Today we left Margaret River and headed back to Perth to catch a flight to Melbourne. The day started well with Wills saying goodbye to all the animals on the farm and had one last go on the swing and hammock.

The drive back to Perth was a long, three hour journey made even longer for all of us by the reappearance of the Devil Child. After being in hibernation for a few days he decided to truly excel himself by shouting pretty much all of the journey, throwing his favourite bear, Tolo, on the floor every two minutes, telling Daddy not to speak to Mummy, and generally being obnoxious. Just as we realised we were pretty pushed for time to catch our flight, he decided to vomit all down himself. As you can imagine, this left us less than enthusiastic about the four hour flight to Melbourne.

However, we managed to arrive at the airport in time, get through security pretty smoothly and then board the plane without too much hassle. Surprisingly, given his form in the morning, William was an excellent passenger – he sat quietly, ate his meal and flirted with the air hostesses – much to Mummy and Daddy’s relief!

Having arrived in Melbourne, we had to deal with yet another challenge in that the travel agent had mucked up our airport transfer. Despite us having to wait another hour while it was sorted, Wills was extremely good and waited patiently.

It was certainly a day of two halves and in the end The Boy redeemed himself!

As mentioned in an earlier post, we’re currently staying at Burnside Organic Farm just outside Margaret River. We began our day by having an informal tour of the farm by one of the owners Lara. Lara and Jamie have been living on the farm for 17 years and have an almost self sufficient lifestyle – they have a small winery with two vineyards, avocado, olive and macadamia trees as well as chickens, geese, pigs and cows! The whole farm is managed to organic and bio-dynamic principles using no herbicides and pesticides and instead clever techniques like putting the geese in the field with the avocado trees so as to keep the grass down and the trees fertilised.

After the tour of the farm, we jumped in the car and, after a quick playground stop, headed down to Augusta and Cape Leeuwin – the most South-Westerly point in Australia – the next landmass would be Antarctica! After lunch watching some kite surfers on the Blackwood River, we had a very quick but windy walk around the base of the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse – it’s the tallest lighthouse in Western Australia has been helping ships navigate the coastline here since 1895. Being the most South Westerly point means that this is where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet and results in some particularly choppy waters.

William has been of better spirits of late, but has been perfecting his persuasion skills and kept on negotiating with us to say “two more playgrounds and then the lighthouse”, or “we go to the beach and then we have lunch”. So, to keep him happy we drove back up to near Margaret River and spent an hour or so on Gracetown beach – a beautiful little secluded beach and great for swimming in – although the water was quite a bit chillier than we were expecting. Finishing the day, we headed to Prevelly and had fish and chips while watching the sunset – all in all a pretty good day had by all!

Ever since knowing we’d be going to Margaret River I wanted to try to get to some of the vineyards in the area to taste some of the amazing wines produced in the area. After some searching, we found Sig from Taste of the South who said he would take us on one of his “Hits with the Kids” wine tours – great things for the littl’uns to do and lots of yummy wines for the adults.

I guess because it was a Monday, it turned out that we were his only guests so we had the SigBus (as William called it) all to ourselves! This meant that we had the tour tailored completely to what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go.

We started at a local sheep farm where we saw a sheep shearing demo and Wills was able to feed both the grown up sheep and little baby lambs – one who was only 8 days old. After that, we went onto three lovely vineyards for some wine tasting and a delicious lunch – the first was aptly named Will’s Domain. All three vineyards had amazing play areas for little man to keep himself more than occupied while Mummy and Daddy sampled some of the local tipple. We finished the day off at the Margaret River Chocolate Factory – all in all a great day out – apart from the obligatory 2 year old’s tantrum just before bed!

Just finishing off our wine tasting now, by sampling a bottle of “Three Boys” Primitivo grown by our hosts Lara and Jamie here at Burnside Farm and grown in the next field over – delicious!

