they were before. There are many reasons for that. Sometimes I struggle because I don’t have enough ‘good’ photos to illustrate (by ‘good’ I mean photos that I like), sometimes I am too lazy to write down two posts (one in English and the other in Russian), sometimes I simply don’t have time to write, as every blog post takes up to 3-4 hours (I need to choose the photos, upload them, write the text, add some links and related files, and so on). Anyway, that doesn’t mean that we travel less or I don’t have anything to write about, absolutely not! Moreover, now I am facing the following problem: before I start telling you about the places that we recently visited, I have to write about some other places located nearby, as without that you could probably think that we decided to follow a motto ‘been there, seen that’. No way :)

Last weekend we rode from Geelong to Queenscliff via Bellarine Peninsula Rail Trail. Before I start writing my ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ regarding the trail itself, let me tell you about our last year day trip to Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale. This will give you an idea why we decided to visit Queenscliff again.

Our last trip to Adelaide was absolutely spontaneous. I hadn’t had ANY plans to travel during the autumn school holidays, as I had lots of things to do with assignments and freelance work. However, when friend of mine invited me to join her family trip to Adelaide, I said ‘Yes, we’re in’.

This was my first solo-trip with my son (9y.o.), as my husband had to stay at home to take care of cats (and to work in the office, of course).

Every year in mid-autumn to early winter we take a break from travels far-far away. At this time we prefer to stay in Melbourne, visit museums and exhibitions, meet with friends and simply enjoy lazy weekends when we don't have to wake up early in the morning to go somewhere.

So on one of the lazy Saturday evenings we went to Cat Cafe. It's not a cafe in the sense that you could come here for a hearty lunch - Melbourne's food and drink laws won't allow it - but it's a fantastic place to have a reasonably cheap drink, enjoy a good book or two and have a few cats join you on the sofas.

Bye, summer, welcome, autumn! It is time to see and enjoy the bright colours and visit favourite parks and beautiful Victorian High Country towns like Bright, Myrtleford, Wangaratta, Beechworth and so on. This year in April we spent a lovely weekend with friends cycling on the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail. The weather was not perfect, as it was raining one day. However we enjoyed our trip to the colourful mountain region with lovely cool climate towns where deciduous trees come out to play and paint the town red, orange and yellow.

Yes, it is autumn here in Southern Hemisphere, and we love it!

A full size replica of the original Stonehenge in the UK, as it would have looked around 1950BC, Esperance Stonehenge is situated 10 minutes drive from Esperance townsite, enroute to Cape Le Grand National Park. A friend of us highly recommended to visit this attraction, so we followed her advice.