Southwest and Golden Outback

I took 2 days off to go on day trips to visit the southwest. It was weird as people who go on day trips are usually old people so I was like traveling with mostly middle-aged people. One of the old man even asked me if I was too young to travel by my own as I look like I was still in middle school. lol

First day trip I went toward Albany to visit the magical giant trees!



Climbed up this diamond trip. Poor tree with the ladder poked into it. But the view up there was awesome!








I was expecting more as the forest wasn't as magical as I saw it to be in pictures. I thought they would appear even more gigantic than what I saw. But the air was brilliantly fresh and walking in the woods made me feel so good!




Finally we visited the Elephant cove and green pool. Nice painterly scenery there! :)

For the next day trip, I chose to go for the wave rock! A rock that looks like a huge tsunami coming at you!

We stopped by at a small town of York and the vanilla sky there was captivating!

After a super long drive further inland, we finally reached the legendary wave rock!



It was quite impressive how the formation goes! However one annoying thing was, we had to endure the merciless and persistent flies that are everywhere! They just love sticking on human. You can have one whole army resting at your back and the rest buzzing you at the face. Suddenly I feel so blessed I don't have to live in a place infested with flies.


The last stop was hippo cave, a cute rock that shapes like a hippo's mouth. :D



Throughout the journey, we past by endless golden fields and it was quite an amazing sight. No wonder they call it the golden outback.

Perth adventures 1

The rest of the semester in UON ended in a blink. Soon it was November and as I had no exams, I was officially free! It was quite an experience carrying my backpack to class and fly off straight after! Flew to Perth to visit my best buddy from JC, JJ. He was really nice to extend his stay there just to wait for me and he had been a really good host for the 9 days that followed. Initially we planned to go on a road trip down south but he was short of cash so plans changed.















This extended my stay in Perth and I really like this city alot. As compared to Sydney, this is heaven. It is not as cluttered, buildings are nicely designed, lots of cheap Asian food around, really cheap transport with certain places free of charge even, and overall I had a really great time! First few days were spent at the markets and outlet stalls, with some crazy shopping done.

We visited London Court, a small interesting alley with a European touch.







Then it was nature therapy at Kings' park.



Saw some really interesting plants, like this one above which shapes like a bird!





We had some fun jumping and running around the vast grasslands. I always loved huge grasslands, can just run around, roll about and lie there all day! :D


One of the days, we went to the zoo! It was better than I expected as we can actually spend the whole day there.


Unfortunately, while watching the elephant show, I got stung by a giant insect! It was hiding in my shirt all the while, I was so shocked when I lifted my collar and it flew out! There, near my throat area, it left a needle sting there. It left me with red itchy rashes at my neck for the next few days, stupid insect!



It was rather interesting observing the Orang Utans! They were meant to live in tropical climate but Perth was quite cold, so they will wrap themselves with towels, damn cute!



Transport was awesome in Perth, we could even catch a ferry across the river with EZlink card and damn cheap too! Saw a beautiful rainbow by swan river! :)

Heavenly Blue Mountains

2nd highlight of awesomely long recess week was blue mountains and jenolan caves trip with Adele, Yohan, Yuqi and Frida! The trip started badly as I overslept and Adele and I were left behind by the group. Luckily the coach company allowed us to change our caving trip to the next day. Meanwhile we decided to hike at blue mountains on the 1st day while the rest went caving.

This is the legendary 3 sisters mountain viewed from echo point. The air was really fresh high up in the mountains!



We made it down the 100 step super steep giant stairway! but that makes the Going back up was so much tougher. haha


We finally see some light after walking like forever


And we made it! The view back up was spectacular as the clouds cleared up a bit, revealing the heavenly blue sky and it made all the climbing worth the while!



We finally met up with the group back in the hostel! It was the best hostel I stayed in Aussie, felt so much like an hotel! :) We were ecstatic to see each other as we shared our crazy experiences of the day.

At night we headed to echo point again to eat ice cream!!! I love the ice cream from supermarkets as there were so many more flavors there, unlike the boring vanilla, strawberry, choco, zzz here. It was definitely a crazy idea to have it in the freezing cold night on the mountain peak but it made us icecream lovers so happy!! Whats more, it's honey macadamia nuts! <3

The night offers a different view, only 3 sisters was lit up while the rest of the mountains were covered in darkness. Since it was called echo point, we decided to shout at the mountains to proof the echo and indeed the echo was loud! Damn, it was so much fun. :)



The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to catch sunrise! Unfortunately the clouds didn't do us a favor but the mountains were extremely blue in the morning.

We had a short hike thereafter before me and Adele had to depart for Jenolan caves.


Bridal veils.


Saw this lovely log along the way, with a heart in its middle.


We were greeted by crystal clear blue waters outside the caves.



It was my first time caving and I was very amused by its massiveness.





Simply beautiful! Isn't it awesome if I can live amongst these mountains? :)