We are in South Australia now.

We have nearly finished this trip now. The Coorabie was our first location in the state coming back to Melbourne, and also really, really good.

Friends

Gus found a friend whose name is forgotten. They kept throwing around big bits of dirt until Dad saw and told Gus and me not to. I found a friend too, whose name is not forgotten.

His name is Bullet.

When I first met him, he was very sleepy. He enjoyed me stroking him, just like a dog. But when I woke up the next morning, he was a completely new person. He was running around, treading in a shed he wasn’t supposed to. This was because he liked chewing on the wool he found on the floor. Now, you’re probably thinking that’s gross, but it isn’t really, because of one of his major characteristics, one that I forgot to tell you.

He’s a dog. That’s why he liked being stroked, that’s why he liked chewing wool, that’s why he was so eager to break the rules and go in the forbidden shed. He’s a dog, part Staffie, part Pug and part King Charles Cavelier.

This is from the Internet, but this dog looks a bit like Bullet. Bullet wears a jacket, though.

Amenities

The toilets there were super-duper clean. I know what the mens are like, too. That’s because there are no mens. And that doesn’t mean there are no public toilets for the males. They’re unisex toilets. And as I said, very tidy ones.

The Site We Got

Not that great, in my opinion. We were squashed right up to this other ancient little caravan which doesn’t seem to be occupied. But right behind us is a load of trees and the big bits of dirt I mentioned before. Once I stepped in some goo, so I had to sit by the fire. That’s were I met Bullet.

Summary

Here’s a summary of the entire park.

1. Clean Amenities: 9/10
2. Near a Town: 3/10
3. People to Play With and Things to Do: 7/10
4. Positive Comments on WikiCamps: 8/10
5. The overall rating: 8/10

We went to an alpaca farm. There was much, much more though. I’ll give you a grand tour.

We go inside. The gift shop is a shed full of wooden wind chimes and everything to do with Stunned Emu Designs. You won’t know what I mean, so here’s a Stunned Emu Design.

Here’s another:

According to all the signs, the artist is Wendy Binks and she grew up here. Pentland sure is proud of her. Her artwork’s everywhere. The lady at the counter is giving four bags of animal food and saying we can’t give the joeys too much. There are joeys here?

When we get out, there is a cage with three cockatiels. I’d like a cockatiel. Or a cockatoo or a corella. As we continue, there are more birds. There’s a galah that says “Scratch scratch” – literally. Yeah, it talks. Dad really does scratch it, but cautiously. Dad doesn’t want his fingers bitten off. There are bunches of guinea fowls screeching on the floor of the cage. There are two koalas facing in the other direction. Then we get to the alpacas. Two are looking a bit odd. One looks like an Ewok and another has dangerous-looking teeth. Actually I find out later that the toothy one is really a llama.

‘Ewok’ alpaca

Toothy llama

There are also a couple of joeys. So that’s the joeys! They’re ever so friendly. They aren’t allowed to have too much food, though, remember!

Oh! A white alpaca just ripped the food bag out of my hand! Mum gives me her bag.

There are ‘racing’ pigeons hooting in a cage. Next is a load of goats. There’s an emu as well. I feed it out of my hand. It isn’t safe, really. The emu grabs the food out my hand, its beak clipping firmly around my palm and immediately unclipping. The goats are a lot gentler, munching contentedly on the food in my hand. Now the emu needs to be distracted to stop it from snapping up the food meant for goats. The emu is greedy.

There are lots of small chickens and roosters squawking in clumps. Then there are the guinea pigs and rabbits. Th Two rabbits are unusually large, but cute all the same. We see two ferrets curled up in a cage. Then there’s a sheep and a pig. They’re really loud because it’s nearly 3.00pm, their feeding time and they’re getting seriously peckish. The pig is squeaking noisily and the sheep are making distinctive ‘maa’ sounds. I suddenly see a cat on the stack of hay bales. I tell Mum and she spots that the cat is wearing what looks like a plastic bib. Strange!

There’s a camel with a face exactly the same as the alpacas, but it doesn’t look as if it’s up for eating food.

We walk on and see a big furry animal. It’s the size of a Shetland Pony, but there’s a sign asking not to feed it as it’s still on milk. Although we don’t know the exact age, Dad is still amazed, saying over and over again how young it must be. It must be quite young. There are some foxes in an enclosure. They’d have to be locked up, otherwise they’d feast royally on the chickens and run wild.

There are two more emus, Em and Mu, and a a real Shetland Pony. There are two fully grown big furry animals and a sign saying they’re Scottish Highland cattle.

It’s almost 3.00pm (feeding time), so we walk back to the area with the chickens, the rabbits and guinea pigs, the alpacas, the camel, the sheep and the pig, the goats and the emu, and the ferrets. After a minute or two there’s a woman in a blue shirt striding up to us. She asks us if we’d like to feed the animals. We say yes. First she unlocks the pigeon cage and the pigeons start racing around – it was their exercise time. She then produces four milk bottles and automatically four joeys come bounding up. We all start happily feeding the joeys. By the time we finish, Mum has three pigeon poos on her head. Yes, the pigeons are still on the loose. We then feed the sheep and the pig. We also spot a week-old lamb and feed that too. We feed the baby Highland cow and find that it is one month old. We discover there is a two month old highland cow with the emu and the goats. The woman in a blue shirt disappears and we wash our hands and depart too.

You like the grand tour?

Perth Zoo? Let me start at the beginning….

Well, this caravan park that we are staying at offers books to borrow. You find them in a little room with lots of free leaflets about things around Perth. Mum found me a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but there was more leaflets than books, so I had a poke around. Then I found one leaflet about Perth Zoo. It looked almost identical to the Melbourne Zoo which I had already seen, but I wanted to go. I showed Mum the leaflet.

