The Swarts Family Blog

In July School Holidays 2010, our little family headed off to have a grand old adventure at the paradise that is Ningaloo Reef.  Our holiday companions were Damian and Crystall Posthuma with their daughter Libbie, and Lester Zuidema with his lady Claire Taylor.

I must admit I was a little apprehensive about the trip.  Some of my worries were: Being so close to the water that Isaac could just run in all the time, campfires, THE DRIVE, the boat, Ivy's feeds, both kids sleeping, the weather, to name a few.  Aran and I had a big talk before we went nad tried to dispel some of these fears with action plans if things were to become undesirable.  This made me feel better. 

Then a group of friends came back from Ningaloo before we left to go there and didnt have the best time.  Problems with flooded tracks, animals on the road, bad weather and other things made for not the best holiday.  Made me think, hmmm are we doing the right thing?

However I can happily say that we had a fantastic trip up. After a small delay getting going we hit the road and had a great trip. Ivy was great with her feeds and Isaac slept pretty much the whole way.  It was beautiful when we got there and we were so excited!  The weather when we were there was fantastic. We had one night when a front came through bringing gale force winds with it. A bit scary, but it was fine. We had a great camper trailer so we were very secure.  We had a few adventures through the night though, helping our fellow campers pull down a few things!  The front brought a few storm tides with it the next morning, but a precautionary trench dispelled any fears we had of getting our gear wet.  We had about an hour of rain during one night, but that was all we saw of the wet stuff!  The last few days were especially magic, bringing flat as a tack seas.

We decided to leave Ningaloo in the afternoon rather than the following morning so that the kids would sleep during the night allowing an easier trip.  Good decision - they were great and we made it home in record time after only stopping at Carnarvon and Geraldton.  We got home tired but happy, ready for a sleep.  But of course Isaac had had nothing but sleep so he was hyper as - oh well, save the sleep for the next night! Was quite funny to see him so happy to be home.  All in all we had a fantastic holiday - and after a few days of cleaning up we will be back to normal (except with super tans!) 

Now I need a holiday from all that washing....

Here are some photos from our trip.  They are in order of start to finish, except I can't recall which days were which so they sort of just run into eachother. Enjoy!

Steph.xxx