Two Yanks Downunder

Celebrating Fremantle

2007-03-03T02:48:00.000+09:00

November 26

Well it was time to get ready to go home. This meant many goodbye dinners including a lovely one at the local Indain Restaurant with Betty Apps.

It was also time to say goodbye to our little shopping mall:

It seemed like Freo was even saying a personal goodbye as there was a big Town festival parade that went by right outside the domicile on Pakenham:

There was this lovely lady walking around amongst the crowd:

...and the Waldorf school participated with a lovely dragon of colored paper.

There were Chinese style dragons...

..and denizens of unknown alternative universes...

The colors and imagination were genuinely awesome.

And I also learned that the Hare Krishnas are still around.

Their float was beautifully colored...

...and as it rounded the corner I even caught a glimpse of the holy man within.

I was sad that the students were no longer around to enjoy this, but it made this a marvelous personal experience that warmed me inwardly for days.

An Evening Out With John

2007-01-01T03:14:00.000+09:00

October 30,

Well, I am now more than two months behind on my blogging!! I thought I'd post some pictures from a lovely evening out with our landlord. I've got the system bugs worked out, I think, so I'll tell a bit about our evening out.

John picked us up and showed us his apoartment/condominium that he is upgrading. he has done an amazing job and it is a lovely place. We arrived in time to watch the sunset on his balcony and enjoy a nice glass of wine.

His apartment is in a bit of disarray since there are builders tromping in and out and working on various parts of the dwelling (so I tried not to take images of the messier areas). This is a shot taken from the living room area of the dining nook.

There are many objets d'art and John has a very good eye for art. He is quite eclectic in his interests. He is well read (particularly in the field of history and supports the arts (as do many Australians - in fact I am quite impressed by the way that art takes a major place in Australian culture - rendering the idea of the nexus art and class debatable - although John is quite patrician in his schooling and interests despite his farming roots.) There is a sculpture by the person who did the aboriginal woman sculpture on the hearth shelf in our apartment -

This piece is more primitive - called the drover's wife - quite exhaustive and sad in a way - but another lovely piece of art which is visible on a shelf against the side wall(on the left side of the picture - you might want to click on the photo to enlarge it - but I fear there will not be much detail.).

The above picture shows the other side of the living room area. One can see that he has collected many interesting pices of historical and artistic memorabilia. There are also photos of his children and family including (in the study area) a fenian document granting honor to his father.

Cottesloe is a lovely, sleepy little palce and we went to a restaurant around the corner (full of original paintings and red decor, (looking a bit washed out in my phto here)..

where we dined on delicious fare and had a nice bottle of wine.

Unfortunately I did not drink my fair share of the wine and this became a problem, as we got stopped by the police on the way home. This turned out to be one of the more nerve-wracking incidents of our stay abroad. Long story short, Mom and I ended up driving John's car back to our apartment and he met us there by taxi. After some good conversation and checking in on the students, John was able to drive back home safely. The Australians are very serious about DUI (what they call drink driving and licenses get lost for years for a first offense and revoked for a second one. (I don't know the exact details, but they are severe in comparison with American standards.) We were all quite rattled.

Margaret's Beach House

2006-12-25T00:51:00.000+09:00

Around the 27th of October:

Sometime around October 27th we were invited by Margaret to visit her beach house south of Mandurah. Mom and I packed up our art supplies and said Hi to Mick on our way out. Here he is in his flower pot so he can look out the window.

We joined Margaret and a friend down South. Margaret's house is in the settlement called Florida Beach. What follows are a few photos from our visit. This is her dining area in the beach house where we had a lovely lunch of bread and salad with a preprepared chook.

The beach house is a wonderful space for art.

Outside was sunny and clear. One can see part of her wall which she hired a mason to emulate on a different section of the property.

After lunch I took a walk out to the beach while Mom and Margaret and Mom chatted. This was an opportunity to take a few pictures...

... and gave me a chance to indulge my artist's eye without betraying my lack of physical dexterity (drawing-wise).

The sand had these interesting formations.

On teh way back to Margaret's house, I saw this bumper sticker, which in some ways epitomizes the masculine culture of West Australia (to me).

The snails were evidently a bit of a problem and quite large. (That is what those white things are on the aloe.)

There is opuntia in the gardens, and I had to admire the red fruits on this one.

This is a wonderful gate out to some trees that are actually in the neighbor's yard. Margaret was very sad about those trees, because the neighbors asked if they could take them down and she was too nice to say no.

So she painted her beloved trees when we got together for a little art time.

Mom and I chose other subjects.

(You've already seen my results earlier on the blog.)

All too soon it was time to return home, so we packed up and headed back. We watched the sun set over the ocean as we drove back to downtown Freo.

Penguin Island

2006-12-12T03:01:00.000+09:00

October 22 (Happy Anniversary Don back home!)

Although I have already written about this field trip in the csbsjuaustralia.blogspot.com blog, I thought I could add a few more photos on our personal blog as it was a pretty interesting experience for me. Of course seeing the little penguin nesting under the steps was the highpoint, but I was also thrilled to see the seals and some of the other native bird life. The Australian Pelican is the largest in the world and so although we were ostensibly off to seal island to see the seals (and see them we did)

...it was the pelicans that were more fascinating. As you can see there are hundreds of them here on this island.

(Here an enlarged detail from the above photo.)

Here you can see some of them flying in for a landing.

On our walk back from the boat to Penguin Island we passed by multitudes of nesting seagulls. The baby seagulls were adorable.

Of course the parents weren't too happy about all these human beings walking so close to their young and their nests, so they raised a hue and cry as we walked by.

The eggs were a dark dull green as you can see and located more or less openly in the scrub near the beach.

This area was also full of skinks that lurked nearby to prey upon the eggs and helpless young birds.

The penguin center itself rehabilitates injured penguins and keeps the ones who could not successfully readapt to the wild.

We attended an informative session about the penguins and had the opportunity to see them fed.

Fairy penguins are the smallest of the penguins.

They are also sometimes called blue penguins because their coats have a bluish cast to them.

They fed the penguins and we also got a chance to see them swim around their pool.

They swim amazingly fast and it was quite difficult to catch them on film.

After the demonstration we headed out for a walk around the island. This is an injured seal that has a large wound on the back side. He stays by himself but seems to be surviving despite his horrible injury.

More seagull eggs we saw along the walk.

The tramp around the island was a bit challenging, but Mom made it with a little help from the students in the group. (We had to walk over some pretty rocky places. We did get to see various seabirds including these terns that were nesting on a platform.

At this point I think I will close. I'll include some plant pictures of our trip to Serpentine Falls in the next section of the blog.

Weird Objects

2006-11-23T00:53:00.001+09:00

And this is a shawl knitted from spun dog hair

Prison and Where I am.

2006-11-21T23:11:00.000+09:00

No, That is not one and the same!! Anonymous commented on my last blog asking where I was. Life has been very busy. As program director for 22 students I find myself rather busy keeping them entertained and safe (see my blog csbsjuaustralia.blogspot.com if you have any questions or are hankering to see some pictures of my lovely young adult "children". ) So the answer to the question is that I'm still in Fremantle as busy as can be and hoping to find a spare moment to catch up on my personal blogging one of these days. (It will have to be soon, because I'll be leaving for home in a little over a week!)

Today, for example I graded papers until my brain turned to mush and then I was incapable of doing anything except eating leftover chocolate cake from our last birthday celebration and goodbye dinner! Tomorrow I have to get a grip and get some exercise, but in the mean time I thought I'd load some pictures from Mom's and my second visit to the Fremantle prison.

October 20, 2006

On our first visit to the Fremantle prison we had been told if we wanted to do a second tour we could take "The Great Escapes" tour for just 5$ more. I guess they were desperate for our money, because they extended the offer over the period of a week, so sure enough a week later we were rested and ready for another trek up to and through the prison and since I still hadn't seen the Catalpa exhibit (for which our flat is named) I was determined to go in and read about the escape from prison by the daring Fenian rebels.

I won't post a lot about the trip, but it was quite interesting to hear about Western Australia's most famous criminal Moondyne Joe(Whose real name was Johns). Wikipedia explains Joe's first offense as follows:

On 15 November 1848, Johns and an associate named John Williams were arrested near Chepstow for "... illegally entering the premises of Mr Richard Price, Esquire, of Pentwyn Clydach... and from there taking three loaves of bread, one piece of bacon, several cheeses, a kettle and a quantity of salt". Arraigned at the Brecon Assizes on charges of burglary and stealing, the pair pleaded not guilty. On 23 March they were tried at the Lent Assizes before Sir William Erle. Newspaper reports of the trial suggest that the pair gave an unexpectedly spirited defence, but Johns was abrasive and "contravened the conventions of court procedure". The men were convicted and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. Edgar (1990) observes that in several other cases brought before the same judge that day, guilty pleas to very similar charges resulted in sentences ranging from three weeks to three months.

Joe actually got a Ticket of leave after arriving in Fremantle and settled in the Avon valley. Later he was imprisoned for horse stealing and entered into a repeated career of escaping and being re-imprisoned (Each time his sentence was extended longer and longer and each escape found him hiding out in the Darling mountains near Perth.) They even built a specific cell for him with studs all over the floors and walls to keep him from escaping (although it was usually from the yard that he effected his escapes and not from his cell.)

Anyway - this visit allowed us to see the refurbished building without its scaffolding :

This is a visiting pen - the room to the right is for "Non Contact" prisoners and thus has two viewing slits, while the room to the right has only one slit for prisoners who get to be in the same room with their visitors.

There are several places not on the regular tour that we got to visit including this room occupied by a forger who did beautiful pictures on the wall from memory and covered them over when he wasn't working on them so no one would know he was doing them.

We also visited a different chapel from the main one on the regular tour.

I was fascinated by the imagery of prison and so will mostly just offer up a few photos like this connecting yard.

On the tour we were also educated on the different kinds of "pie holes"and orifices for passing cigarettes to prisoners. I was taken with the numbering of the rooms in this area of the prison. We were told that there were no rooms with the number 6, because it was too much like a hangman's noose.

There were some lovely, lyrical images to be found in the yard.

This image of the walls and a dandelion shows how brittle the walls actually are. Inmates were able to break through the crumbly material fairly easily.

Here are a couple more photos from the tour:

One section that I had never seen before was the women's quarters. This yard could not have been very pleasant for the few women who were imprisoned there.

We also got to hear about the Postcard bandit, Berenden Abbott, who used to commit crimes and then send a postcard of pictures of himself to taunt the authorities with their inability to capture him.

Finally I also got to spend some time in the exhibit about the Catalpa escape.

Irish revolutionaries (Fenians) who were imprisoned as political prisoners in Australia were rescued by a group of men who hired a US ship and came to Australia ostensibly as a whaling ship. The convicts were smuggled aboard and when the British wanted to fire upon the escape ship the Captain dared them to fire on the American flag. A prior incident made this a very risky thing to do, so the rebels were able to sail away uncaptured on the whaling ship Catalpa.

There were many interesting exhibits, images from the diaries a few items from the Catalpa and I was glad we had gone.

Creatures of the Night

2006-11-17T14:29:00.000+09:00

October 18, 2006

I'm almost a month behind in the blog and since there is only one Yank down under here now I'm writing under a fictitious precept but about a time when there were still two of us here. (grin).

One of the more interesting things that my Mom and I did while she was still here was a visit to Dryandra Woodland park to see some of the nocturnal marsupials.

I had originally hoped to drive through historic York, but we got lost (big surprise) and ended up getting a late start, so eventually we had to turn around in order to get ot the park in time for our appointment to see the night animals.

We did stop along the way to look at flora and fauna along the side of the road and found some particularly nice wild flowers at a little rest stop half way to the park.

As you can see the woods have a different quality than those in the south, still pleasant but the area feels more sparsely populated and dryer.

These are not lush spreads of flowers and yet they are quite abundant and varied in form.

We arrived at the park a little over an hour before our appointed time and feared we would not find the entrance to the animal sanctuary so we drove around the park a bit.

The above picture does not capture the peculiar quality of the woods the way the picture (below) on the web site does.

Unfortunately all the driving around meant we lost the sun and did not have time to draw as I had planned. Instead we wolfed down a sandwich amidst multitudes of flies and after a quick duck into the brush then headed for the sanctuary.

I took a few quick pictures in the bush while I searched desperately for a numbat famous for being one of the few diurnal marsupials that stayed awake and fed during daylight hours. Alas no numbat and very little light to take pictures by.

Dryandra Woodland Park is named for a peculiarly Australian plant form, the Dryandra, that grows in abundance in this area of Western Australia.

It is related to the South African Protea and is a strange alien-like plant form with unusual pointy leaves and antennaed flowers. (sort of).

This is an interior part of the continent and thus does not have the gorgeous beaches and humid air. Instead there is a dryer climate that serves as a home to the ants and termites and the animals that feed upon them.

The CALM (Conservation and Land Management office) website comments, "Although the numbat is probably Dryandra's best known inhabitant, woylies, tammar wallabies, brushtail possums, tawny frogmouths, kangaroos and wallabies are regularly seen by visitors to Dryandra. More than 100 species of birds live in the area, including the mound-building malleefowl."

Of course we did not see the numbat, but the Barna Mia sancturay has a big fence inside of which they keep members of endangered species to protect them from predators while attempting to breed these animals in the wild in order to release them back in to their natural habitat. They feed these animals at night so that visitors can see them (but keep the percentage of feed down so that the animals msintain their foraging habits and will be able to survive in the wild.)