The next day, I woke up. Nobody was awake yet but they would be soon. I went on program for designing. The name? Adobe InDesign. Mum is a graphic designer so she knows how to use it. I know how it works too, now. Mum also knows Adobe Photoshop, a program for editing photos, but not I.

So anyway, when I got bored, I went to the playground at the caravan park. It’s not really the greatest, but in my opinion, the swings are pretty good. Also, it’s right next to an amazing pond, with a lot of little birds with multicolour beaks. Additionally there are big black swans, and some colourful ducks with their tiny striped ducklings.

After my play Dad started telling me “it is time to go to the planetarium, come on, get in the car, get a move on, chop chop”, so I walked off and slumped into my booster seat. I hate having a booster seat. It practically squashes me to death. I stared out the window. There’s nothing else you can do when you’re trapped in a car. Gus was already in, but not my parents. When they got in, we started moving. I kept staring out the window. Then we stopped. But this wasn’t the planetarium. I was pretty sure this was the zoo.

When I asked Mum, she said something about the planetarium being too crowded. So then we got in, and Mum asked about where I got the map. The leaflet had a map of the zoo on it. It had been left in the car when I first saw it, and I had brought it out with me. When this was explained, Mum told me that the zoo people were selling maps for $1. Seems that I saved us $1.

The Perth Zoo was a lot like the Melbourne one, if not smaller. Halfway through looking at the animals, Mum announced that we were to do a project on an animal. Gus did his on the Black-and-White Ruffed Lemur. I did mine on the Sunbear. This is the finished project. I did it with InDesign.

Yesterday I went to a Bird Breeding Centre named Rainbow Jungle. It mainly had  little finch-type birds and colourful lorikeets.

Purple-crowned Lorikeet: little finch-type bird

Superb Parrot: colourful lorikeet

We had seen it in a magazine but we weren’t planning to go until we saw it on a bike ride. We couldn’t have known it was there except there was a tower with a sign on it: Parrot Breeding Centre. We planned to go.

When we got there, I noticed a bin covered in stickers. They all read the same thing; Rainbow Jungle. The gift shop was choc-a-block with anything to do with birds. At the counter, there were even real macaw tail feathers! I knew they would be from the place’s birds. Dad asked the lady  how much it was for a family pass. It was $40. Well, at least that’s what the lady said. It seemed dad didn’t have his wallet, so mum paid instead. The fist bird: a corella. Judging by the sign, his name was Cocky and he could do a lot of tricks, but all he was ready to do was say, “Hello Cocky”. He was supposed be able to sing “ladededa”, so I sang that, but he started dancing, which was very amusing.When he got tired, we moved on.

The birds were wonderful. They came in every colour you could imagine. There were ponds with goldfish in them and features such as a stone man spitting into a pool, a trickling waterfall and lilies and lilypads. When we reached the tower, we climbed up. There were a pair of coin binoculars, but mum and dad never let us do that sort of thing. Then I saw a couple of $1 coins! I put one through the slot. Dad lifted me up so I could use them for a bit, but said I was too heavy. He used them instead, watching these boring surfers.

We went on. It was extremely interesting. Eventually we came back to Cocky, who was having a nap, and ate lunch. Then, as we had nothing else to do, we went through the gift shop and back home.

At Exmouth, the Whitings and the Simmonds went on a Whale Shark tour called Three Islands.

It was amazing.

Look!

Whale shark.

me

Wow. A school of fish.

Whale sharks are sharks, making them fish (like the Whitings!), but they don’t eat us. They consume little plankton and crill.

We also went to a aquarium. It was very interesting.

Toadfish. Poisonous.

Clarks Clownfish. Dad mistook it for a Red Sea Clownfish!

Pretty.

It’s a turtle!

There were a lot of sharks, but you couldn’t have really got a photo because they lived in a man made lagoon and any photo of them would only show its fin.

Happy Birthday, Matt!

I wake up. Hang on a second, it’s dad’s BIRTHDAY! It’s still way too early. I lie back until my fellow pals Wil Simmonds, Minny Simmonds, and Ari Simmonds are outside, eating Weetbix for brekkie. I can’t see Dad though. I expect he’s having a surf. I wish I could possibly consume Weetbix. Once, just once. I’ve had a few ‘breakfasts’.

When I was very young, I had delicious toast. A bit of apple and a piece of toast was all I had early in the morning.

Once I went to a relative’s house to stay for a bit. Mum gave me a different breakfast while we were there, and I figured that was because we were on holidays. It was a lot of fruit, a couple of veggies and some nuts.

When we got back home, we had the same. And the same and the same. Soon my brekkie had changed.

I started to have porridge, but it was really plain yuck. So I went back to fruit.

My fellow pals and I are fooling around when I spot Dad. “Happy Birthday!” After that I start hanging out again. The rest of the day is relaxed and uneventful, but before sunset, mum comes out of the caravan with some Popcorn Slice the kids made earlier. It’s a good recipe where you melt marshmallows and stick popcorn together with the marshmallow mixture. It’s totally yum.

After that we walk to a pub. I choose a enormous seafood pizza, and that’s nice as well. I go to bed full of gourmet pizza and happy, although because it’s so wet we end up taking a taxi back.

A lizard. Dad found it at Karijini when we were visiting…..

HERE!

(And here!)

We see these weird flying crickets a lot.

We’ve dressed a termite mound before, look!

This is an actual dinosaur footprint, believe it or not.

I am a crocodile named George. I am REAL, and Scotia and Fergus have seen me before. They once stayed at the caravan park I visit regularly.

Fun in Broome

There are camels in the backround, look!

An awesome tree house I made.

I’ve been having a lot of fun, haven’t I?