Sue Zann Toh

I have a sort of tradition of going somewhere and doing something on, or near, my birthday. I’ve gone down south to Margaret River for a 3 day romantic getaway. I’ve gone up north to Lancelin for a bit of quad biking.

This year I went down south again, but this time only one hour to Mandurah with a stop over at the Serpentine Falls for a quick swim.

The water was cold and refreshing on such a hot day. Hard to believe it’s meant to be autumn with temperatures up near and in the 40’s. I ended up slightly sunburned, mostly on the shoulders.

We wandered down to Mandurah and had a fish and chips lunch at Nino’s, then on the way back to the car we spotted a boat hire place and decided to take a boat ride. I thought it was pretty good value, $45 for an hour on a motor boat cruising around the Mandurah canals. We actually went for 2 hours, which was more than enough to explore pretty much all the canals and all the nice luxury houses and boats on the canals.

We weren’t fortunately enough to spot any wild dolphins in the main canals, but nevertheless, it was a fun afternoon.

I steered the boat for a little while, but I nearly got us stuck in shallow water so I decided to hand the controls over. It wasn’t very hard to steer and the boats have quite a decent turning radius. They only went up to 8-9 knots, which is roughly 15 kmph, and the speed limit in the residential canals was 5 knots.

After the boating we made our way back up to Perth and zonked out on the couch in front of a couple of DVD’s.

So it was time again to do something different in our lives, something we haven’t done before, something fun and exciting, but not too exciting and not too strenuous! The idea of horseriding came up during the South West holiday in 2005. I wanted the chance to go horseriding, but time didn’t permit it (I hadn’t initially planned it). So when we came back to the city, I marked it in my to-do list… “Go Horse Riding!”.

I found a sweet riding estate not too far from Perth city. It’s called, Brookleigh Equestrian Estate, located about 45 minutes from Perth in Upper Swan. As it was my first horseriding experience and I was the one organizing this “adventure”, I thought we’d start off with a leisurely trail ride.

We were given a quick introduction on:

• how to get on a horse
• how to get off a horse
• how to make the horse move
• how to make the horse stop
• how to turn the horse

My first impressions were “I don’t know if I can do this!”, but once we got going, it was a rather pleasant experience. My horse’s name was Solomon, he’s one of the older and more experienced horses used for trail rides. He seems very easy going, almost too easy going! He has his speed and when I tried to get him to walk a little faster, it was almost like he was saying to me, “No, not today”.

We didn’t get to trot or gallop on the trail ride, but we did have to navigate the horses through a rather large puddle of water and up and down hills. You wouldn’t think that hills were such a big deal, but there’s a bit of a technique to it. At the end of the day, I thought this particular horseriding trip was just the right mix of adventure, relaxation and fresh air. I can’t wait until our next horseriding trip!

Visit Brookleigh Equestrian Estate.

AQWA, formerly known as Underwater World, is Western Australia’s aquarium. AQWA is located about 30 minutes north of Perth city in Hillarys Boat Harbour. The aquarium is set out as a guide to WA’s coastline with four distinct areas,

1. Far North Coast
2. Shipwreck Coast
3. Perth Coast Marmion Marine Park
4. Great Southern Coast

AQWA offers more than just an aquarium for looking at fish and sharks. They have “AQWA Adventures” which includes diving or snorkelling with sharks (!) and whale watching during the whale migration months of September to December. They also have a cafe, bar and gift shop for souvenirs and can accommodate kid’s parties. They can even host a sleepover under the shark’s aquarium for kids. I was a little disappointed that the sleepover was for kids.
My favourite area of AQWA was the Shipwreck Coast. Its main attraction is the underwater tunnel running through a large aquarium filled with grey nurse sharks, stingrays or mantarays, hundreds of fish and a couple of large loggerhead turtles. It’s quite an experience as you stand on the conveyor belt while a giant grey nurse shark or smooth sting ray glides over your head! I loved the experience so much, I went around the circular tunnel at least 3 times!

Another one of my favourite areas of AQWA was the touch pool. The pool is home to stingrays, Port Jackson sharks, many fish, slate pencil urchins, starfish, a cuttlefish and more. I got a thrill out of sticking my arm elbow deep (and more!) to say hello to the stingrays, starfish and my favourite, the Slate Pencil Urchins. It was a bit more difficult trying to touch the fish, as they would swim away when they saw your hand coming too close.

There were many wall aquariums around AQWA as well, filled with colourful fish, lobsters, seahorses, seadragons, jellyfish, anemones and more. There was even an enclosure for crocodiles (only little ones) and outside, there’s Seal Island, where 2 female seals swim and play, and the Stingray Bay, the shallow pool of water where 2 species of stingray happily coexisting together.

If you plan to visit AQWA, make sure you give yourself at least two hours to wander the aquarium. There’s so much to see and learn (and touch!) and you wouldn’t want to be rushed. Keep in mind, this is a kid friendly place, and there’s going to be many children running around and making a lot of noise, so bring your patience with you.

See photos from our AQWA trip in the AQWA photo gallery page.

Visit AQWA’s Web Site

In 2005, I thought I’d do something a little different for my birthday. I thought I’d take my boyfriend, his sister and her husband up to Lancelin, WA for a little Quad Biking adventure!

Lancelin is about one and a half (1.5) hours north of Perth, on the coastline. It’s famous for it’s beaches, where surfers are frequently seen riding the waves, and it’s sand dunes, where extremist are frequently seen riding the dunes. The dunes are truly amazing, it looks like some giant took a bucket of clean white sand, and dumped it inland to form these dunes. It’s so white, it’s almost blinding! The sand dunes at Lancelin are a popular place for sandboarding, dune buggys, dirt bikes, quad bikes and four wheel driving.

We found DirtBikeHire.com on the internet, and booked for a one hour quad bike hire and tour for $70 per person. When we arrived at the sand dunes, we signed our hire agreement and disclaimer form, put on the helmets and goggles provided with the hire, then hopped onto the quad bikes.

There were two types of quad bikes, the manual quad bikes with gears like a dirt bike or motorcycle, and the automatic quad bikes. I was eternally thankful that I got the automatic quad bike as I’ve never been on a motorcycle in my life. Although the automatic quad bikes were less powerful, they were much easier to drive, there was the “Go” button on the right handle, the front brake on the right handle and the back brake on the right foot.

At the beginning, we were sent to the “idiots hill” and given some time to get use to the bikes. I felt like a complete dope after the guide came up to me and said “Go faster!” (Yes, I was driving as fast as a turtle). After that, our tour guide took us around the sand dunes where he would stop and let us zoom around, up and down the dunes. It was a whole heap of fun! I enjoyed it much more than I expected, even when I fell off the bike! I didn’t hurt myself, but I did feel stupid for about half a second.

My most memorable moment of quad biking was going over some of the larger sand dune. We were warned to be careful driving up the sand dunes as the other side of the dune was usually a sharp drop. My thoughts were, “Uh huh, OK whatever”, but then I drove up the first sand dune, saw the HUGE drop on the other side and some profanities escaped my lips. I was scared, so I stopped my quad bike at the top of the dune and consequently got bogged (stuck). The guide had to push me off the dune, so I had no choice but to tackle the huge drop. I encountered many more huge drops on the other side of sand dunes, but I was smarter this time, and found an alternate route for my quad bike.

Although there were some scary moments, I really did enjoy my first quad bike experience. At the end of the hour, I was physically and emotionally tired from the excitement. I highly recommend that everyone tries quad biking at least once in their lifetime!

Visit DirtBikeHire.com Web Site