Sadly, we’ve already moved on from Perth. We’ve now hired a car to take us about three hours South to Margaret River. On the way, we stopped for what we thought would be a fairly quick lunch in a little town called Busselton – however we ended up spending about 5 hours there.

William had his first paddle in the Indian Ocean and absolutely loved it – it was hard getting him out of the water and he tried to persuade me that he had his swimmers on so he could go swimming properly.

After a bite to eat we took a train ride out to sea! Busselton Pier is the second longest pier in the World (after Southend) and, although now just a tourist attraction, used to be important for shipping timber from the nearby forests. At the far end of the pier is an underwater observatory where we could get up close to some of the marine life in the water, while staying completely dry!

We’re staying about ½ an hour away from Busselton and about 10 minutes outside of Margaret River itself at Burnside Organic Farm. It’s a great little place run by a couple who try to be as self sufficient as possible – they’ve got chickens, pigs, cows, a great little veggie garden and, most importantly, their own little vineyard!

Just before popping into town for dinner, Mel spotted our first glimpse of wild kangaroos – in the garden right behind the little cottage where we’re staying.

So here we all are finally in Perth, a place I visited ten years ago before I met James and way before William was thought about. Perth itself its pretty much how I remembered it – extremely clean with all the old buildings well preserved and lots of sun, blue skies and very hot!

We all arrived very late to our hotel after a gruelling flight with HRH Walker junior AKA the Devil Child. Despite being tired he refused to have any sleep and proceeded to spend at least two hours of the flight flailing his arms and legs about like a mad thing. Eventually I had to restrain him, which was not much fun, but hay ho we finally got here.

Going through immigration and customs we witnessed one of the immigration officers exuding all his charm to a poor Chinese man – blatant racism and something I can’t stand! On the flip side this lovely lady officer in customs happily x-rayed William’s Mr Bump soft toy as he had asked for him to have his “photo” taken again.

Went spent our first full day in Perth exploring the city pounding the streets in the heat and then finally ending our day in Kings Park – which is a beautiful park that overlooks the city.

Today we spent the day taking a boat trip out to Fremantle which is a very pretty and historical suburb of Perth about an hour down the Swan River.

We are sure the food in Perth is delicious but our last two meals have been a disruptive room service affair – by the end of the day Wills has been so tired that any kind of sitting in a restaurant would certainly be out of the question (think more arm flailing and restraining). We are fast finding out the joys of travelling with an over tired toddler.

Tomorrow we’re off to Margaret River just three hours drive south of Perth – it will be cooler and we are self catering so HRH will be able to be back on some sort of routine and hopefully in better spirits.

We had all intention today of getting up at a sensible time, however time zone differences and jetlag got the better of our normal toddler alarm clock and we ended up missing breakfast and laying in until 10.30.

Wandering back down to the harbourside, we went through Kowloon Park and stopped to look at the flamingos. Hong Kong isn’t the most pram-friendly city but I’m sure that there was an easier way into and out of the park – a large flight of steps up and an escalator down. In Hong Kong generally there always seem to be lifts – but normally from the 1^st floor – meaning you have to negotiate an escalator or steps to get there first. Although the locals have been great towards our little boy, when out on the street they seem oblivious to the pram and you end up playing a game of chicken as you’re pushing your way along the pavements.

From the Southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula, we took the famous Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island. Running since 1888 these ferries plough backwards and forwards all day long taking passengers on the 7 minute trip connecting the mainland and the original HK settlement. The Island feels a bit less gritty than the peninsula – although there are lots of premium brand shops in Kowloon, over here they’re magnified 10-fold – think Gucci, Cartier etc.

We stopped for lunch at the Luk Yu Tea House on Stanley Street– delicious dim sum and jasmine tea albeit with rather brusque service! Master W decided he wasn’t going to have any of it and instead just wanted snack bars!

