Perth Darul Awesome Trip - Day 6

We woke up early for our next agenda. The plan was to go back to Perth while making two stops on the way. The first destination would be a cave visit. Read in a blog that this is a must visit if you just happen to be in Margaret River, so there we go.

Margaret River got a string of nice caves that can be visited. There are 3 among them that were the most famous, the Lake Cave, the Jewel Cave and the Mammoth Cave. Gonna cost us AUD50 per head if we were to go ahead with all the three caves. We thought 50 dollars is just to expensive for a cave visit plus we were on a tight schedule, so we thought one cave is enough. Lake Cave it is, and it cost us AUD22 per person.

Situated around 20km away from our stay, we arrived early at around 9:30am. Nobody was around, except us. The entrance to the cave is already opened, and we wasted no time and entered. Paid the entrance fee, waited for an hour as the tour will start at 10:30 am. Browsed through the gallery to kill the time, took some pictures as usual.

The entrance. 

In the gallery. Happy to see some stalactites, which I couldn't brain what is she happy about. 

10:30am, the tour started. A couple of Chinese girls in their 20s joined us for the tour. Found out they were Malaysians, students from Melbourne whose were on a holiday. I asked them if they felt the tremors last night but they told us they missed it by a whisker. Oh just so you know, Melbourne was hit by a major earthquake the night before, 5.3 on Richter scale, no huge damage were done, no biggies.

Our tourist guide for the morning was... heck I couldn't remember her name. But she was nice. The tour started with a climbing some 300+ stair steps down. It was a little bit scary for me, plus it was slippery and wet.

Yup. The cave is down there. 

Finally arrived at the base ground. The part in this picture was actually part of the caves, but the roof collapsed around 1000 years ago. They claimed this according to the age of that big tree, which they estimated to be around 750 years old. 

A small gap with more stairs, entrance into the cave. 

The cave is dark and quiet. Surprisingly you can hardly find an animal in that cave. No bats, snakes or whatsoever. Not even a tiny fish.

They put some lighting on, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. 

That stalactites hanging from the ceiling weight almost 1 tonne! 

Ok now came the hardest part, climbing back up!

Pheww! Made it to the top.

After an agonizing 20 minutes of climbing up, the tour ended. We then got ready for our next stop, Busselton Jetty.

It is about 70 km away from Lake Cave. Drove for an hour before we reached the spot.

Claimed to be the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere, it stretched out about 2 km out to the sea from the town. It was meant to be destroyed but somehow the local people felt attached to it because of some historic event, so they issued a petition to preserve it as a historic place, and they did it and this is what it is by now. A very long wooden jetty with a tourist train on and an underwater observatory at the end of it.

The entrance to the jetty.

The entrance to the jetty is pretty cheap. Cost us AUD2.50 per person. But here is the catch. You have 2 choices to get to the underwater observatory at the end of the jetty. You can go by walk, will cost you the entrance, but you have to walk for about 4 km back and forth. Or you can have a ride on the train, but it will cost you AUD11 per head. So we decided to walk.

Yes, it was that long.

Some local people who passed away and had their ashes scattered to the sea, will have the privilege to put a memorial plate on the handrail.

Train is coming!

At last we arrived at the end of the jetty. There is a small souvenir shop, and also the main attraction, the underwater observatory. Unfortunately the observatory is closed for schedule maintenance. Will not be opened until the next couple of months. No problemo, we chilled for a while before decided to walk back.

At last. The end of the journey. Have you heard the idiom "It wasn't the destination, it's the journey that matters"? Well they lied. Of course the destination is matters. 

The screen shows in real live what does the underwater observatory looks like. As you can see the water was kinda murky.

By this time I felt a little bit worried. It seems like gonna be raining soon. The sky was already dark, and the winds blew so strong we had a hard time to walk. Plus, its gonna take more than 30 minutes of walk, so we'd better be hurry.

Shit. The sky is already dark and we still have another 2 km of walk.

Nevertheless, we made it to the end.

Tourist mode. 

Hey have you seen in our country some tourists wearing singlet, short pants and slippers and don't even bother what other people around might think of them or what they are wearing? We called this tourist mode. And we are definitely on tourist mode by then. Look at her shoes. Oh it might be too small. Here let me zoom in for you.

Travelling boots

It is a pair of house slippers. Which you use it regularly in a house, hence its name. But we were totally on tourist mode, so we don't give a damn what other people might think. Most importantly it is comfy. The jacket that I wore? Been wearing it since arrived.

Me on the tourist mode

After that, we continued our journey to back to Perth. Had to drive for another 2 and a half hours. For the next 2 nights we will be staying at Sullivans Hotel. Did a lot of researches and this hotel is the best within our budget. Cost us AUD135 per night.

How was the hotel? Well, not that good. We did not get the good view of the Swan River, got wifi but it sucks, and it only allow one connection at one time, which made it even sucks more. The room was just so so, I think the Fremantle B&B is way better than this hotel. Anyway, what matter most to us was to get a good night sleep. That all is matter.

The room

We were thinking to have a walk in Perth City that night, and maybe have some dinner, but it was raining cats and dogs. So we decided to drive for another 20 km to the nearest Nando's. Oh just so you know Nando's is Halal in Aussie. It is certified by Australia Muslim Halal Authority, so got another good choices for food besides fish and chips. By this time around I am sicked of fish and chips already.

After dinner we headed straight back to the hotel. Need to get a good rest because tomorrow will be another long journey to the north.

End of Day 6