The guide...

first does an educational program which tells of how and why they bait the non-native with poison-laced meat. The posion is derived from local plants which are posionous to European species , but to which the Australian animals have long become immune through constant contact. Then we go out in the dark and congregate around red lights to watch for the animals. Of course there was not enough light to take photos but that did not stop me and here is some of what we saw:

Mostly we saw woylies and bilbies. Here (from the Barna Mia website) is a bilby.

We also saw lots of boodies, and...

more exciting this rufous hare-wallaby.

Altogether we saw five different rare species and went home absolutely thrilled with the experience (even though
an inconsiderate British man insisted on talking through much of the waiting and thus risked scaring the animals away!)

We drove home in the dark contented and aware of the small animals we saw but could not identify on the side of the road.
(I guess we need to go back for a second course!)

Time speeds. Memory trails behind

2006-10-31T15:50:00.000+09:00

Saturday October 14, (More than 2 weeks ago, alas)

I'm so far behind on the continuing adventures of Lynn and Wendy that I hardly know where to begin. Many days ago I posted this picture as a teaser about our trip to Hyden and Wave Rock. Unfortunately there were no scrambled eggs involved nor teeter totters, nor even brains of child geniuses scrambled by using teeter totters. There were some rather intriguing aspects nonetheless. This is the picture of the dog cemetery outside of Corrigin. We had borrowed a car and headed due east and stopped at a few places listed in a tattered and slim little guide book I had found buried beneath the stack of gigantic tomes of truly notable Australian landmarks. Ordinarily that would make this trip sound like the beginning of some scary horror movie where everything went wrong and we were attacked by an alien intelligence trying to spread their spores among the cultured people of Western Australia. On the contrary,however, it was neither a scary nor boring event that resulted. This little book had more obscure and strangely more interesting destinations than some of the famous standards and in fact we enjoyed all the novel little items that they had listed as being of interest for people on the way to the big rock.

The cemetery has regular grave stones and memorials to beloved companion animals and also a big sign noting that one must get permission to bury one's animal there.

Just past the dog cemetery is also a wild flower drive.

Although the terrain here was much less lush than in other places we had been, there was still quite a variety of blossoms to be found.

The drive was poorly marked and a bit confusing, but still worth the time spent.

Here you see a few of the flower varieties. There were no massive displays of wall to wall blooms, but still some of the views were quite lovely.

We headed on to Hyden, which turned out to be a bit of a one horse town. We stopped at the cafe and bought sandwiches with salad and these turned out to have beets and raw carrots and thus seemed rather strange to us. Then we decided to go to the cave with aboriginal paintings in it first and do a loop bringing us round to wave rock at the end of our drive. The landscapes were a bit different from what we had seen before.

They were rocky and also had a painted desert sort of appearance almost like some of the sand pit areas of Yellowstone National Park in the States.

The exterior to the cave which was probably used for ritual purposes, is what you see above. There were many different paintings, mostly of hands to be found in the very shallow cave.

There was also a drawing of a serpent...

...and hand prints done in a couple of different styles

I took this picture to give a sense of place for this part of Australia...

...and this one because Don was so taken by the trees that he felt resembled the trees found on the African Veldt.

Mom explained to me that the trees she had seen in Kenya were much shorter than their Australian counterparts. Nonetheless, the openness of the land and the flatness of the area made the colors of the earth even more impressive.

It was hard not to think there must be geysers around there somewhere.

We got to the parking area for Wave Rock and discovered this kind of brushy area.

There was a boardwalk that lead into the bush and then sand trails that led to the massive rock formation.

It is quite an impressive rock some 100 meters long with the stain of chemicals sweeping downward from the top making it truly resemble a huge stone wave.

The images of it in the books seem to imply it rises out of the desert monolithically, but actually there is quite a lot of brush and tree growth in the area.

There are trails to other rock formations - holes and the Hippo's mouth, but wave Rock is really the most impressive, both in terms of color variations

...and size.

The Hippo's Mouth does indeed look like a gigantic hippo's jaw, but it neither photographs well, nor impresses in the same way. Here is one last look at the landscape we left behind when we turned around to head home and dodge kangaroos.

Do I need to say that we got lost again on the way home? (All roads lead away from Fremantle and none seem to return.)

Personal Time

2006-10-28T02:08:00.000+09:00

Sometimes you just need a day for yourself! (smile)

n.b.(By the way the previous sketches are for the most part not mine, but my mother's.( She is the real artist on this trip.) Sometimes I think my language made this unclear. The above mess, however, can be blamed on no one but myself.)

In Memoriam

2006-10-22T22:05:00.000+09:00

I am very sad today. It is Don's and my wedding anniversary and we are apart, on opposite sides of the globe, in opposite hemispheres. This, however, is a minor pain compared to the news I have just received that one of our cats has passed away on this day. He was a wonderful cat that chose us from his place in the back of a cage at the animal shelter, a proud strong cat who loved to hunt and to lie in the grass in the sun. He had been named Snuffy by his previous owner and we adopted him as an older cat when he made it clear to Don in no uncertain terms that he and not the little orange cat that I had wanted to adopt was to come home with us immediately. Just before we left for Australia, we learned Snuffy was suffering with liver disease and we were very happy that he remained strong and moderately healthy for Don's return. Don has done a wonderful job of caring for him during his last days. We miss him terribly.

Fremantle Prison Again

2006-10-21T14:55:00.000+09:00

One thing Mom had not yet seen was Fremantle Prison, so, about a week ago we decided to head to the prison and take the regular day tour. You may remember that early in the semester I accompnied the students on the ghost tour and I was interested to see the place in the daylight and try to decide which tour would be the most interesting. (Also I wanted to see the exhibit on the Fenian escape - which I was only able to visit for a short time, because of the schedules of the tours.)

The prison is an impressive sight in the day time: White and massive and on a hill so as to be conspicuous.

Fremantle was never a penal colony like the Eastern cities, so they did not have significant prisoner populations until after the 1850s when the city started begging for prisoners to use as cheap labor. These are buildings that now house the toilet facilities.

Once beyond the black iron gate, one has a nice view of the front yard.

Here you see the interior of the cell block from the ground floor. The metal netting was added late in the prison's history to help prevent suicides (and it took years after the particular suicide that motivated this to get anything in place.)

Here is a kitchen - on the ghost tour we heard about a cook who was murdered in the kitchen.

The yards for the prisoners have guard towers overlooking them.

In some yards they let the prisoners paint on the walls when they knew they would be closing the prison.

We could see the prison better during the day tour and the tour was much more factual than what we heard from our previous guide (but of course the atmosphere was not as intense either.)

There was a major fire which destroyed the hardwood timbers in the ceiling and the roof and so most of the original jarrah wood had to be replaced in one side of the cell block. (Here is a photo posted on the wall fromt he time after the fire.)

It must have been awful to be locked inside and see the bright daylight outside filtered through the bars and completely inaccessible.

The cells were very small (especially in the early years of the prison when prisoners slept in hammocks. On the ground floor we have examples of the changes over the years. The rooms get larger and eventually there is actual furniture. This however necessitated a change in the ways the doors would open, since furniture alsomeant objects to pile up and inhibit the opening of a door that swings to the inside.)

This is the flogging triangle. The cat-of-nine-tails was the usual form of punishment. We heard grizzly descriptions of its use and abuse.

Here you see a door into the cell for giving food.

These are the doors to death row cells. Cell number one was the cell for holding before the person was taken to the gallows.

We enjoyed the tour and decided we would come back for the Great escapes tour on another day when we were not so tired.
On the way out we noticed this tree with its amazingly contorted branches.

Then it was home to rest up from all that walking.

I think after seeing both tours that I enjoyed the ghost tour more. We heard more personal stories about individual prisoners like Moondyne Joe (a bit of a legend in these parts) although I worry about the facticity of the night tour. I also did not really need the people jumping out of cells at us - but did enjoy the spookiness and atmosphere of the darkness.

Back To See a Banksia

2006-10-21T14:53:00.000+09:00

In the Stirling Range we set out to find wild flowers and although we were disappointed not to see masses of flowers the way we had seen them in other settings, we did manage to see a few flowers here and there.

The setting was much more open and the sun hot and thus the area seemed quite severe. We saw familiar plants, banksias and grevilleae, but nothing that really looked like the famous bellflowers of the region.

On our 13 km (roughtly 1/3 of the 43 of the prescribed the drive) we saw none of the orchids we sought, but it was still with great reluctance that we turned around and headed back to Mt. Barker. We really wanted to seethose orchids, but we had to turn around or we might not make it to the Banksia farm in time to see the banksias.

When we arrived at the Banksia farm (which (hooray!) I found relatively easily despite the fact that the town had been re-routed a bit with all its cement curbing (making one feel like one was stuck in a tube and could not escape)), we discovered that a Japanese tour had not only taken over the Cafe where we had hoped to eat, but also booked the only guided tour for the time we would be there. Thus although we had intended to go for the fancy-schmancy, super-duper tour, we ended up taking the el cheapo version of self-guided tour, because there was no one available to inform us.

I did the best I could in being Ersatz Tour leader after we had a basic intro by a friend of Kevin's who helped out when they were busy. After loooking at the seed pods and being reminded of propagation and the many different appearances of the flowers, leaves and seeds, we headed out to the garden. Once again I was low on film, so I could not go wild taking pictures, but the vista from the back porch is so lovely that I had to snap it. Here you see the red algae of the pond and the Stirling mountains in the back ground

This is the honey banksia that produces the sweet nectar.

Midway through we were so tired and hungry that we went back to the cafe for lasagna or quiche and carrot cake. The Japanese were well into the middle of their tour, so we sat alone and talked, and watched a hawk making lazy circles... oh, OK, (lahoma?)... it was really a black shouldered Kite, but it was interesting to watch as it looked for rodents in the field.

We spent a long time trying to find this banksia that sends up shoots from underground...

And I think this is the old man banksia that starts of whiskery soft and gets stiffer and less cuddly as it gets older. Hmmm...

The honey eaters were loud and bustling and really enjoyed this bird bath as water source. There are two on the bird bath in this picture although they are very hard to see.

We had to drive through the whole place a second time because we wanted to check out the rare blue (silver) banksia behind the gate.

Amazingly that was our last tourist stop of the trip.

The remainder of the evening was spent getting home. We were pleased to get to see some of the landscape on the way home, but all too soon it got dark and we were tense from kangaroo patrol. The most horrible thing about the trip home was that not once, but twice birds flew straight into the car and died what I imagine to be grizzly, mangled, deaths. The first time I actually had to get out and remove the corpse form the radiator. This was so terribly distressing to me that I could not even bear to look and see what kind of bird it was that I had hit. Later a second bird kamikazed into the car. Both times I was travelling much slower than the speed limit and had no control of the situation. It ws an ineffably awful experience. As we got closer to Fremantle it was dark but we could see parts of Dryandra and Arluen(?) forests and we knew we wanted to come back and see them in the light. The way home was hopelessly complicated and we bobbed and turned and the last 20 kilometers seemed to take as long as the first 300. Fremantle is clearly a plce to leave, but not to return to.

We got home, unloaded the car and collapsed! it had been a long wonderful trip, but we were very glad to be back to our own beds, the washing machine and 100+ channel cable TV.

Up the Porongorups

2006-10-21T09:57:00.000+09:00

October 5, 2006 (middle half)
(Remember you can click on most images to enlarge them).

We really did like our little cabin in the woods in the Porongorups. I did a morning walk while Mom slept in a bit and met a dog and saw lots of birds, none of whom wanted to be photographed. The back yard had a sensual mist in the morning and as the day grew the sheep came in to the field behind the house.

The cabin itself was decorated in a primitive kind of style, complete with papier mache frame on the mirror which looked like it was simply glopped on and then painted in a quick effort with bright blue paint (and some starlike flowers in yellow). There were several childlike paintings of flowers and with the bright colored bedding. I got to sleep in the bunk bed. Oh boy! The place was very cheerful. We even had satellite TV with 4 or so stations. The refrigerator in our cabin had a lovely cartoony map of the area with a list of the names of the peaks of the not too forbidding mountains nearby.

The park was only a block away, so after breakfast and packing up we headed to the Porongorup (just say Prongrup) National Park. This is not a park with a Nature Center or a lot of Ranger help and since it is mostly mountain hiking we decided to just pause briefly (don't we always decide this?) but of course we found more than we expected.

We stopped first at the Tree in the Rock site and both went to see the Tree in the Rock - a very large tree that managed to sprout and somehow sustain itself in a gigantic rock. The walk there was surprisingly short and of course just as we arrived at the parking place a whole bus load of Aussie tourists also unloaded with their walking sticks and back packs. Some were older, but it was clear that they were planning on doing some serious hiking and it looked like a fun outing. They all headed off to the Tree at the Rock at the same time as we did, but they moved faster than us and did not return as they had plans to climb one or more of the mountains that lay further along the path.

That picture above makes the whole thing look quite unimpressive and uninteresting really, but if you take a look at this next photo and see that little figure (Mom) standing next to the rock, the magnitude of the experience becomes a little bit clearer.

Wendy left Mom with all kinds of birds

to do some sketching

while she did the heritage trail which was short and mostly uninteresting. I did see this nice fungus ...

and also this termite hill.

I was not satisfied with the walk, so I decided to go a little ways up the trail that the hikers had followed past the tree in the rock.

I could hear the birds but never managed to see one except for a single bluebird that was brown and blue/green and not the ususal one we had seen in Pemberton. I kept climbing - noting that there were permanent climbing ropes installed and that I might have to stop anytime.

The view from close to the top of Nancy peak was lovely although a bit obscured by trees and then I knew I needed to race down to Mom who had been waiting patiently. (It is a mountain in the middle of the map if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can read the names.)

We packed up and decided to head to the Stirling Range next.

