Near the end of February, George and I were thrilled to have my family come visit us in Perth. They were in Australia for a total of two and a half weeks, and spent some of their time with us, while also going on a road trip down to the south coast of Western Australia. We loved having them, as well as having the excuse to see and explore parts of the area we hadn’t yet experienced for ourselves.

We got up to quite a few fun and touristy activities when they were here both within and outside Perth, so I thought I’d make this post to share what we got up to.

General Sights Around Perth

As my family arrived on a Friday afternoon, I was able to pick them up from the airport on my way home from work. They were greeted with a very warm welcome from the weather, with it being 38 degrees on their arrival.

Luckily, while we took them around Perth that weekend, the clouds came in and the weather became much more mild. On the Saturday of that weekend, we took my family out to Trigg Beach, Cottesloe Beach, and Scarborough Beach so that they could have a first look at the coast and walk around.

After exploring the beaches, we headed out to see King’s Park, which is the biggest green space in the central area of Perth. It is quite huge, with lots of flora, tall trees, and really nice views of the city.

On the Sunday of the first weekend my family was visiting, we headed to Heirisson Island, which is a park on an island next to central Perth where several kangaroos live! It was my family’s first time seeing kangaroos on the trip, so it was a really exciting adventure to try and find them on the island. We managed to see 4 of the 7 kangaroos that live there, which was pretty good for daytime considering the nocturnal nature of kangaroos.

We then headed over to a nearby lake called Lake Monger for a walk around, as my mom really wanted to get some photos of black swans. We spent the rest of the day exploring downtown and then my family got organized for their own aforementioned road trip.

Road Trip Up to Geraldton

My family came back ten days later, after what sounded like a fun adventure around south Western Australia. George and I both took the Friday off work for our next activity, which was a road trip up to Geraldton. Geraldton is about 4 hours north of Perth, and has some very interesting scenic stops along the way up to the small beach town.

Our first stop of the day was to Yanchep National Park, which is about an hour north of Perth. Our reason for visiting Yanchep was to see the koalas that live in the rescue area there. We enjoyed walking around the park, seeing the koalas that were getting rehabilitated, and even saw some bonus kangaroos. My family was excited since they hadn’t yet seen any koalas on their trip yet.

Our next stop after Yanchep was the Pinnacles Desert, which is a series of thousands of limestone structures left over from seashell deposits over 25,000 years ago. It was really interesting to drive and walk around this desert that contained nothing but these rock formations.

Our final stop before making it up to Geraldton was to Lake Thetis to see the stromatolites. I didn’t know this before visiting, but stromatolites are the oldest living life forms on Earth. This was interesting information to learn, as to be honest, the stromatolites themselves weren’t that interesting to look at. They were an exciting part of science (and Western Australia) to see, though, so we were happy to stop and take a look.

While we enjoyed our time in Geraldton, it was definitely more about the journey than the destination! We stayed in town for one night, and went to the pub for dinner that evening and had a nice walk around the boardwalk and town the next morning. It was a beautiful day, and Geraldton beaches have some terrific sand dunes.

We had more of an adventure than planned on our drive home, as we accidentally took a wrong turn an hour into our drive that resulted in us taking the inland route back to Perth. Luckily, we realized this before it was too late (though it still resulted in our drive home being six hours instead of four) and were able to course-correct without needing to backtrack. Most of our drive back was pretty dry in terms of scenery, though we were excited to see some wild emus on the side of the road (our first since Coffin Bay)!

Rottnest Island

Our final day with my family was one to remember: a day trip out to Rottnest Island! This is probably the most well-known day trip for tourists visiting Perth, as the island has some amazing beaches, is easy to get around, and is filled with quokkas – a large (and cute!) rodent that only lives in Western Australia.

We caught an early ferry over to the island, which took about 30 minutes from Fremantle, and first stopped to collect the bikes we rented in the little town area surrounding the ferry docks.

My mom had strategically suggested that we rent e-bikes so that we could have enough energy to cycle around all day, and we were so thankful that we had them. It turns out that Rottnest is full of hills, and we wouldn’t have made it around the island and as far as we did without the electric power of our bikes helping us up the steeper and more persistent slopes.

The scenery around the island was stunning. The beaches reminded us of those that we saw around Esperance and Albany, which is a good tip for tourists who may be spending just a short visit in Western Australia around the Perth area, but want to experience the beaches that the south is known for. There were so many beaches to choose from, and while some were busy, if you went farther out from the main haunts you could have one basically to yourself.

As mentioned, another highlight of the island were the quokkas. While we saw them in shady spots all over the island, we started seeing more of them during our last hour on the island when the sun was starting to set and the crowds had died down. Since quokkas don’t have any predators on Rottnest, they are not afraid of humans and were more than happy to be wandering out and about with any humans who happened to be nearby.

Rottnest is an incredible place and definitely needs to be on your list if you are visiting Perth. While a day visit is sufficient to see it all (if you use the bus system or have an e-bike), you could also easily spend a couple of days there enjoying the amazing beaches and other sights at a slower pace.

We had such a nice visit with my family, and it was so special to have them come and see what our lives have been like for the last several months in Australia. I know that they all really enjoyed their adventure here, and it is hard to believe that the next time we see them will be when we are back home in Canada in just a few short months!

Life has been busy, hence the delay in my blog posts. Coming up next are a few posts about our two-week trip that we took to Sri Lanka during the most recent school holidays at the start of April. I am excited to show and tell you about it (soon… I promise)!

In the meantime, we are back in Perth, enjoying our last month and a bit of Australian life. For me that involves continuing on with work before I take another extended break, while making plans for our final travels before heading back to Canada. It has certainly been a fantastic year for blog content. See you soon!