western australia (WA) road trip 19 to 28 october 2026

Bee Choo in John Forrest NP near Perth, WA 27 Oct 2026

Incredibly, I had never been to Australia in my life, before this!? While working in the oil patch in the 1980s, I was due to go on field assignments to WA and had a work visa and a ticket ready - twice! - before our Australian office decided on a day's notice that they could do the work themselves, without the assistance from a Singapore-based oil well data collection and analysis expert!? When taking bird photos later that decade and into the 1990's, there was really no reason for me to go - Australia was already well covered, while places like Indonesia were begging for someone to travel and study and document the avian fauna, little known at the time.

In October 2026 an opportunity came up to visit the place: Bee Choo was between travel plans for October, Mark was still living at home and could look after the cat while we were gone. So we bought tickets and just went. Below is the trip report.

introduction

The ticket

Why haven't I done this before? Perth is just 5 hours and 10 minutes from Singapore, the cost is not much more than flying to Bangkok. The airport is great; somewhat to my surprise, the immigration auto-gate actually worked, customs never opened our bags; no queues anywhere. I love quick and easy!

The nature

Perth is a busy place with 2.2 million people, i.e. most of the 3 million who live in the state. But Western Australia is (much) bigger than Alaska, so there is still plenty of room for everyone. We went there for the wide-open spaces and the birds and the wildlife which is great. Look at these two young Australian Magpies accepting a snack from me; mother magpie is watching in the background. In Singapore you will get fined if you feed the wild birds!

The birds

In 10 days we saw 74 different birds. Or rather, those were the ones we could identify with certainty and/or got a photograph of. The parrots were the champions, look at this Australian Ringneck, a spectacular endemic which we had good views of most days. Bee Choo took all our bird photos.

The star bird

Except this photo! This is from my old compact camera with only 5x zoom. I don't really like to chase stuff, but I did bother this Emu mother for quite a while until I got a clear shot out in the open with the Shark Bay outback as a backdrop. The Emu took the prize of the trip!

And the star animal

We were seven days into the trip before we saw our first live kangaroo, the Western Grey, almost the size of the Red. It was the only mammal we saw during the trip. More about this iconic marsupial in a special section below.

Plus friends

Wide-open spaces, new sights, animals, quality time with Bee Choo, what else? Right, our Australia trip was also about visiting Singapore friends who have ended up in the Perth area. This is Serin Subaraj, his late father is featured in my 'Death' page. M.sc. Serin is Senior Zoologist with a WA environmental consultancy firm and has got it made in that state, living his dream. Will he and his fiancee ever return to Singapore? Personally I find that HIGHLY unlikely!

Ilsa Sharp

And the same way, will Ilsa ever leave Australia? Just as unlikely in my view, like Serin she has found 'The Lucky Country' with a beautiful house and a lifestyle that is hard to match anywhere else. 27 Oct 2026, we spend our last evening with Ilsa, thank you for a lovely dinner and all that delicious wine! Ilsa is a distinguished journalist, editor and writer, influential in the Singapore and Malaysian nature scene for many years and still doing editorial projects. Jay, her husband, took this photo of the three of us.

Our itinerary

Our 9N/10D in Australia. The Road Trip section below pretty much follows this sequence.

And finally ... the money

As always when I travel, I like to keep tabs on our expenses. The money this time around was not that much different from similar road trips to Cyprus, Norway and Sweden; only Alaska is obviously more expensive to visit. We were below budget on most items.