Everything Australian at Yanchep National Park: Roo's, Koala's, Surfing, Forest Fires

After arriving in Perth and moving in we took an "orientation trip" an hour north of Perth to Yanchep National Park for a couple nights.

We arrived and immediately went to the beach which was gorgeous! I could make my own postcards from some of the sights and the water was perfect, too.

While we were at the park we learned how to throw boomerangs (mine went directly down into the dirt and didn't work) and how to throw spears (I was better at this one!). Then we had a lesson in aboriginal culture and some of the plants they used for medicines and soap etc. while looking at the koala bears in the trees.

The next day we got up really early and headed an hour north to go surfing! (Again, I wasn't that great) It was actually a really calm day in the ocean where we were so we weren't doing big things haha but it was fun and I think we all at least managed to stand up on our boards at least once. I'm ready to rent one and try again!

Also while we were there we saw a ton of kangaroos and lots of wildlife and the "bush" of Australia. There was a large protected lake and across the lake we could see huge forest fires burning every day. They had huge helicopters flying and sucking water out of the lake and dumping them on the fires. I was surprised how close the fires seemed to our hotel and how unconcerned most of the Australians were, but to them this is a natural occurence that the forests are prepared for since we learend that a lot of the plants grow only from the ashes of the fires.

So our trip to Yanchep was a huge success and all of us had a blast. Sorry, and all of us means the group of about 35 American students that are all part of the same program. We aren't the only US students here, but our schools (Elon, Kalamazoo, Trinity, and SMU) all do a program with Curtin and we are grouped together for orientation and everything.