These were larger mountains and we set a goal of driving on an unsealed road to look for the orchids and bell flowers.

We got ever closer as the little rental car plugged on up the hills and enjoyed the views of the mountains and hills and the yellow fields of canola nearby. (Which did not make it into the photos because the photographer was busy shifting gears.

Some drawings - Can't bear to end it all!

2006-10-20T23:03:00.000+09:00

Somehow I can not bear to write about the last day of our trip right now, so here are some sketches that Mom has done since we have been here. I'll try to actually write about something tomorrow!

Guess who!

This is a drawing of our hotel room in Pemberton:

Here is a drawing of our courtyard!

No Scrub Bird in the Bush

2006-10-17T22:23:00.000+09:00

Continuation of Two People's Bay

When we arrived at the Nature Reserve after driving over miles of isolated roads (seeing only the Goa in the road) we discovered an unlocked building with exhibits on the noisy scrub bird (complete with recordings of the call and descriptions of other wildlife). Then we walked across a sunny trail and found a bench in the shade. Mom sat on the bench and sketched while Wendy hiked the heritage trail. The rare Noisy Scrub bird was reputed to dwell in this area. While Wendy was hiking, Mom saw a rodent that might have been the rare marsupial of the area. I did not see anything exciting on my hike which was sunny and not as well protected by trees as some other trails. Mostly what I saw was swarms of June bugs. The trail led around to the beach eventually and so I was able to loop back to Mom at the end of the walk.

Some of the landscape was very impressive,

including this dark tunnel of trees on the way to the beach.

The beach was lovely, but I was disappointed to see no bird life and although I had seen a dark-headed grey bird that was not a honey eater dart across the road, neither of us will ever know if what we saw were any of the unusual animals we were searching for (and we guess they probably weren't). There were lots of leaves on the beach too that were helping to cover marshy spots. (Probably they had been put there by CALM the office of Conservation and Land Management, i.e. the National Park People).

The trees are just so different here and I can not really explain how and why, but I do seem to photograph them a lot in an attempt to figure it out!

The best part of the trip was that when we were leaving, we saw this guy scooting across the road.

He was the first (and only living snake we have seen in Australia).

We headed back to the Albany visitor's center where we waited a long time in line to book a "chalet" in the Porongorups. Then we went to the local IGA (grocery) and purchased some dinner fixings before heading to our cabin in the mountains.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that reads this blog that we got lost and drove right past our accomodations (in daylight no less) and so had to turn around - thus arriving after dark. We had a cabin next to a grandmother whom we were told was quite deaf and although we did not see her, we certainly did enjoy her garden in the back. Here is a shot of it at sunrise

The quality of the light was amazing. There were sheep in the meadow behind us and a gorgeous view of the Stirling range and it was the perfect location for our exploration of the Porongorups the next (and last) day of our trip.

I'll Be in Albany

2006-10-17T10:50:00.000+09:00

October 5, 2006

It has been really hard to learn to pronounce this City the way the Australians do (Al as in "Call me Al") Kind of like dealing with pronouncing Monticello like it is in a state famous for scotch tape and plastic wrap instead of an orchestral instrument.) (grin)

Anyway, I got up early and checked out the town for breakfast spots. After a bit of discussion we decided to eat in.When we finally left the hotel, it took us forever to discover how to get into the Albany Visitor's Center parking lot (we went in the "No entry" way (which turned out to be a bus entry. (The visitor's center was on one side of the train and bus station but had no parking at all on that side and no clear indication from our side of the street where parking was to be had.) After all that ToDo, we found out there was a business meeting in the center so we couldn't go in. Instead I quizzed the guard at the door about where to go and what to do and we decided to go to Frenchman's Bay in the morning to see the Natural Bridge and Blowholes before the weather changed too much.

It was quite an enchanting drive around the semicircle of the bay and we arrived at a place in Tondirrup park, where there was the Natural Bridge along with a busload of Japanese. We had to scramble across rocks,

but by now Mom was an old hand at this and we checked out both a big gap against which the waves came crashing in dramatically....

and a Natural Bridge formed by the stones. (duh?)

We drove down a little dirt road towards a lighthouse, but the way was blocked, so Wendy executed another of her notably dangerous mid-street U-turns and we headed to the blowholes. There were supposedly 71 steps which Mom went down begrudgingly and then there was a really long path across the rocks to the blow holes.

(I was later informed that there were at least 101 steps and it seemed like more than that to me!)

Mom turned back after almost reaching the end and she was right to do so, because the blowholes were rather undramatic although they did make a nice whistling noise along with their little puff of spray.

The best thing about this stop (besides the dramatic boulders by the sea)

was the bird sounds and the abundance of flowers.

The birds were everywhere, but would not allow themselves to be easily seen nor photographed,

so I contented myself with the slower moving flora of the area.

The views were lovely.

We also saw a lizard on the trail.

We skipped the bird aviary on the way back and headed instead to Two People's Bay - where the French and Americans met and determined to co-exist peacefully. This turned out to be a true delight.

The trip was long and many times we were sure we were headed in the wrong direction, for there were next to no signs. This
was not the typical tourist stop - it was a nature reserve with no ranger. On the way in, we were thrilled to see a Goa on the road.

We were actually a bit concerned for him as he seemed rather disoriented, but he was not dead on the road when we went home, so we are assuming he survived the day and recovered.

Mom did a drawing and I trekked around a bit and kept seeing the rear ends of lizards disappearing in the brush.

Tingle All The Way

2006-10-15T11:03:00.000+09:00

Well, the Tree Top Walk was pretty much the main goal of this trip. (By the way - just a reminder that you can click on the images to make them larger and some of them really should be viewed in this manner).

The sun made the trees glow and the walk through the old growth forest below was entrancing.

These little photgraphs in no way convey the power of being surrounded by the big trees and enveloped in their upper branches. It was hard to grasp the idea that we were so high up and that the understory with all the animals was so far beneath us.

Here are various views from the walk as the ramp took us higher and higher.

...and allowed us to see forest life at the different levels.

As one moves from one section of ramp to the next, one gets closer to the North where you can see the Porongorup Mountains in the distance.

We also learned that there were night tours for looking at nocturnal animals and maybe someday I'll get a chance to do one of those!

The tingles are characterized by a triangular base that increases with age as they have no tap root like most large trees.
When you see them turned over, their bottoms are like hollow rings. On our walk below we admired the huge trunks. Of course not all the trees are Tingle trees in the understory and there are little signs around the walk to inform about other plants that are a vital part of the ecosystem of the area. (The red trees shown here are Sheoaks, I think.)

Often these trees are hit by lightning or disease and end up with hollow centers, but are still kept alive by the transport system beneath the bark.

After we finished our walk around the big trees, we headed towards Denmark, but we made one more stop on the way at "Conspicuous Cliff".

The peak was easily accessible via stairs and though I had intended to simply dash down to the beach and back before heading to Albany and our hotel, the look-out platform led to the cliff, I couldn't resist heading out through the brush...

and then on up a bit...

before I knew it ...

I was at the top ...

....and rewarded with a magnificent view.

The beach had a stream of water going across it, so after coming down, I did not venture across to get to the sand.

Since it was getting late we drove on toward Albany - having to drive very carefully to avoid the kangaroos (all of which seemed to be going from beach direction inland.)

When we passed the Mt. Barker turn-off I felt a thrill knowing that I was in previously unexplored territory (by Don and myself on our first trip.) Therre was no turning back now!!

As we passed by a field of sheep (and we had passed by many) I noticed some wild birds leaving the road and ducking into the grass.

After only one wrong turn (because we had been warned that Albany is a complicated place to drive) we arrived in town...

...and made our way to the Fredericks hotel - our room was not fancy, but it had a toaster, fridge and everything we needed for a late dinner.

Things to Look Forward to From Today

2006-10-14T23:05:00.000+09:00

Too tired to blog - so here are a few pictures from today's field trip!

Do You Know the Way to Mandalay?

2006-10-13T21:26:00.000+09:00

Sheep or Rocks? (part 18)

And the answer is:

We had spent more than an hour at breakfast chatting with Julia, Jim and Bryan and (Pat?) It was a rousing dissection of World politics and fortunately we seemed to all agree, so there was no need for fisticuffs after coffee.

Since we were driving right by it, we decided to stop at the Bicentennial Tree. There was a whole slew of Dutch tourists who had been brought there by a bus and as the last tree climbers dismounted from the tree the gathering crowd would give a cheer to the successful climber.

It was rather heartening, so when I began to climb the first few rungs, they also cheered me on and consequently I got up farther than I had before (between half way and 2/3 of the way up to the first platform which for someone as fearful of heights as myself was pretty remarkable.)

There were trails inthe vicinity of the tree and naturally I had to photograph any wild flowers I happened to see. We saw some of the tiniest ones ever on these trails.

(Once again I am using my foot as a reference point).

Our trip through the Karri forest continued as we decided to take the long way East through Northcliff rather than what
looked like a quicker route.

This gave us a chance to stop along the so-called Karri Forest Explorer trail and enjoy the woods. This was actually at the beach stop but shows that we were still near the Bibbelmun track. This is the Wagyl - the Aboriginal creation spirit of our area (of the Nyoongar people) and is used to mark the track.

We also passed through Shannon National Park and along the edgeof Mount Frankland Park. Then it was south and along the edge of D'Entrecasteaux Park - a rather wild and unmanaged park area mostly for 4WD vehicles (But did that stop us, oh no!!) We decided to check out Mandalay beach (recommended by Jackie at Glenhaven) so we drove some 9 kilometers on an unsealed (i.e. gravel) road through a desolate area. At first we wondered if we were on some wild goose chase as the road went on and on and we saw no one on the road, but finally we got to the beach and it was gorgeous. There were large rocks and the ever bright blue sea.

The beach was named for the ship wreck of a Dutch ship in 1911. (I don't know if that was a popular ship or if it is just a lovely name, but I haven't dreamed I was at Mandalay or anything since the visit.)

After the beach it was on to Walpole where we decided to stop at Wooz and Suz'es Cafe for a burger lunch.

We were served by an earnest 8 year old who was excrutiatingly polite and quite efficient.

His mom was a round, pleasant woman who had taken over the place recently and liked the name and we had wonderful burgers and a dry piece of carrot cake before heading to the visitor's center to get hotel reservations and tickets for the Tree Top Walk. The visitor's center set us up with a room at a Hotel that had been recommended by our landlord John Lynch and then we headed on east to Nornalup and then on to the Tree Top Walk.

When Don and I had done the walk before, it had been rainy, so I was very happy ot have the chance to photograph some of the big trees in the sun. There were more people there than the previous time and so we had to wait a bit to get onto the various platforms, but we enjoyed the walk in the trees as well as the one around the trees afterwards.

I'd love a Pavlova

2006-10-13T21:01:00.000+09:00

October 3. 2006

It seems I forgot to mention some of our earlier activities, like the trip to the Pemberton Visitor's center where we
saw live Marrons (Australia's version of the crawfish - a dark and very spiny creature that is somehow gorgeous in the same way that dark red opals are.)

I had also discovered an unfamiliar spoon in my backpack (which meant I had inadvertently stolen it from our last hotel) so we also went to the post office where I bought a padded mailing bag and mailed the hotel their spoon back.

The late afternoon was our time at Big Brook Dam. We drove down Golf Links Road and after a typical Wendy turn the wrong way, we found the place.

(This is actually from Beedleup the park before the dam.)

It was getting dark, but there were two fishermen at the dam fishing. We looked at the water and walked along the Bibbulman track a bit before turning around and heading for Glenhaven. There was a bit of rain on occasion and water hung in droplets from the trees. The track was asphalt (bitumen pronounced bitchuhmun here).

The sky was grey and it cast a somber mood over the place.

We decided to eat out at the Gloucester Motel for dinner and I got my chance to finally try the Marron. It was good, a bit more rubbery than American crayfish with a slight nuance of scallop and it is not eaten with butter (which I really missed. Just about anything tastes great with drawn butter and I often wonder if it is the crab or lobster that I like so much or really just the butter.) Mom had a vindaloo prepared by the authentic Indian chef and...

for pudding we ordered Pavlova for dessert, a traditional Australian meringue dessert. (We got the last one and were kidded by our neighbor who said he wanted a bite since they wouldn't let him order his own. (Behind us in the picture is a British couple who stayed at Glenhaven that night. (A Navy Captain and his wife.))

I slept like a log that night and in the morning we packed up and headed back on the road to do the Tree Top Walk.

Of things Blue and Blown

2006-10-12T13:28:00.000+09:00

October 3, 2006

It was a darkand stormy night (seriously) with lots of wind and this set the tone for the day which was our least enjoyable of our trip, but still an absolutely lovely experience. The weather just would not cooperate and in the morning it would pour formidably, stop for a moment and then let forth again. This did not bode well for Jima nd Julia's first attempt at hiking along hte Bibbulman track and it meant we would look for inside activities for the day. We decided to go to galleries. Unfortunately Botanica was closed on Tuesdays, but we went to Roseie's quilt shop next door where we got an up close view of some of the blue Fairy wrens. The woman was very nice, but unfortunatley country crafts are really not my things, so I did not find anything I wanted to purchase.

We next went to the Fine Wood Craft gallery, where we browsed and stopped and had tea.

