Sandra Ashenford reflects on the ups and downs of her week

THE travellers have returned safe and well from Australia, with lots of photographs, souvenirs and tales of their fabulous adventures Down Under.

They had an amazing time seeing all the famous sights and exploring some of the country’s big cities, as well as enjoying a fabulous coastal drive with plenty of time to test the waves and slide down the sand dunes.

On the long journey home they nearly ended up stranded in Dubai when the airline made a mistake with their onward booking but fortunately it was sorted out in the nick of time.

Spouse, having driven to Bournemouth and back in the same day for daughter number four’s Cheer competition, heroically got behind the wheel again a couple of days later to do the round trip to Gatwick to pick up daughter number three and her husband from the airport.

Ferrying our children about has always been an integral part of our parenting, with me doing all the local running around and spouse undertaking all the longer trips, while I sit alongside as a very ineffective co-pilot.

I’m not, as regular readers will know, a great traveller and Gatwick seemed quite a long journey to me, though obviously not quite as long as Perth to London.

Australia does sound like a fabulous place to visit, though, so you never know, I might one day make the effort and actually drag myself all the way to the other side of the world.

I would particularly like to see at first hand a quokka, a rather cute furry little thing that daughter number three and her husband met on Rottnest Island, just off the coast near Perth.

Apparently the thing to do is to try to take a selfie with one, which both Perdie and Harry achieved.

I’m not sure what the quokkas think about all the attention, but they do seem to have a permanent smile on their sweet little faces.

Perdie and Harry also met some koalas in a koala sanctuary, and lots of kangaroos which were a bit of a driving hazard as they travelled along the coast from Sydney to Brisbane in a camper van, before flying from Brisbane to Perth.

But they were absolutely delighted not to make the acquaintance of any of the poisonous snakes and spiders that everyone warned them about before they left Britain.