DAY 107 – FIRST DAY OF RAIN AND VENTURING INTO THE PERTH HILLS.

Well today we have experienced our first wet day of this entire holiday.  We had planned to head up into the Swan Valley today to do the wine and food trail, but the wet weather ended up keeping us at home.  It was too wet and too cold and too miserable for us to want to venture outdoors, so we spent most of the morning in our vans, just reading, catching up on postcards, and for me, catching up on this blog.

Ian and Kathy were happy to do the same…  It is actually nice to just stop… We have been on the go for weeks, so the break is always nice  I am sure the Swan Valley would have been nice also.  It just means we now have a good excuse to return to Perth at some later date.  

Just after lunch the weather seemed to clear a little, although still very windy and cold, we decided to take a drive up into the Perth Hills.  We had planned on visiting the Historical Village up there, but on our arrival found that it was due to close in about 15 minutes so we really didn’t have the time to do it justice.  I was a little disappointed, as Ian and Kathy had been there the previous day and shown us photos of the place.  They had an amazing doll’s house there that was fully decked out and Kathy had shown me some photos of it and I thought it looked pretty cool. 

Never mind, it just means that if we get a chance we will come back again before we leave to tour it properly or it is another one of those things that we will be coming back to Perth to do.  

However, we did have a look through the Zig Zag Gallery up at the Information Centre there.  They currently have an exhibition called “Walk in the Hills” exhibited in the Gallery.  It was quite magnificent.  They were truly works of art with all exhibits being fabric or sewing.  Just amazing how talented some people area and I loved seeing this exhibition. 

We had a good wander around the gift shop they had there and I even managed to pick up a couple of Christmas presents.  

We would have spent almost an hour there before heading off to Lesmurdie National Park where we were keen to do the  Lesmurdie Falls walk. 

This was quite an easy 500m walk down to the top of the falls.  The views over Perth was impressive, but would have been so much better on a clear day. We were able to take some photos of the falls.  There is a second viewing platform another 100 metres further down the hill which actually gave you give view of the waterfall and the base of the falls. 

  The wildflowers were quite prolific here also and we saw another couple of new ones that we previously hadn’t seen.  

It was extremely windy out on the lookout, but looking up into the sky we saw the dark grey clouds forming and knew that if we didn’t hurry back to the car, we would get caught in a deluge of rain.  

I made it back in time.  Steve thought he still had a few minutes to spare so headed a further 150 minutes down the track to see the “Cascades”.  Were they worth it.  Yes definitely.  Did he get wet… Yes a little, but he managed to make it back to the toilets where he stopped and sheltered until the real downfall abated.  

By the time he got back to the car it was 4.15pm which meant we really had to hurry as I had another chiropractors appointment at 4.30pm back at Forrestfield.  We made it in the nick of time with not even a minute to spare.  

Fortunately for me, the chiropractor had been held up with other patients so he wasn’t quite ready for me anyway.

After visiting the chiropractor it was back home, where we arrived to the smell of Pea and Ham soup cooking.  Kathy had borrowed our crock pot and put a big pot on that morning.  It was a wonderful meal to have on a wet cold and windy evening.  

 

Perfect double rainbow to end the day..

We had another perfect end to the day, this time, not a magnificent sunset, but a beautiful rainbow that stretched across the sky. In fact there were two of the,m.   Definitely feeling blessed indeed.