On the plane the woman next to me had raved about Devonshire tea and how we absolutely had to have it in the Blue Mountains when we were there. Unfortunately Don and I stopped at a Healthy place where they did not serve it and I had been curious for months about what Devonshire tea really was. So Mom and I ordered Devonshire tea (which I replaced with Devonshire coffee) and ate our scones with cream and jelly - discussing whether one was supposed to put the cream on top of the jelly or the jelly on top of the cream. After crossing through the garden pictured above, we stopped at the other shop and could not get away from a Welsh man who talked endlessly of the "Goddess" and how George Bush and Tony Blair would get their just desserts eventually (because of her?) It seems the Welsh were the first to espouse a feminized world view (according to his world view). I couldn't help thinking of the Flying Dutchman and the little poem about the Welsh - "You can always tell the English, you can always tell the Dutch, you can always tell a Welshman,..." etc.

I could not resist a small inexpensive acquisition of some prints before we left and then we headed to the Gold N Grape, another woodcraft gallery where there was a very friendly black dog (and where I spent a half hour in the parking lot on my hands and knees searching under the car seat for an errant contact lense. (Hush, Don!)

The weather cleared to some extent around 3:00, so we went off to the Gloucester tree (a fire tree which has big spikes hammered in in a spiral so that it can be climbed to check out the region for forest fires. It is one of the three big trees formerly used for this purpose.) I climbed a few rungs ( few more than I did the last time I was there.)

There was a lovely trail in the area, but we were surprised to see almost no flowers at all there.

The parrots were bold and brazen...

and I can never resist taking pictures of such colorful things...

We went around the 800 meter trail admiring the trees and then decided to finally visit the Big Brook dam (which I'll write about in the next post!)

Falling for the Falls

2006-10-12T12:49:00.000+09:00

As I mentioned in my last post, when we turned east the vegetation changed drastically. Eventhough it had clearly rained (and there was still rain in the gullies) it looked like a dry formidable climate with grey stunted and twisted trees, many with bare limbs,...

... what Mom called a grotesque forest.

This did not however mean an absence of wildflowers. They were not as visually evident, but were still to be found everywhere in the brush and along the sides of the road.

We stopped and had lunch on the shoulder and of course I took the opportunity to go photograph some of the blossoms.

We took our time getting to Pemberton stopping along the way as we saw fit and photographing what interested us.

As we got close to Pemberton we were back in the area of the big trees again. Here we stopped at a Park to enjoy the karri trees and visit the water falls that Let's Go describes as horizontal.

It was quite a climb up, but we were old hands at climbing up and down after the caves, so we marched on gamely and were rewarded with a lovely view of tumbling water from a creaky (and somewhat scary suspension bridge.)

There were many picturesque moments as we rounded a curve in the path or reached a viewing platform.

(And of course there were flowers blooming all around too. )

Can you believe this woman hiked a cave and did this waterfall too all in the same day?! (See I didn't leave her in the cave!)

More flowers:

And this is a shot just to give an indication of the size of the trees.

It was getting towards 6:00 and as anyone who has ever stayed at Glenhaven Bed and Breakfast knows, there is only rule and that is to be there for sherry at 6:00 to meet the other residents and place one's breakfast orders. Mom and I enjoyed our lemonade and met Jim and Julia who had come from Fremantle to do the Bibbulman track in the area and Eliza and David also from Fremantle. I took a bit of time to chat with Jackie and Jim in their kitchen and to catch up on the granddaughter that had been born around the time of Don's and my prior visit and also to pay for an ebay item I had accidentally (oh, okay I'm addicted, I admit it) won after departing on our holiday. The grand daughter, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous with a shock of dark hair and an adorable smile.

Mom and I ended up not going out that evening. My back was killing me and I just didn't want to drive, so we had boxed dinner in and Jackie provided us with a nice plate of tomatoes and cheese, which was absolutely perfect.

Our rooms were great, decorated with quilts in a green theme, complete with complimentary candy and impeccable country decor. We had the room in the back with twin beds and a lovely view of the garden.

Jackie and Jim claim not to be gardeners, but the grounds are gorgeous. Unfortunately this shot does not convey the abundance of color and beauty of the landscaping behind the house.

I'm kicking myself for forgetting to get a picture of Jackie, but here is her garden and she is as lovely as the flowers in the garden both physically and in personality. I highly recommend staying at Glenhaven if you happen to be in the vicinity.

Using Joules in Jewel (Caves)

2006-10-11T10:04:00.000+09:00

October 2, 2006

We actually headed north on 250 (back the way we came to catch up with the road east to Pemberton. Our next stop was Jewel cave.

Pictures can not convey the way one is enclosed and surrounded by the beauty of the formations, nor give the sense of darkness, but that does not mean I did not try to capture these things.

This tour was full of annoyingly clever descriptions of things and stories about wedding cakes with one figure (spelling doom for the bride who decided to get married in the cave.)

We were also commanded to look for images in the flows and formatrions. Trees, emus, mother-in-law jaws etc.

None of these are worth dignifying with pictures, so I will simply post the images in the order that I took them so that the viewer can draw his or her own conclusions about what he or she sees.

Jewel cave is probably the largest cave in Western Australia and they believe it may actually hook up with Mammoth cave (a cave a bit farther North on Caves Road.) There were thousands of stalagtites on the ceiling (and I could only get a few in a shot.)

This was a particularly impressive flow formation.

There were many unusual formations including helictites (Goodearth.com explasins, "Helictites are contorted depositional speleothems which grow in any direction, seemingly defying gravity. They occur in many forms from tiny filaments ... to thick, antler-like forms . Most helictites are formed from calcite.)" These went sideways and in unexpected directions and were one of the best features of the cave. We also saw pendulites that looked like pendula.

Mom managed the entire tour even the narrow places and the steep stairs.

Getting back up after the descent was the hardest, but we were glad we had gone. Nobody got left in the cave, although I think Mom tried to ditch me on one of the longer curves!

We stopped in Beedleup National Park and walked around a bit and saw some gorgeous wildflowers.

The trees were big and majestic...

...grey and proud ...

...and there was one particular pea flower (kennedia coccinea) that twined around the trees and blossomed prolifically.

The whole side of this tree is an ant bed full of the orangy-yellow sand of the region.

The flowers came in a wide variety of colors...

and sizes... (That is my sneaker at the edge of the photo).

There were multiple colors in a single area. This white clematis really sets off the other flowers around it.

And although we saw these in gardens, they really do grow in the wild.

I keep returning to the beauty of the trees. These were nothing like the giant trees we were soon to see,...

but still entrancing because they were so different and offered such relief from the bright sun.

We drove east on Bushby road and hooked up with Brockman Highway and as soon as we turned, the landscape changed drastically.

Shiver Me Flinders!

2006-10-10T17:59:00.000+09:00

October 2, 2006

So I fell asleep to the tunes of "Sister Act" on our hotel TV and slept like a log. It was wonderful to have a chance to take it easy this morning (unlike the day before when we were rushing to make our assigned time at the Aquarium.) The Hotel had some lovely flowers outside so we strolled around and took some pictures (I think Mom took pictures of the ducks that came to our back stoop to beg.

Our first stop of the day was Flinders bay per recommendation of our Scottish sounding (but actually pure Australian) hotel clerk. There was a little caravan park there and we stopped and asked permission to park there so we could take a look at the beach and the guy there showed us a short cut to the beach.

It was a rocky place with several kinds of flowers abloom...

and we both stuck our toes in the Southern ocean just so we could say we had. (It turned out to be warmer than we expected.)

We headed back to the car almost avoiding the footy game that was taking place on the caravan park lawn.

We continued on down highway 250 and stopped at the lighthouse. This one had no long walk to get there, so we looked and felt less than inspired. perhaps we were becoming inured ot the sights of crystal blue ocean and pure white beaches, we turned around and headed off and almost neglected to stop at the other sight of the area - the waterwheel. (It sounded so, well, uh, run of the mill. It couldn't be that interesting after all, could it?) Well, we were wrong!! The waterwheel was a MUCH more ineresting place to stop. The beach was full of giant boulders, any of which guaranteed a fantastic photograph! The waves were bigger and more violent on this side of the cape...

and the colors were indescribably vivid.

Also the waterwheel had absorbed calcite of some kind and become petrified in place, making it a bizarre stony ghost of its former self.

Mom and I took limitless pictures of the boulders (only a few of which I will impose on you here.)

This really seemed like the high point of the whole trip so far!

Here is the water wheel from the other side. (It was still attached to a long trough.)

Well, I guess Mom is no match for me in terms of looking at boulders. It was time to move on. So we loaded up the car and headed down 250 to the next adventure.

Ngilgi Willy Nilly

2006-10-08T14:06:00.000+09:00

Sunday, October 1, 2006 continued

We took the cave roads down the coast and stopped at Ngilgi cave in time for the very last tour.

The entrance had the story of Ngilgi described in mosaics and we read of the war between Ngilgi and the winds.

Mom was warned about the 701 steps, but she wanted to go in, so down we went into the bowels of the earth to see a cave full of crystalline structures, stalagtites, stalagmites ...

and flows.

I'm not sure why the guides feel they have to entertain us with fantasy-laden descriptions,

(the cave formations really speak for themselves), but we were regaled with tall tales and descriptions of the various crystal structures.

The tour was divided into two halves with one guide introducing us to the first big room.

This room was vast in size.

When we finished with it, without our guide, we wound around through narrow little passages to reach other smaller areas.

The first part of tour came to an end at a place called Cupid's corner. Mom and I were slower than the others so the others had turned around and returned by the time we got there. I left Mom to go around a little bend and remembered that the guide had told us we would meet up with a second guide to do the main chamber.

I worked my way through the last passage and found myself in the main chamber.

There was the second guide waiting for the members of our group (who had all evidently turned around before getting that far. )

He took me on a personal tour around the room, where I was shown a major shawl and some other notable formations.

The variety was stunning and I have to say I really enjoyed myself...

...and then I rushed back to Mom so we could get out of the cave before closing time.

We looked around the area a bit, but because we were still at the top of caves road and it was past 5:00 we needed to get going.

(I thought we had a reservation at the Mayflower Bed and Breakfast in Augusta, but it turned out I had written the wrong night on my request, so when we finally got there (after getting lost twice) we were disappointed to find out they were completely full (due to my mistake). The very nice people there were able to secure us a room in a good hotel with a breakfast basket and full kitchen for a very good price, so all was well that ended well.

We had breakfast that evening at "Squirrel's" ...

a general store qua, tourist shop, qua cafe.

Afterwards I went home and collapsed in bed - my back was killing me, I was frustrated and tired and angry with myself for making such a stupid mistake.

Bustling Busselton (Updated

2006-10-08T09:32:00.000+09:00

Sunday, October 1 2006

Okay so I'm really still writing about Saturday night, but we'll get there I promise. When we got to the hotel, I discovered our room had only a double bed and not the promised Twin and Queen combination that I had requested in the email. (Score one for my side because tomorrow's game is a lulu). Anyway, the resourceful clerk switched us with someone who had not yet arrived so that we got our proper room. We splurged on a (to us) expensive restaurant meal of 30$ each - Mom got the fillet which was supposed to by steak and turned out to be Barramundi and I got a Greek salad and Thai butternut soup. We switched and then drowned our sorrows in dessert, a piece of chocolate olive oil cake. (It had fudge sauce, ice cream and "cream" but none of the promised "strawbs" on the blackboard.)

The next morning we got off early and so we went to the markets. There was a little flea market kind of thing down near the jetty - home made jams, trinkets, eggs, and vegetables and also a whole bunch of plants for the garden.

The Busselton jetty is a very very long wooden pier that goes 2 kilometers out into the ocean. At the end is a sunken chamber for observing the ocean floor and fishes.

We were told it would take 25 minutes to walk out there - we reserved 50 minutes and still barely made it in time. It was a long hard walk in the morning sun. On the way we had to traipse past all kinds of fishermen with their lines and gear strewn across our path and although there is a train track right in the middle of the jetty - it seemed to serve as a convenient "room" for junk, so there was no straight path to the end of the pier. I saw a very interesting black headed orange beaked bird as we walked toward our goal and of course there were the prevalent seagulls and cormorants (what they call sea eagles here). I may also have seen a loon but am not sure.

We passed one fisherman who had caught these herrings. (You can also see squid caps on the left and something he called a Gar(r)di closest to the bottom right.

When we got to the end, we learned the train back was not running, so I secured us a wheel chair for the return. Then we went down into the 30 foot chamber. We were given an elevator trip down which means we missed most of the explanations, but it meant we got the best room with all of its windows to ourselves for uninterrupted viewing.

There were several different interesting fishes. This angel fish like thing was much farther south than its natural habitat and the conjecture was that perhaps global warming might have something to do with it.

What follows are images of what we saw. I thought this was a pretty fish with its red-orange stripe.

The coral was especially beautiful with its bright colors and the fishes that swam around it.

When feeding, it sends out the white flowers all over its body and when done the flowers are retracted.

We saw large schools of fish...

...as well as colorful individuals.

There were also barnacles near the surface level and as the water ebbed and flowed they would close up when subjected to the air and open again when the water returned - sticking out fan-like tongues in a graceful swaying motion.

The wheelchair ride back was faster, but also pretty bumpy with time taken out from wheeling in order to switch from the center of the track to one side or the other in order to avoid fish lines and fishing gear.

After the pier we were happy to ride in the car for a while as we headed for the cape. Before we hit Cape Naturaliste though we stopped off at a beach recommended to us by our landlord John Lynch. Meelup is a lovely swilling beach about 8 kilometers away from the point of the cape.

We stopped there for a bathroom break and admired both the beach and the colorfully tiled bathroom.

There is a long park extending from the top of the cape south called Cape Naturaliste Park.

We decided to peek at the light house, but ended up walking a long, long distance (longer than the 1.5 kilometer return promised by the sign) to get to a viewing platform.

The bush was scrubby and low but we enjoyed the different character of this flora.

And speaking of flora, there were wild flowers all over.

