Western Australia – Day 4 – Beaches and Birds

The bumpiest part of our tour of D’Entrecasteaux National Park was crossing the Yeagarup Dunes, the foliage beyond that, and finally in the initial stretches of the beaches facing the Great Southern Ocean. That was a rough 20 minute ride and at times I was afraid the vehicle was gonna topple LOL.

After parking about a hundred and fifty meters from the water line, the first thing the kids did when the vehicle stopped was to play with sand.
There was a flock of sea birds at rest, and we approached slowly and gently…
Though it doesn’t take much for the flock to get startled. I judged between trying to get shots of them taking off using either the 12-40mm f2.8 or 40-150mm f2.8 – both of which would have presented advantages and disadvantages. I eventually settled on the 12-40mm – which made for nicely focused shots but no close-ups.
The flock cleverly flies to the next undisturbed spot – just about 20 meters away LOL. We set this up twice: one series with Colin getting the flock to fly (above shots were from this deck), and another with Ling doing the same.
Ling brought along the kids’ crocs, so there were plenty of shoe changes at each stop.
Colin, having spent his entire life in Pemberton, clearly loves the town and knows the area like the back of his hand. We had fun conversations about traveling, kids, education systems, climate, and even technology while driving from spot to spot.
These two got a small but nice collection of seashells.

The cost of the half-day tour was AUD330, and it was well-worth the expense for what we got to see. Though that’s also because we really don’t get to see these sights much at all – especially the magnificent sand dunes since we dropped the Lancelin sand dunes from our itinerary several months ago. I reckon that was the right decision after all, since in return, we got off the road and were able to experience sights with no noisy crowds in sight at all. We highly recommend taking up this half-day trip with Pemberton Discovery Tours if you ever come in this direction!