Our 2011/2012 summer break

By Kanau Sion and Joanne Kanau

Whole family at Kings Park over looking the CBD

Mum and dad in Kings Park 

This is a our fifth year in Perth, Western Australia and we have gone through a few summer breaks - a few with unforgiving, scorching heat waves and others, more friendly and mild with usual crystal clear skies and often cooler days and nights. As usually the case in countries which experience the four seasons [summer, autumn, winter and spring]  summer is usually characterized by longer days and shorter nights - a completely and stark contradiction to winter. Summer is a season most people look forward to for various reasons including, long school holidays, individual and family

Mum and girls - Kings Park

holidays, taking break from work to visit and meet with families/relatives,  and a time for parties. However, for Christians it is a time to mark and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. For us though, the essence of this period is primarily for us Christians to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas day because we ascribe to Christianity. That is not to deny also that we don't put up a few parties and have not also embraced the conventional practice holidays for our kids - to take a long deserved break from a hectic long school year.
This summer, we decided to continue our usual [summer] tradition of taking our kids out in Perth and also outside the confines of the city's suburbia for  further site seeing and  to enjoy the out doors. This was also our way of getting the kids to

Mum and kids in UWA, Nedlands

unwind from their long school year. Kings Park offers a very unique attraction as it is located on the nearby west Perth city hill and provides a breathe taking panoramic view of the Perth Central Business District [CBD], South Perth and the majestically sparkling and meandering Swan River. On top of that, Kings Park provides beautiful lawns, world class public amenities including free bbq stands/plates powered by free government gas supply, toilets, shower, cold drinking water sprinkles, children's play areas and breath-taking board walk which runs through tree top levels, all nestled in the comfort of the park's rare natural forest. Kings Park is a must see for week-end day get away and a perfect spot to unwind and so we highly recommend it to anyone seeking some form of peace, solace and tranquility.

Further down towards the western end of Kings Park is another perfect spot.

Mum and kids in Synergy Park

 Although, it is slightly smaller Synergy Park provides another option for getaways with similar public amenities. Water sprinklers, bbq places, a small island on the lake, board walk over the lake, and replicas of a theme park provide exciting amusements for children and parents a like. Our children loved visiting the area and boy, how difficult it was to get them off the replica theme park and play areas when it was time to make tracks.

On the whole, Kings Park and Synergy Park provide two absolutely amazing options for individual, family and group day or week-end get away and our years of experience as regular visitors there attest to this exciting experience.

Our kids in Clydesdale Park  jetty

Another place of our choice we usually take our kids to is Clydesdale Park among other locations of convenience and is situated along the banks of the Swan River in the Southern suburbs of Perth. In the like manner to other Perth parks, Clydesdale provides all the basic services for every visitor but more importantly, a spectacular view of
the CBD from the Swan River's south banks which no other location can boast. Given the ideal location to us, it is convenient that we constantly bring our kids to and let them play and run amok in a safe and enjoyable way.

Dad on the Clydesdale Park jetty

 It is no wonder many city and suburban residents and visitors also love to regularly visit Clydesdale Park because of it's unique location to the Perth CBD. Like Kings Park, Synergy Park and other beautiful spots in Perth and Western Australia generally, Clydesdale Park appears to also be a melting pot for tourist both during the day and at night and is often labelled as a place that never sleeps.
On the flip side, for Perth residents and other city slickers who are bored sick and annoyed of the hustles and bustles of the city and suburban life, a drive and visit out of town is a best and perfect choice. There are a few exquisite places of choices we usually take our kids to and they have had much fun visiting.

Entire family at the Mandurah Mariner

Mum and girls - Mandurah Waterfront

However, according to our kids, and we agree with them to a greater extent, none of them beats Mandurrah, a beautiful Perth satellite city almost 80 kilometers in the southern coast from the Perth CBD. In our opinion, Manurrah is Western Australia's perfect version of Italy's Millan - with houses, countless boat rams built along and over the sides of the meandering water ways, not to mention the number of family catamarans and boats in varying sizes and shapes. Mandurrah provides the most amazingly spectacular and colorful array of Christmas lights radiating and reflecting the beauty of the place every festive season.  In fact, it is almost always the constant winner of the annual best display of Christmas lights competition in the whole of Western Australia. We will surely sorely miss this place when we finally return to PNG at the end of the year.

Dad and girls in front of Rockingham Plaza

Further up north west from Mandurrah are also a number of attractive places to visit including Rockingham, Shoalwater and Kwinnana among others. We particularly like Rockingham because of it's varied and range of shops all located within a mega shopping mall as well as its beautiful beaches. We don't want to sound unfair here because the same can also be found elsewhere in Perth  and other outer  suburbia. Perhaps it's fair for us to say that our decision to like this place is because we regularly visit and also that it is impossible to equally divide our time to visit all areas in the like manner. To put it simply, there are so many of them so we decided to frequent some, including [Rockingham] while only occasionally visiting others.

Mum & girls - Rockingham Plaza

The kids love to visit the Rockingham shopping mall, and although we get quite cranky at times about their demands to buy certain things to please them...typical of girls, we always budgeted well and  follow our simple family principle of 'agreeing to disagree' on what to and what not to buy. That, we have found to have a positive effective on our five girls' attitudes towards shopping. Apart from the some times annoying inconveniences relating to this the kids absolutely love going to the Rockingham beach. This beach and especially the sea provides an ideal location for surfers looking for right the types of waves and breeze. The

Girls in Rockingham Beach

perfect waves and the south west breeze needed by surfers are usually generated by the south/south west winds from Antarctica which head towards the west coast and the Indian Ocean. Rockingham is an amazingly beautiful place and we have jokingly said we could make it home should an opportunity present itself.

Wow! We have covered quite a lot of grounds here in terms of trying to tell our story about the  2011/2012 summer holidays to you readers. To conclude, those are some so amazingly beautiful places in Perth, Western Austral, and we believ also the whole of Australia this beautiful

Mum and girls in Rockingham Beach

planet earth. Interestingly, we have found ourselves so lucky and fortunate to live here in Perth and been lucky enough to visit such amazing places. These locations have been valuable and worthwhile for us and our kids to visit and through this approach we are all fresh and ready to take on 2012 as we have already started. We are honored to have been given this opportunity to live in this wonderful part of the country and have continued to cherish every moment of it.  To any aspiring visitor to Perth and Western Australia we say to this you, do it while you can. You'd be crazy not to visit while you can.