The photos don't really do justice to the multiple blossoms and colors all across the viewing field.

You can see some of the bushy flowers...

...and some of the individual flowers

These pink ones were breath taking.

Flowers were visible on all levels from the bushes down.

Of course we did also see the light house that we went to look for.

The sea was an enchanting turquoise blue and I'm pretty sure I saw a (humpback) whale breach way out in the distance. (There were splashes and dark shadows just barely visible 2/3 of the way out to sea.)

Images from the Kimberley

2006-10-07T22:16:00.000+09:00

Since we can't talk much about our Broome trip, I thought at least we could put up some of our drawings. Here is one
of the landscape. I will put up more later.

Beyond Yalgorup

2006-10-07T21:36:00.000+09:00

Saturday, September 30 continues....

After our visit to Yalgorup, we decided to head into Bunbury and visit the Dolphin Discovery Center. When we arived at the visitor center, we were told that the DDC was closed for the day, but we were given directions for two different birding spots.

We decided to go for the White Mangrove Swamp and so we went to the area across the street from the Dolphin Discovery Center and climbed down the stairs to the boardwalk of the Mangrove swamp.

There was a lot of bird activity, but the mangrove plants hid it all pretty well. Mom and I had walked across little Mangrove stems on our way to go fishing in the Kimberley, so we were already familiar with Australia's mangrove groves, but we read the little blurbs on ship wrecks and looked for birds.

We saw about six birds all of which we had seen often enough before,
This one according to Mom is called Willy wagtail:

...so we then loaded back in the car and headed on toward the Tuart forest. Of course neither Mom nor I knew what a Tuart tree looked like (despite having photographed one in King's Park a week or so earlier), so we drove through the park wondering what it was we were looking for.

We decided the Tuarts were the large grey trees and were amazed to see huge patches of Calla lilies (which we were later told were Arum lilies that Europeans planted and now like the rabbit, the fox and the cane toad, they were out of control.

None of these pictures show the magnitude of the problem - we passed fields absolutely full of the flowers, but there was never a good place to pull over when we saw them.

It was getting dusky and buggy at the Tuart Forest so we knew it was time to head on to Busselton, where we had booked a room for the night.

This turned out to be a nice situation - a room with refrigerator, toaster, hot water kettle and all the amenities (including ensuite (or adjoining) bathroom. We slept well and got up refreshed and ready for more adventures.

The Southland is Where I want to be!

2006-10-07T00:16:00.000+09:00

Saturday, September 30, 2006

So, we got up and packed the car for our big trip south and would have gotten out of Fremantle about 9:00 if it hadn't been for all the one way streets, so a half hour later we were finally heading out of town. My back was still bothering me intensely from pulling a muscle in the Kimberley, so it was an exciting trip with me shrieking periodically with spasms while going 110 kilometers per hour and especially when breaking! The flowers were in full force and we enjoyed the changing microclimates as we moved southward. In the Fremantle area there were a lot of yellows and pinks which changed to oranges when we got much farther south. We decided to stop at Yalgorup national Park just South of Freo, because we kept reading about Thrombalites, but could find no description of them anywhere(except they were related to stromalites.)

We headed into the park and the trail to the thrombalites was past some grey trees and then onto a wooden boardwalk. The weather was cloudy off and on and it even rained slightly while we were out on the boardwalk, but it did not really interfere with our viewing pleasure. Here we went across part of the bay passing some fascinating grass-like plants that grew off the roots in angukar geometric patterns.

As we progressed along the boardwalk we admired the deep turquoise blue of the water.

And then we looked down and we saw them, the thrombalites!! The are living stones that grow about a centemiter per year. Unfortunately the tide had come in and covered them for our visit, but it was a spooky sight to see living rocks lurking under water of Lake Clifton like some kind of zombie alien.

We next headed to Lake Preston in the same park over washboard roads presenting another chance at our favortite pastime:

Sheep or rocks?

We decided to eat lunch at the picnic site there and when I went to find out where the beach was, lo if I didn't find that the next people over (camping) included our Pharmicist from Fremantle, who recognized me. He and four other guys were hanging out drnking and getting ready to listen to the big Footy game (championship). Here we are at lunch and you can see their tent in the background.

Lunch was an exciting bologna sandwich, but the magpies seemed to be pretty interested.

These are rather large birds and 5 or six of them gathered round to see what we would leave them.

The woods were grey and tangled in this part of the park.

Although there were also the banksias and other more interesting plants too.

Here is Mom on the way to the Lake Preston beach.

Particularly interesting was a papery barked tree of a reddish color.

And here is a view of the lake. After a nice relaxed lunch we were feeling like our trip was already a resounding success.

Trip to the Kimberley

2006-09-29T11:56:00.000+09:00

I have not yet decided how much to say about our trip to the Kimberley. We have been asked not to write in a place that people from the school are liable to access, so I will probably post a few non-specific images and leave the narrative for private journals. In the mean time, everyone should know that we are back safe and sound and except for a burned hand and a pulled back muscle (mine) there were no incidents.

The view out the airplane window was astounding and will post a few of these images also. (Some are not the right color, I believe, but since I had no way of remembering exactly what colors we saw I am posting them according to what the computer thinks is the right color balance.)

The landscape seemed to change every 2 minutes and although we had cloud colver on the way up. The way home was clear and we got to see many different and incredible landscapes.

Don't forget us while we are Up North

2006-09-21T12:37:00.000+09:00

Tomorrow (Friday afternoon) we go away with the students to the Kimberley up North - so there will be no posts for about 6 days. We will be out of communication range as we get the opportunity of a life time to spend some time in the bush with an Aboriginal community.

I'm sure we will have much to say when we get back!

Wednesday Footy

2006-09-21T12:23:00.000+09:00

The Program had a great success today when our CSB/SJU Footy team had a chance to play Australian Rules football against a local Aboriginal College named Clontarf Academy.

For more photos and details see www.csbsjuaustralia.blogspot.com , but I just had to put a few photos up because it was such a great occasion.

Here are Dave and Dan preparing for play:

And here is the whole group afte the game.

Mom and I decided to go out to lunch to a little Indian restaurant that was less than 2 blocks from home.

We watched a swallow flying around as we ate. There were a couple of nests across the street under Gino's eaves, so Wendy naturally had to take a picture:

The food was good and reasonably priced and the outing gave us time to get all our other errands done before a meeting about Broome with Simon and Wendy's appointment to watch the "Yankeroos" play footy. On our errands we saw this woman and her poodle. The poodle had dreadlocks in both its tail and head hair. (I wish I had a shot of its face.)

Monday Errands

2006-09-20T10:01:00.000+09:00

Yesterday we had an interesting experience. Mom and I had errands to run and were at the Chemist because she had been given the wrong test strips for her diabetes tester. A 25-35 year old young man was in line ahead of us. He was an interesting looking man who almost had the air of the street about him, but he was clothing was unsoiled. He had clean fingernails, and dark clothing that had just a whiff of shoddiness about them. He did not smile and was neither overly skinny nor well-built but looked scrappy without being wiry. We watched as the druggest brought him a little plastic cup of a dirty ale colored liquid with an accompanying regular sized plastic cup of water. The druggest rummaged through a large book, checked off a name as the man consumed the liquids at the counter. Of course what we had seen was the dispensing of methadone, somethiing I had read about but never seen before.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Mom went out with Margaret for the afternoon and although I had wanted to be virtuous, I did a few errands, but mostly lazed around. I had hoped to paint but after I finally decided upon my subject, there was not enough natural light, so I turned to making some necklaces instead. In the evening we watched CSI and The Closer and
went to bed after a nice relaxed day.

Pictures for my Family

2006-09-19T14:39:00.000+09:00

Members of my family have been asking for images of this and that. Here are some of these and those:

I don't think this really is a kangaroo, but here it is anyway.

This is the little bird that has built a nest on our patio. It has a hanging basket nest and is probably a honey darter.

This is Wendy in her Hair wrap.

Caversham for the Birds

2006-09-18T20:46:00.000+09:00

Well, it turns out that there was more wildlife in the park than we even imagined. They let these wild monsters wander around outside the cage!

Mom spotted this one on a stump.

The variety of birdlife was incredible. I know the ducks are nothing uncommon (even though they are beautiful.)

The miner (myna) bird is a bit more out of the ordinary!

This is a quokka - rodent found on Rottnest island in the vicinity of Fremantle.

This is a quoll - a very jittery nocturnal animal that I managed to catch at his dish.

These are one of the many varieties of parrots that are native to Australia.

Black swans are the State bird of Western Australia.

Can you believe I found another owl picture?! (Yeah, of course you can!)

These parrots are very brightly colored and fly around wild.

As we got ready to leave the bats were waking up and dining on fruit left by their keepers.

This was a lovely bird in one of the free flight cages.

The birds nested all over the cage. Here we se the rare kangaroo bird at rest.

I'm not sure what these large rodents are but they come in grey and red and a are a bit skittish.

They have large tails that they use to protect themselves and they swarm across the lawn.

They don't make a lot of noise and seem to take things pretty easy.

And they multiply like... See the little baby?

So that is what we saw at Caversham. We had to struggle to find the right roads home but managed to get home faster than we got to the park. We were all tuckered out and happy to get home.

Got owls?

2006-09-18T12:39:00.000+09:00

I'm not sure why (perhaps it was because they were awake) but I seem to have been obsessed with the owls on this trip. perhaps it was hearing barking owls make "woofing" noises that started us down that route, but the owls were alert and fascinating.

And how can a photographer pass up a shot like this?

Okay, now I know this is not an owl, but it is a gorgeous blue-winged kookaburra.

Awww....

I wish I could remember which was which kind of owl. We saw lots of different kinds. I think this was a masked owl.

This was probably the barking one.

I should also mention that the landscape of native plants was also breath-takingly beautiful. I know I sound like the typical over-enthusiastic American with all the excessive epithets, but it is an inspiring landscape- so different from the one we know at home.

This was a bustard, intently involved in a mating ritual while his companion ignored him completely. He hooted in a bass profundo way and swaggered while she (unimpressed) continued to forage for food. (Sounds too tempting to comment upon, doesn't it!?)

This is a glossy ibis rom a cage with many Thick-knees and pigeons.

Reptiles are under-represented at the park, but there were a few in cages both in the open and in a mini-reptile house behind the wombat pavillion.

We also passed the red fox sitting and waiting for dinner.

The dingoes lay out on a rock and got a rather excited when the rather excited male emu was chasing the female around the cage.

As you can see this one was planning a family already. The eggs are an extraordinary green color.

Oh, what's that? A kangaroo?

Oh, no, it's a wallaby. Stay tuned for kangaroos.

Caversham Wildlife Park Again

2006-09-17T21:46:00.000+09:00

Since I know that my Mom loves wild animals (She went to Kenya on a photographic safari for goodness sake and she's the one that inspired me to feel that way) I thought it would be a great idea to return to Caversham so that she could enjoy the animals too. So today we bundled ourselves off in the campus car (after spending the morning watching "Bad day at Black Rock") and headed for Caversham. As usual we made a couple of unplanned detours, but actually this getting lost led us to a wonderful field of wild flowers that was well worth the frustration of not having any idea of where we were.

We headed to the park and decided to check out the wombats as soon as possible, so rather than starting with the kangaroos, we headed through Southeast Australia toward the wombats.

It was a day of rodents and owls. There are many cages with some of the less springy members of Australian fauna. (i.e other things besides kangaroos that are interesting to look at.) For example here are some cute little rodents all curled up to sleep during the day.

Since we got there in the afternoon, some of the bats were beginning ot stir. By the time we left in the evening they were up and feeding, so I got to see a completely different set of animals this time around.

Of course it was hard to resist taking pictures of some of the more colorful birds again.

And even though I swore I would remember what this was - I now have no idea whether this is a poteroo, a padmelun or what!

On our way to the wombats via the Koalas, we passed many cages of animals from the Southeast and Northeast. No that is NOT a kangaroo, but some kind of wallaby (I believe).

Of course the Koalas never get any less cute, so we HAD to stop and say hello - pet them and photograph them endlessly. It was always a case of wanting to take just one more picture.

Some were just settling down for a nap, looking quite self-satisfied and content.

The attendant told us they could be quite active, but this was definitely a slow time of the day.

These younger ones were watching the people watching the Koalas.

Of course we got distracted by the Tasmanian devils, so we stopped and looked at these scary little guys. Their jaws lock in place once they chomp down and if they get you, they pretty much become a permanent part of your anatomy!

We finally did get to the wombats and here is Mom petting the wombat.

The next part of our blog will concentrate on birds (oh yeah, and maybe some kangaroos!)

Of Gallery Openings, Yanchep and Pinnacles (part 1)

2006-09-13T11:09:00.000+09:00

Friday was a busy day. We had tea with the Vice Chancellor and Ambassador's wife and sandwiched this in between Simon's class and his orentation for the Broome trip.

That night Christine and Tasha joined us for a trip back to the Fremantle Arts Center for the Exhibition opening of a Print show. The celebration was well attended and we were pleased by the quality of the art displayed. Tasha was so pleased, that she bought herself a print (The best one there, in my opinion - a lovely dramatic graphic print of a lving room with chair and cushion.) There was food and wine and anouncements of prize winners and we had a lovely time.

The next day (Saturday), Mom and I got off a bit later than hoped and found it much less difficult to get out of town than expected. We took the highway across the bridge and it took us exactly where we wanted to go up the coast toward Yanchep National Park. Right after we had turned onto the road for Yanchep, but before we came to the ranger station, we were pleased to see some kangaroos grazing on the side of the road.

We showed our park pass and then proceeded to drive around a very lovely park. The buildings were quaint and we appreciated the beauty of the orange vine on the top of this particular building.

