6 month update - adventures in south west Western Australia

Hello everyone, what a big year it's been already. We celebrated Malcolm's 6 months and our third wedding anniversary by taking a trip - it does not fall to the faint hearted to travel with an infant, but buoyed with encouragement from other parents - 'travel while they're young and not crawling', we set off.

It has been magnificent - hard at times as Malcolm decides occasionally he has had enough, but also amazing and wonderful to travel with him and sometimes see the world a little like he might.

First stop WA - specifically the South West corner for a wedding and then some touring.

The flight over was a little painful as we didn't manage to get a bassinet - 9 babies on the one flight - and so Malcolm had to try to sleep propped on Prita's knees and a pillow. for some reason he didn't find it particularly comfortable so stayed awake and grumbled instead. On top of that Prita came down with some extreme nausea - incorrectly attributed to tr

avel sickness - and was feeling extremely faint.

But we landed in Perth intact and promptly set out to look for coffee. Well, that's a whole blog post in itself...

We jumped in our little hire car and zoomed South. There were amazing squalls of tropical dimensions - they didn't last long but made it

almost undriveable when they were there.

We emerged in Bunbury - a lovely town, as we drove in we saw a beautiful mangrove boardwalk - one of my big weaknesses - we managed to see the dolphin centre. By this time Sean was beginning to feel extremely sick in the stomach as well. So Prita had a run along the harbour front while Malcolm and Sean had some man time on this lovely patch of soft grass under a Norfolk pine.

After an obligatory stop at the Busselton Jetty and a stop at Busselton pharmacy to buy some completely useless nausea medication, we hopped in the car and drove down to Dunsborough for Katie and James' wedding.

The biggest tragedy of this holiday was the timing of Sean getting sick. While I didn't enjoy being ill on the plane, Sean couldn't enjoy Katie and James' fabulous wedding because he was so unwell.

The medication was having little effect and along with extreme stomach pain he

was also very faint and couldn't stand up for more than a few minutes at a time. Such a shame, and it meant we got no photos :-( The wedding was in the most beautiful location at Wise Winery, in a bushy setting with incredible views over the Karri forest and then stretching out to the Naturaliste bay and ocean beyond. The food was amazing and we had a lovely time meeting their friends and family (almost all of whom we didn't know). It was gorgeous.

The best bit about WA were the magnificent forests, particularly the tall splendiferous Karri trees. While our walks were necessarily short we chose carefully and each one was really beautiful and different. Malcolm for the most part enjoyed being in the backpack carrier and loved looking around the incredible scenery as well. He was also particularly entranced by the karris - that is what he is looking at in this photo. Weirdly, he generally found it impossible to stay awake even when it was no where near nap time, who would have thought piggy back riding was so soporific.