After lunch, a bit more of a wander and then we ended up at the Peak Tram – a funicular railway that’s been taking passengers up to Victoria Peak for just over a century. Very busy and very steep, it deposited us at the top where we took a 3km walk around Harlech and Lugard Roads – the so-called Morning Trail. Lush greenery, peace & quiet and I’m sure, on a hot day, a lovely respite from the heat. Amazing really that in the heart of HK you can find some peace and tranquillity like this. A quick stop at the main viewing area before we took the tram back down the hill, and the ferry back across the harbour.

After the lack of dim-sum eating at lunchtime, we decided it best to for something a bit more Western for dinner, so in we popped to Pizza Express in a nearby shopping centre – consistent the world over, albeit the service a bit less attentive over here! We didn’t realise quite where the restaurant was until, 10 mins into our meal, the building opposite started to move – we realised we were right at the cruise terminal. The boat moved and revealed a quite spectacular view of the Hong Kong skyline.

We went back to the hotel via the Temple Street night market. This had been built up as an interesting place to go of an evening but unfortunately all we saw were a few stalls selling what can only be described as pretty tatty plastic souvenirs – not one worth going back to really.

Apart from that, we had a fab day in Hong Kong and are really quite sad to be having to leave it quite so soon.

I’ve been wanting get to Hong Kong for ages – the expectation of a heady mix of East meets West – exotic yet still reassuringly familiar in parts. We’ve landed to unseasonably cold weather though – 10C – and everyone is wrapped up in hats, coats and gloves which isn’t what my immediate thought of what Hong Kong would be like.

We’re staying at the Eaton hotel in Kowloon, and with only a day and a half to see the city, we decided to go out and have a quick explore. Wandering down to Victoria Harbour, we were expecting to see the fantastic Hong Kong skyline – unfortunately though it’s so foggy today that we could barely make out the lights on the opposite shore – one for tomorrow!

Walking back to the hotel we stopped for a delicious first Chinese meal at the Kam Shan Seafood restaurant before heading back to the hotel to get some well deserved rest!

I have to say that I was somewhat apprehensive about the first long haul flight with our little boy but I’m also glad to say that we survived!!

The longest flight we’d done before this was the two hours to Rome and the  additional 10 hours was filling us with dread beforehand – thoughts of endless tantrums, airline meals being thrown through the cabin plus the fact that he’s not renowned for falling asleep easily had us both saying to each other “don’t worry – it’s only 12 hours”…

Apart from about 1/2 an hour when he was trying to get to sleep, however it wasn’t too bad! We started off by luckily finding a great Family Lounge at Heathrow T3  which was tucked away down a small corridor. It was incredibly quiet, with a great softplay to keep him entertained and attentive staff watching out for flight times etc.

Onboard, Cathay Pacific provided a kiddies bag full of stickers, colouring pencils and paper as well as special children’s meals (although these seemed to be larger portions than the adult ones!). The food, generally, was actually really quite nice (yes, nice airline food).

The saviour though were the in-flight movies, with our little boy watching both The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child a good few times. This was, in the end, the only way we could get him to sleep – other methods were tried but he kept on insisting on sitting on the floor or jumping up and down or generally wriggling all over the place. As it was, he got a good 6 or 7 hours – which was more than could be said for Mummy and Daddy… when you’ve got two of your three seats taken up by a stretched out little boy it doesn’t leave much room for the rest of you!!

So we’ve landed tired and jaded in HK but excited to be starting our big adventure. Two nights here to explore and then it’s off to Australia!

So here we are – the night before the three of us embark on our Big Adventure Down Under. We’re hoping to keep this blog updated with the ups, downs and in-betweens of our month away.

We first met in Australia 11 years ago when we were both backpacking, so returning is probably going to bring up all sorts of old memories – we’ll be revisiting a few old haunts but also going to lots of new places.

How has Australia changed since we  were there over a decade ago? What’s it like to travel to the other side of the World with a toddler? Can James really keep on top of work remotely while moving around the vast countryside? Is it still going to be raining in the UK when we return in 4 1/2 weeks?

Watch this space!