We stopped at the nearby information center which turned out to be a glorified souvenir store (in another very picturesque old building).

...and then were delighted to discover that there was a Koala enclosure where the Koalas were loose in the eucalyptus trees, so we would have a chance to observe them (more or less) in their natural state. We walked through a well labelled botanical garden that had many lovely blooming plants and stopped to view a few of them.

I was quite intrigued by this eucalyptus that had the blossom coming out of the side of the stalk.

...but then headed straight for the Koala enclosure from which we could already hear the bellowing of the dominant male. The koalas were having breakfast and soon afterwards curled up and went to sleep.

They are hard to distinguish from the trees they live in and are basically furry lumps that hang in the crotches of trees. None of the pictures came out very well because of backlighting, but you can see that they are Koalas if you look carefully.

The park was made up of several microclimates, including a lake which was a santuary for the Tiger Snake as well as various bird life

Upon arriving we had been greeted by the whistles of flocks of White Tailed Cockatoos, and they continued to serenade us through this part of the park.

They travelled in large groups and taunted us, but never allowed us to get a good photo of them. We also saw the green ring necked parrots and some galahs, like this one that was searching for seeds on the ground.

This part of the park was one of several different areas connected by a circular road and so we travelled on to a second section that had some limestone caves. We decided not to tour "Crystal Cave" but did walk along one of the collapsed caves. At the beginning was a Spring area with palm trees and a different kind of vegetation from the brush farther away.

We walked along beside what had been the roof of a cave that had collapsed and were able to view the walls of the cave nearly in tact. These consisted of large rocks, which had been eroded by water in the forming of the cave. This one was called Wild Dog Cave by the Aboriginal people.

We saw these red trees on the way back to the "Spring area" of the trail.

We have been very fascinated by the grass trees ever since arriving in Western Australia and found these particular ones near our car to be a lovely specimen.

After driving around the Park Loop we decided wehad best be on our way and headed north and east away from the coast (because the map showed a dortted line directly above us.) We drove to the largest town in the area, Gingin and were famished by this time, so we had a typical Australian snack - a meat pie, some fish and chips and of course dessert of a cinnamon bun and carrot cake.

There was a lily festival going on in town which we were sorely tempted to visit, but common sense drove us to seek out a gas station instead.

Daytripping part 2

2006-09-10T11:38:00.000+09:00

After our stop in Gingin we had decided it was too far to go to the pinnacles today as by the time we had finished lunch it was after 2:00 and we reckoned we had another 3 hour drive, so we stopped to get gas before the long trip home. At the gas station they told us the pinnacles was only another two hour drive, so we changed our mind and decided to risk it, even though Wendy was already imagining the dozens of kangaroo carcasses we might leave behind when trying to return home during the dusk.

The change in landscape from region to region is always fascinating and although there were never any good places to pull over, we saw some beautiful fields of wild flowers (particularly the yellow ones in this area).

We passed a wind farm at Emu Downs (where we saw no emus nor place to stop and take a picture. I know it is impossible to tell that these are windmills, but trust me, the tiny white lines in the background (you'll have to click on the image to see them) are windmills.))

When we got to Nambung State park (where the pinnacles reside (most of them), we were very happy that we had changed our minds. The rock formations were magnificent.

Also we were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them. They stretched on for miles quite like the poppy fields in the Wizard of Oz.

The pinnacles are basically a petrified forest of limestone tree stumps that were buried for years until the wind blew the sand away from them.

They stand about six to eight feet tall in little clumps and are surrounded by the reddish or white and ochre colored sand. We had particularly dramatic weather and did not know if it would rain or be sunny, but the consequence was a full rainbow that stretched from one side of the sky

...to the other completely unbroken.

Most of the rocks are pointy, but this one had a particularly interesting texture.

Here is Mom amongst the pinnacles and also a chance to reference the size. (These seem a bit smaller than the earlier ones)

We drove around a curve and came upon these perforated pinnacles. Unfortunately we could not stop there to take a careful shot, but you can see the holes pretty clearly.

The seeping in of different chemicals into the wood left different colors in the rock.

...So there are many different shapes and colors to please the eye.

As we left we stopped by a little pull out and saw these kangaroos grazing. (Making Wendy even more nervous about the drive home.)

This was called Hangover Beach and was an absolutely gorgeous shoreline.

They call this part of Australia the Turquoise coast and the water is deep blue and beautiful.

There are also lovely flora and fauna - iceplants and seagulls as well as other flowers and scrub. I captured this fauna heading to the beach.

Here are some images of the yellow wild flowers near the beach as we left and the sun began to sink.

Our trip back was indeed a bit stressful. Mom was on kangaroo patrol and at dusk we did indeed encounter two different kangaroo crossings or near crossings. We passed one guy who munched quietly on the side of the highway (and Wendy began to think she would have nothing to worry about) until she saw a dark spot inthe road ahead. As she got closer she saw it hop to the side of the highway, only to watch it decide to jump back across in front of her just as she was starting to pass. Thank goodness she had had the foresight to slow down upon sighting, so he passed by without incident and other than two freshly dead kangaroo bodies that had not been there on our drive up we spotted no more kangaroos on the road. Other then getting lost and going north to Badgingarra (and adding 100 km to our drive home in the dark) We had a safe trip home and got in around 10:00, exhausted, but happy.

A Perfect day with Margaret- continued

2006-09-06T13:57:00.000+09:00

We finally tore ourselves away from Evi's beautiful showcase and rode through some wealthy residential areas to Margaret's home. She gave us a tour and she also has a lovely home filled with artworks, many of her own and many from friends and well known artists of the area.

The entry has these lovely Dutch ceramics, many of which were brought back by Margaret's husband, Frank.

The living room has a large fireplace set off by an enormous light-colored oil painting in a Pollock-like flung paint style.
(Seen on the right in the photo below. The color here is not very good).

Here is the couch wall in the same living room:

And here Mom gets a tour of the other end of the same room.

Margaret and Frank's home has a very peaceful quality to it: elegant and yet also full of fascinating objects. This is a piece of found wood that she framed in front of some black paper.

Even the halls are lined with stupendous paintings.

Margaret has spent some time in Tokyo and her bedroom has a gorgeous textile piece from Japan above the bed. She has also brought back a Japanese fire helmet among other unusual pieces.

Her garden is filled with a variety of sub-tropical and tropical plants and trees and she has several different gardens set around her H shaped home. Here is Mom enjoying the back garden.

And here is yet a different view:

In that same garden we were delighted to find haworthias and succulents in a container and Margaret was generous and even supplied us with cuttings for the Henry Street garden.

I couldn't resist putting in a picture of this South African daisy, even though it is simply an imported nursery annual.

It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to see such enticing gardens.

This is a work area where Margaret does some of her silver work:

After enjoying her hospitality, we headed off for Subiaco for lunch at a small Greek restaurant, which also was filled with art, mediterranean objects and photographs of the owner's family. Restaurants in the area tend to be smaller than in the U.S. and have a more limited range of choices, but also are high quality and comfortable. There was however a tremendous variety of desserts and Mom and I could not resist having some lemon poppyseed cake (We hope we don't face any drug tests in the next few days!) The food was good and the conversation even better.

Margaret is a highly educated, charming woman with style who really knows her art, both local and international. She attended art school later in life, but knows her passion and has explored a wide variety of media including painting, clay sculpture, embroidery and even silver work.

To top the day off, we visited the Laurence Wilson Art gallery on the University of Western Australia campus.

There was an exhibit on "Picturing the Sea" and again there was quite a disparate group of paintings. Everything from an Aboriginal painting called "Scar" that was an abstract depiction of blood and oil in horizontal layers (reds and purples) representing the labor abuse of the artist's grandfather by European Australians, to turn of the century landscapes and even an installation with large seed pods on a fabric rectangle laid out in the center of the first gallery.

After our visit to the museum we strolled around the grounds of the University. They have an attractive sunken garden in the vicinity, where we enjoyed the plants and flowers.

This is a lovely tree with a very knotted trunk down in the basin of the garden.

Here you can see some more views of the garden with Mom and Margaret looking down into the garden.

I love the textural element of this combination of plants:

Unfortunately the time had flown by and it was already late in the afternoon, so Margaret took us back to Freo. On the way home she stopped at a bakery so we could buy some artisan bread and also pointed out places to buy quality wool. We followed the river back and disembarked on Henry Street.

Upon arriving home, we were so inspired by our day full of art, that we decided the perfect ending for the day would be to sit out on the porch and do a drawing or watercolor. Both of us were very dissatisfied with our work, but we will resolve to keep at it and do better tomorrow. (which we need to do, because it got so cold on the porch after the sun started to set, that we could not really finish our work.)

It truly was the perfect day! Great food, great art, great weather and superior company!

(Updated) Margaret takes us to Evi's

2006-09-06T00:22:00.000+09:00

One of the good things that happened yesterday (Monday) was that Margaret Bongers, Pat King's sister, called and invited us for an outing on Tuesday.

Wendy dashed out and got some sweets and we both did some cleaning and straightening. Margaret arrived about ten thirty and we invited her in for tea and scones, before starting our tour.

Thus began the most interesting day for Mom so far. Margaret drove us all around the Fremantle/Perth area past a Majolica store

...and a yacht basin on the Swan river. Because the water is so deep, it is a dark, dark, blue, quite striking with its white boats and Italiante houses perched above.

As she drove, Margaret showed us the locations of several art galleries and where other stores of interest might be found. While in this upscale residential area, we passed the house of an artist friend of hers, who was outside working, so we stopped to meet her and to view her work.

Her name is Evi Ferrier and she is a very successful and inspiring artist. She has almost completely filled the walls (outside and in) with found objects, broken tiles, pieces of sculpture and paintings. The first thing one sees when one arrives at Evi's is a house, whose exterior is covered in mosaics.

On the roof is a large sculptured dog done by a friend.

Uner the carport is an enormous sand sculpture of a conglomeration of people. There are candles on the top and it must look fabulous when the shadows play over the geometric lines of the figures.

After entering the gate, one is greeted by a gorgeous weeping wisteria hanging down from above, which perfectly complements the gliter and dazzle of the courtyard and house walls

and a nearby pool (painted on the bottom and fence by another firend. The walls are decorated with broken tiles, teacup handles and all manner of ceramic materials.

Evi (Pronounced Ehvee) has been mentioned in several books and publications (even in the States) and is a cheerful, ebullient woman, whom Mom describes as warm and gracious.

She took us of a tour of her home and every room was unique and fascinating with its own atmosphere.

The living room was wall to wall paintings and even the bathroom was full of little bottles and interesting objets d'art.

The kitchen is a cheerful place full of warm yellows. It had an almost Mexican feel to it (and several of the artifacts around the house were Mexican, I noticed.)

She shared her living arrangements with a gorgeous harlequin Great Dane who lay majestically on his cushion and was as calm and friendly as any dog could be.

Here you see Margaret and Mom taking the tour:

There are large windows that look out onto the patio, so that the exterior and interior work in a complementary fashion.

I just could not get enough pictures of the place and wish I had taken even more, but I felt so intrusive waltzing through the house and snapping pictures left and right.

It was avery inspiring experience and I am eager to go back to my mosiac work when I get home. Mom and I were motivated to do a little painting when we got home that night!

More pictures and the next part of our exciting day will be continued in the next blog entry.

Sunday

2006-09-05T23:43:00.000+09:00

Sunday was another lovely day, and so we enjoyed a leisurely walk to the market. Outside the market there are always buskers of various kinds and that day there was a man preparing to ride a very tall unicycle.

As is the case with most of those guys, he had a very amusing patter and we stopped (but only briefly) to be sure that he would indeed stay atop his contraption before continuing on to the market.

There we laid in a supply of food, well vegetables, anyway. The market is similar to a Mexican market, crowded with vendors as well as customers.

On display was a diverse variety of wares including the infamous Floonie store which we passed by on the way to the food.

After finishing at the market, Wendy walked the veggies home while Mom waited on a bench near the "Cappuccino Strip". Then we walked to the grocery store. On the walk a severely disabled, (but lovely in temperament) man in a motorized wheel chair came up to us and congratulated Mom in a belabored fashion on her tenacity in walking with her stick (cane) and to tell her to keep up the good work.

We had lousy curry that night. (Wendy just wasn't up to good cooking!)

Our Saturday Out

2006-09-05T22:58:00.000+09:00

Friday evening Katie Healey came by to bring us our tickets and so we invited her to stay for dinner. We were tired from shopping, so we had made a pumpkin (otherwise known as squash) soup and augmented it with an Australian meat pie (for Mom) and a cheese sandwich for Wendy and Katie and left over broccoli that never gives out (and is still sitting in the freezer). It was a relaxed evening.

The next day we had an early visit from John Lynch and a plumber who came to fix the leaking water heater.

Then we decided to use the fact that you can ride the trains for two hours on any ticket punch to visit a museum in Perth before going to the Footy game in Subiaco.

We opted to visit the museum closest to the train station which was the Western Australian Art Museum. Because time was short, we had to leave before we saw more than half of it, but we enjoyed the second room that had art from the various areas around Western Australia. We also went out on the Verrranda and took pictures of the trees. (All on Mom's camera -yet to be developed).

We got back on the train and went to West Leederville from whence we were able to walk to the oval. Wendy miscalculated a bit, first by getting us there far too early (more than 90 minutes so) and secondly in thinking that we could stop at a cafe or diner in the area. West Leederville is a residential area with nary a store in sight - so we had no choice but to go straight to the oval and enter the stadium. We were starving and able to find one vendor open that early (after much searching). There was, however, a show, in that two high school footy teams were battling it out, so we got to watch the up and coming footballers in action.

This is a view of the oval from outside as we approached the entrance. An Australian football field is absolutely gigantic, bigger in both length and width than an American football field.

The day had been warm, but we were in for a shock as far as the extreme change in temperature after sunset. Here as you can see it is sunny and warm. Notice there are not too many fans in the picture, but there is lots of sunshine!

When the Dockers actually got to playing, the sun had set and an unfriendly wind decided to pierce our clothing and chill our bones! Alas, we are not the diehard sports fans, that the Australians are and we beat it out of there before the end of the second quarter. Of course the Dockers had a safe margin of victory, so we did not feel like we were letting them down and they ultimately won their last game of the season by more than 70 points.

We went home and watched the end on TV in the comfort and warmth of our living room.

Lynn Arrives (catching up on Thursday and Friday)

2006-09-05T00:51:00.000+09:00

Thursday was a really busy day. Not only did I have to get up and finish grading papers for class, but I had to run pick up the car and then pick up my Mom who was coming to take over the Assistant Director duties, from the airport. It was rainy and not too attractive out and I was very nervous about whether I would get lost again going or coming to the airport. To add to the pressure, I was informed that someone needed the school car at one oclock and Mom was scheduled to arrive at 11:25. With picking up baggage and the fact that her plane had left Sydney 20 minutes late, I was even more anxious because the last trip back from the airport had taken 2 hours due to some injudicious geographical indiscretions on my part. Would I be able to handle the task at hand, or would I be an abysmal failure destined for the Airport Loser Hall of Fame?

Ultimately I arrived early and without incident so I ended up parking by the side of the road in order not to go into short term parking too early. This turned out not to be such a great idea (even though there were some half a dozen other people pulled over to the side of the road doing the same thing.) It seems two very full flights from Sydney left at exactly the same time and arrived likewise simultaneously. This meant that by the time I pulled into the lot 5 minutes before the flights were to arrive, every short term parking space was taken as well as some invented spots along the sides of the parking lot. After driving endlessly I was able to pull into undoubtedly the farthest spot away from the airport that anyone could have found in short term parking! To prove how panicked I was, I confess, I did not even take a single picture! Can you imagine, ME not taking pictures!! (And I had such an opportunity to take a picture of a drug sniffing beagle, too!)

It turned out I was there in plenty of time and had to wait around while people unloaded. Eventually a nice woman wheeled Mom (all decked out in pink) out in a wheel chair. We collected her luggage, and headed home without any terrible events except for one cuss word from the driver when she realized that she had almost taken us to East Perth because of a fork in the road. We arrived at the University at 1:03 and then headed home for unpacking (and class preparation).

Mom got settled in and I figured out the Video player so I could show the students Breaker Morant at the flat that night instead of our usual class. We had to go to the grocery store to prepare for the evening's event and get Mom some supplies, so we walked to Coles (the grocery store) and gave Mom a little taste of her new home for the next couple of months.

That evening, she met the students, stayed up the full length of the day and actually stayed clear headed and comprehensible the whole day. (I know I was no where near so lucid when I arrived). She helped me get snacks ready for the students and straighten up and so I was already forcing her to work within hours of her arrival!

On Friday we went into town and did a bit of clothes shopping. Like Daughter, like mother. I just couldn't really elieve that Fremantle winters would be very cold, so I had not brought much in the way of warm clothing and so too Mom needed to go find a long sleevede shirt or two to compensate for her flimsy wardrobe. Target had been having a wonderful clearance sale, so we shopped to our hearts content and on the way home split a scone from Culley's tea room.

Here you see a friend that we picked up while dining. He hopped around and dined on the left over crumbs and seemed like he might not want to wait until we were finished (but he did).

Mom even saw a Galah flying around on her first day out! (It was the first one I had really seen in the wild too.) We came home and had a nice dinner and prepared for our first major outing on Saturday when we would go to the Footy game!

A trip to King's Park

2006-09-01T22:38:00.000+09:00

Sometimes my office seems a bit bleak and I know its time to get a change of air. (Of course the Department of Mine Sweeping sometimes does seem like my true job position).

This week I decided to take a train ride to Perth and visit King's Park. King's Park is a large garden on the banks of the Swan River, that has a botanical garden and a wonderful collection of native flora (and even some fauna). It is also near a hill that is a sacred spot to the Aboriginal people who first lived here and houses an art gallery.

It was not the most successful trip. I had used up my last multi-rider ride and needed to purchase a ticket and that ultimately caused me tomiss the train by 10 seconds. (I was racing to get to the park before 10:30 forthe Wildflower tour and that set me back a bit (as did the fact that in Perth the first bus driver refused to let me on the bus and the second bus driver had to inform methat I was waiting for the wrong bus. When I finally got to the park I found I had the time wrong and the tour was well under way. (When I caught up with the tour it turned out to be a history tour and not a botanical one, so it was a messed up effort all the way round.)

So, I set off on my own to explore the vegetative matter in the vicinity. As usual I took a lot of pictures. (Most of which need very little description. There are many wild flowers in bloom right now (we are approaching the major blooming season).

This is a general view of a garden of native plants near the entrance to the botanical garden.

The garden lies along the river bank, so there are beautiful views of the city across the river at every bend. Here is a shot of one of the paths along the river.

Brightly colored flowers accentuate the beauty of the unusually shaped low-water plants.

The garden has many different smaller gardens within the perimeter. I'm amazed at how many orange plants there are, but my favorite is the red flowered plants. This one has flowers and seed pods coming right out of the tem.

The grevillea are incredible and there are separate gardesn for Banksia, Acacia and melaleuca (among many others). They even have a little tree level walk, that is qiuite interesting.

I love the variety of flowers and the many different forms of the blossoms:

The Swan brewery is on the River very close to the park.

I heard so many different bird calls - at least seven different kinds and had no idea what kinds of birds I was hearing,

although I did see a blue-winged kookaburra and caught a fuzzy shot of him flying away as well as a few of him sitting in a tree (But he wasn't eating any gumballs.)

I was amazed at the sheer variety of fascinating floral forms to be found in the garden.

I love the Kangaroo paw which is the flower of West Australia.

Here is a Melaleuca from that specific garden.

All the plants seemed reallye amazing. After the garden I headed home via the arcades. I had a great Sushi roll before my return to Fremantle. The day had been saved even though it had started out wrong.

Sunday in Subi

2006-09-01T08:11:00.000+09:00

Visiting Christine's house on Saturday was not enough of a good suburb, so on Sunday I headed back to Subiaco, this time to enjoy a free concert and to look around with a bit more leisure.

Subiaco is a trendy suburb, great for shopping and people watching. It was the day of the big game between the two local Football teams, so I shared the train with dozens of excited fans of the Fremantle Dockers (shown here in their purple, green and red and the Eagles whose fans wore yellow and blue. The Dockers fans expected to be very outnumbered and the team has been having an up and down year, so most thought the eagles (the more upper class team) would trounce the primarily working class supported Dockers. (It turned out that the Dockers would win by an overwhelming margin.)

When I arrived in Subi, there were the ticket scalpers selling their wares for the sold out game and for a split second I considred going tothe game instead of the concert, but since we have tickets for the game on September 2, I decided against it and headed down the street towards the arts centre.

On the way I stopped into the tiny little Subiaco history museum to see what they had to offer. The most interesting exhibits were parts of the old church.

Then it was on to the concert by Sue Bluck. The arts center is in a very nice location.

In the back are mosaic lizard sculptures and onthe side is one of the most beautiful wooded parking lots I have ever seen. Of course as ususal I had gotten the time wrong so I was late for the concert, but fortunately the football game had siphoned off the ususal large crowd, so I was able to get in despite the fact that tickets usually go long before the concerts start.

I was so impressed by the quality of this concert. Sue has a honey smooth voice and sings a wide variety of bluesy jazz. The bass player looked like one of the Baldwin brothers (maybe a younger Alec which you can't tell from this photo) and the saxophone player was absolutely amazing. I resolved to buy their album opn the spot (although it turns out their newer stuff is not on the album I bought and the older stuff is abit less exciting.)

After the concert I came home and rushed to the market where I had three and a half minutes to do some vegetable shopping for the week. I was pretty happy with my results. For $10 I scored veggies that would have cost more than fifty dollars at the grocery store, so of course since there really isn't enough pictures of food on this blog, I thought I'd better record my success photographically.

Longest Day Ends … In MN!

2006-08-31T21:56:00.000+09:00

All right, so the title is a giveaway, but I could be practicing lies, deceptions (… things we are only just beginning to learn about… cf Galaxy Quest).

As far as readers are concerned, the suspense intensifies as Don disembarks in Los Angeles with multiple hurdles to cross before he can even contemplate catching his last connecting flight to MN. Do not worry about the mule, just load the wagon. These words serve him well in this situation. Go to baggage claim, wait, wait, wait, pick up checked luggage. Stand in customs line, hand over passport and declaration form to the agent, after a brief wait, get waived forward and he is free to leave the international terminal. What happened to the promised thorough security check? Do not say anything, just keep walking. Do not look back, do not stop, do not pass go!

The distance between the international and domestic terminal was a pleasant walk in the evening air five weeks earlier. Now it is a brutal shuffle in the summer desert heat with an extremely heavy bag that is difficult to balance. Nonetheless, Don arrives at the correct terminal and then plunges into the chaos of the NWA e-ticket line! A woman who asked him if her teenage children (who mistakenly stood in the wrong line for who knows how long) could cut in front of him met with the response that he had a 12:15 to catch, after which she disappeared. Thankfully, when he got to the front of the line, he had his NWA ID number handy and that quickly produced a boarding pass.

Afterwards was when he began to quickly learn more about the new world of security. He went to check one bag and the employees that were previously so helpful placing tags around his bag did not take that same supposedly NOW checked bag

and place it on the conveyor behind them. Rather, they made Don lug it over to yet another area and stand in a new line. There was so little room in this terminal between the doors to the outside and the ticket counter, that all the people inside who were going from one gate entry to another cut across perpendicularly through security lines and this was the situation here.

The employees who were to take our checked baggage and run an electronic scan while we waited had to reach across the flow of people passing by to take our bags and then we had to find a way to cross over to them to see if our bag passed or if they would make us open it up. Such was the crush and the speed of those passing by who had other business that a person could try to cross through them only to be caught up in the pedestrian contra-flow and wind up at the security check for another airlines! Somehow I managed to avoid this and my bag passed the scan and I was waved on to the gate.

However, at the gate entry ways we all discovered that everyone was converged into a single line for a ID and boarding pass check. Moreover, there were about 200 Japanese teenagers in line in front of us! Once through this check, we all were split into two lines for a carry on luggage scan security check. Of course practically all the Japanese teenagers needed three or four grey plastic bins to hold all of there various and sundry small carry on items and all of the things in their pockets! This fact really slowed things down and then we were able to observe that there were very few security personnel present. There was one at each of the two scanning machines and then one at each of two metal detecting doorway frames that passengers walk through. So there were four security employees to cover hundreds and hundreds of people and their luggage being checked and scanned. Every so often one of them would have to collect all of the plastic grey bins from the far end of the scanners and bring them around for waiting passenger!

I stuck with a couple about my age and I mentioned that us over 21 year olds needed to stick together. They were amused by that and then when I added that security was so much more efficient at Sydney I found out that they too had been in Australia. They went to Queensland to briefly join their growth daughter who was doing a summer long tour of the entire OZ continent.

Shortly thereafter, I managed to make a small contribution to slowing things down. As I was finally able to place my things in the grey bins and then move them over to the conveyor belt, one of my shoes fell out of the bin and over the other side of the conveyor and onto the floor. I looked over to the agent at the scanner and she made eye contact with me. I could tell that she did not want to get up so I shrugged my shoulders, leaned over onto the conveyor belt and my feet left the floor and my hands touched the floor on the other side of the conveyor. I grabbed the shoe and pushed off of the floor with my hands and righted myself on my feel and placed the errant shoe securely into the bin. The security worker looked at me again and mouthed Thank You.

So, I got through security, quickly arrived at my NWA flight gate with 10 minutes to spare before boarding. I slept most of the 3 1/2 hours of this flight and woke up in the Twin Cities. I got to ride the little shuttle train from my gate to the MSP baggage claim area where we all found that the luggage from five different NWA flights would be sent to one and only one whatever they call them that go round and round. Nicole, who had been house sitting for us for five weeks appeared and then after some time so did my one piece of checked luggage. We got out to her car and drove to Avon, which took quite a bit longer than usual as I-94 was down to one lane on both sides just east of Monticello, and this will be the case on weekdays until some time in October or November. So, at about 9:00 p.m. on August 17, 2006 I arrived home in Collegeville Township after about 30 hours of traveling.

All was well with the home and our two cats and large canine. I settled our bill with Nicole for her excellent house sitting and animal care services and thanked her profusely. Her earnings will help fuel her own study abroad semester in Greece and Italy beginning next month.

I wish to thank my wonderful spouse Wendy, director of the fall 2006 CSB SJU study abroad program at UNDA in Fremantle, West Australia, for encouraging me to accompany her for part of this grand adventure and giving me such an opportunity. I am filled with appreciation for her and all that she has done for me and for us. I will miss being away from her but I know that she will help create an outstanding overseas experience for our excellent group of young men and woman who have the courage to travel so far in search of knowledge and adventure.

The Longest Day or Jindabyne Disparu (part 3)

2006-08-29T00:23:00.000+09:00

Well, Qantas 11 did commence boarding on time thirty minutes late! Unlike our LA to Sydney flight five weeks before, Don was not seated right behind the galley with no leg room, rather he was one row behind that very same row and that meant two children right in front of him!

A lesbian couple with a two year old boy were directly in front of him and then a thirty something mom and a several month old girl to his right. The young boy of the gay couple did not utter a single note of crying or complaint during the whole 13 plus hours! The little baby on the other hand, had numerous prolonged bouts of discomfort that she was not shy about loudly and vocally sharing with the rest of us.

Compensating for this baby noise was the fact that there was no one seated next to Don on the right (he had the aisle on the left of the middle section) and so he and the passenger on the other side of the empty seat could divide up the space for their things or to stretch out a bit to one side. A really good pair of headphones and lots of entertainment and music with quality sound systems took the sting out of baby noise like nothing else.

This flight turned out to be a feast of movie viewing for Don: Spike Lee’s lauded Inside Man with Denzel, Jodie, Clive and Christopher (Plummer); V for Vendetta with Oz’s own Hugo Weaving, the UK’s John Hurt, Ireland’s Stephen Rhea and Natalie Portman representing the US; Thank You For Smoking with Aaron Eckhardt and Robert Duvall; and that slippery Jindabyne.

A lot of these hours and hours of viewing had to do with the fact that it is more difficult to sleep properly on a long east bound flight with time compressing rather than stretching as when headed west. Although of course the observant reader will undoubtedly indicate that when the International Date Line is crossed that Thursday August 17 gets a whole new lease on life (hence the Longest Day) which stretches time. Still, the night is short on this east bound flight and sleep was not easy to come by. Even with a significant sleep deficit from Wednesday, Don could only catch short stretches of sleep, to which he added many 20 minute sessions of meditation. Once again, just as Jindabyne was entering its final 20 minutes the entertainment system was taken over by the cabin crew and all transmissions ceased. The mystery of this film remains to be solved for this viewer. Laura Linney is searching for some answers or resolution, how do things conclude, a mystery that Don shall live with until DVD releases occur.

Once again all praise to Qantas and their cabin crew for taking such good care of us. We were well fed and attended to in spite of having the employees totally outnumbered. Some of the more adventurous and curious wondered how things must be in Qantas first class if we were so well looked after. However, the plan to take a serving cart and crash through to take a serious look at this secure and secretive world came to nothing.

Eventually, after about thirteen and one half hours we landed in Los Angeles. We were over half an hour late, so it was after 10:00 a.m. instead of the scheduled 9:30 a.m. Don had to catch a 12:15 p.m. NWA connecting flight to the Twin Cities that would start boarding at 11:45 a.m. Both baggage claim, customs and security check were mandatory before he could even leave the international terminal. At least he was back in the United States, but how long would he remain in California?

The Longest Day: The Jindabyne Jinx Begins Part 2

2006-08-29T00:20:00.000+09:00

Aug 17 part 2
Qantas 574 to Sydney was a large Airbus with two aisles and ten seats across, (very much sized like the flight from LA to Sydney five weeks earlier), it also turned out to be only about 25% full so there was plenty of room to stretch out. Each of us had our own screen with access to the large Qantas database of films, TV shows, documentaries and music.

Once the entertainment system became operational, I planned to watch the recently released Australian film Jindabyne by the director of the much praised Lantana and starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney ; which for some reason was accessible on this flight!

Wendy and I had planned to view this film in Fremantle at the Luna SFX and had failed to do so, but I would have my chance right now. If only I had not been tempted by another Australian film, the dark Candy starring Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush and Abbie Cornish from Somersault. So Candy it was, even before breakfast!

Breakfast was served during Candy and with tasty scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage and baked beans Don clearly violated the gluten protocol. However, skipping ahead, there would be no significant repercussions due to this lapse during the course of his travels to MN.

This was a lucky break and should not serve as an example for any of our gluten intolerant audience at 2yanksdownunder.

The dark intensity of Candy (wherein Heath and Abbie are a young married couple who descend into heroin addiction. Their attempts to leave the drug behind then have an unexpected impact upon their relationship) required a nap before any further viewing could occur. Upon dozing fitfully off and on for a couple of hours, distractions also presented themselves the eventually fully wake passenger in the form of the wonderful sunny day that allowed for amazing views of the outback 10,000 meters below us.

So, after an unknown interval, Don began to view Jindabyne. Here we have another dark themed work in which a group of male friends on a fishing vacation discover the body of a young murdered aboriginal woman. However, rather than interrupt their vacation, they continue to fish until they have caught a sufficient haul and only then notify the authorities.

Naturally, their delay in reporting this serious crime leaks out in spite of their conspiring to get the story straight for the police and causes all sorts of commotion in their town and in their private lives. Before the film was even halfway completed, the cabin crew took control over the entertainment system for supposedly important announcements regarding such trivial matters as catching connecting international flights.

Such was the spell cast by Jindabyne that Don almost ignored information that was vital to my return home! Then, to top it off, since we were within about 45 minutes of Sydney, the entertainment system was shut down with the exception of music!

Soon enough we were in Sydney and many of those few of us from QF 574 headed directly to the special international flights lounge. This small area soon began to fill up to capacity and some of us wondered how many increments of 10 minutes had to pass before the once every 10 minutes shuttle buses to the International Terminal would begin to move. The correct guess to the question was two increments, and Don only had 90 minutes between flights and over 1/3 of it was already gone!

The first shuttle began to fill up and not until it was totally full with plenty of standing passengers did they begin to divert folks to a second bus. That one was only half full so they traveled in relative comfort and it therefore paid to be last in line for once. This was actually the only time at the Sydney airport that procedures compared to the way things can go on back home at airports. Be that as it may, we had an interesting ride across different runways and past terminals with all sorts of unfamiliar airlines parked at them.

At the International Terminal we were all put through an extremely thorough search. This was not as time consuming as it might read or as the reader might anticipate since the Australian security folks had more than adequate numbers of employees present for this. They did a wand sweep of everyone and a pat down and then searched every carry on bag thoroughly.

Ironically, almost all of the security employees had name tags that led Don to believe that they were immigrants or OZ citizens of Indian or Pakistani decent. The kind and polite Sayid who searched his carry on bag (taking almost every item out) did not know what vegemite was and set it aside. His coworker (with a Hindu name that Don has forgotten) did know what it was and seemed willing to let it be taken back to the U.S., but it was not his decision. They gained the attention of their supervisor, and he indicated that the small jar of vegemite could not cross the Pacific to Los Angeles. This callous decision deprived Don’s coworkers back in MN of an unforgettable culinary experience.

Now Don was free to go to the gate with only 10 minutes to spare before boarding was scheduled to commence. Was the security check that he would face in Los Angeles at the end of his upcoming Qantas flight 11 to be as rigorous as that in Sydney? Would the fact that he would also have to collect his checked baggage and go through U.S. customs still allow for him to catch his connecting Northwest airlines flight to the Twin Cities?

Before any of these questions became important, it was announced that Qantas was delaying departure of QF11 by 30 minutes! What sort of ripple effect would this have in Los Angeles where he had a three hour layover. That term, layover would just not do any longer, someone would have to invent another one to more accurately reflect the amount of time travelers would now have to invest in standing in security check lines and such in this new world of ours.

The Longest Day: pt 1 Or Time To Use The Wayback, Sherman!

2006-08-28T09:50:00.000+09:00

Our alarm clock was not really allowed to go off early on Thursday morning since Don woke up on his own at 2:50 a.m., proudly beating the alarm setting by ten minutes! Not close to the world record, but sufficient in the circumstances. After getting cleaned up and sorting through some last minute packing decisions, it was time to awaken Wendy. Well, it would have been but she was already somewhat awake and quickly got ready for our departure.

One travel hurdle and been overcome when the British made recent terrorist arrests. The flight attendants for Northwest Airlines had a pending CHAOS strike set for detonation on August 15, 2006. Following the new security standards implemented in the UK and the US, the flight attendants postponed their strike by ten days. So, if Don could get to Los Angeles on schedule he had an outstanding chance of making it from there to the Twin Cities!

New challenges arose with the many restrictions on carry on items. Some plans to bring certain gift items to the US were changed and others were determined to be worth the risk of declaring at security check and letting a decision come at that time in places and by persons as yet unknown. A known unknown or an unknown unknown?

We actually got everything (including ourselves) into the UNDA Hyundai and were on the road by 4:20 a.m. Don even remembered to leave his keys to the Henry Street residence behind for Wendy even though it would deny them a well earned time for international travel and adventure.

Although the theoretical route to the Perth domestic airport terminal was simple, Queen Victoria Street to the Canning Highway and then a straight shot to Beardsley and our destination, the unusual pattern of one way and disappearing roads in downtown Fremantle were a hurdle not to be underestimated. This was handled with dexterity by Wendy who insisted upon driving since she would have to make the return journey on her own and wanted practice with the car on the road. No significant objections were raised.

Don got a bit nervous since the travel was taking longer than he thought. However, given his sleep deficit and pumping andrenaline fueled anxiety he was clearly not a great judge of the true situation. Wendy got to the airport near 5:00 a.m. but parking was difficult to find since it was pitch dark and signs were not well lit and there was more and more traffic everywhere consisting of drivers who exceeded the speed limit and took turns in aggressive fashion and did not show a bit of politeness. Don had one of his low moments and needlessly and thoughtlessly lost his temper at Wendy for not parking in what seemed an obvious area. He decided to grab his things and go into the terminal and let Wendy find the parking on her own. It was 15 minutes till boarding time and he needed his boarding pass right now! Or so it seemed.

Well, using the automatic e-ticket machine even with the correct version of his name to match the Qantas computer only resulted in a print out that told him to stand in a particular line, probably the one for ‘problem individuals’ which would be no surprise for him. This line was fortunately short as all sorts of folks were anxiously waiting to catch flights for any number of points in OZ and were feeling the time pressing. A stranger even asked Don if he were flying to Cairns, although the pronunciation of this was so unusual it was only in retrospect that Don figured out what the guy had actually asked, to which he automatically replied NO.

Wendy then seemingly magically appeared as an even further downcast Don was getting to the front of the problem line and he was really glad and relieved to see her. It would have been terrible for their last moment together for many months to be one where he thoughtlessly took his nervousness out on her in bad tempered fashion.

So, it was off to another line, also blessedly short. A boarding pass and seat assignment were given out, a heavy bag was checked and then security questions were asked. Revelations were made about sensitive liquids and gels of medicinal nature and prescription then checked by the airport employee upon which all was approved for carry on transport! Now to the security check and a last bunch of kisses and hugs for that noble, creative, forgiving and wonderful spouse that is Wendy. We exchanged further waves as Don got through security scans and retrieved his carry on companions and ascended to the upper level for the gate.

There was time to dash to the loo and then the boarding of QF 576 commenced.

On(ward) Donner, On(ward) Tasha!

2006-08-28T09:42:00.000+09:00

16 August 2006 (Don's rendition of the 16th of August - Yes, class, it is a review, there will be a test on Monday)

Don’s last full day in Fremantle was to be a busy one. Errands were first on the agenda since Christine and Natasha from UNDA were going to drop by for an early dinner. However, just when Don was preparing to leave the residence for the grocery store, the bell rang. Christine had dropped by at that moment to drop off her contribution for the evenings feast, her creation being the dessert Pavlova.

(Giant chess board on the main square in downtown Fremantle):

This treat was invented by an Australian chef in the early 20th century to honor the visiting Russian prima ballerina of that name and has been a noted feature in Oz since then. Wendy came downstairs to chat with her a bit, but for some reason Christine felt that she needed to get into the office. This was understandable, but Don tried nonetheless to convince her to come in for a few minutes, saying that he would telephone her office and let her mates know that Chris was having an “episode” and would be in a bit later after she calmed down. In spite of the mirth ensuing from this quip, no minds were changed and Chris soon disappeared saying that she would be by after work.

Don and Wendy made the rounds of their errands acquiring everything except a bottle of wine. They came by the Sail & Anchor Bottle Shop about 10 minutes prior to it’s scheduled opening and decided not to hang around but to return home with the heavily laden shopping bags.

After a quick lunch, Don did most all of his packing for the next days travels, or rather refined some of the preliminary packing from the night before. Wendy worked on her Thursday class preparations and then in mid afternoon they both went over to the P & O to meet up with a group of students.

Today was to feature a visit to the local Fremantle lawn bowling club for those interested in this unique sport. Wendy had made arrangements with the club contact person, Bryan, to bring over two groups of interested CSB and SJU students, but the rain on Tuesday had necessitated canceling the event for that day.

Some of those on the list for Wednesday were waiting outside the P & O by the Orient Bar with some of their mates who were not going along. After lingering about for a few others who were scheduled for that day, Don went over to attempt a round up of the missing. Instead of locating those who had signed up, he managed to convince Zach and Tom to go along, but somehow Tudor got left out. Laura, Maggie, Katie and Bethany thus outnumbered their SJU counterparts, a rather rare occurrence to date in their OZ adventures.

After a pleasant walk through town we all arrived at the lawn bowling club. A few of the members helped our students select the appropriate bowling balls for their size and then all of us went over to the playing area. They were divided into two teams of three with Laura, Maggie and Bethany on one side and Katie, Zach and Tom comprising their opponents.

To commence play, one player on each team rolls a small white ball down a marked line in the grass. After it comes to a rest, then the team members alternate rolling much larger balls towards this small now stationary ball. The rules of engagement were not clear, but it seemed that having the larger balls stop in close proximity to the smaller one was a good thing.

The veteran players instructing our students and observing could usually tell almost immediately what was a good roll and what would be significantly off course. Zach and Tom got themselves each a mug of beer to sip on during play and seemed to be really enjoying things. Katie remarked how she was just putting too much effort into her rolling of the bowling ball and therefore not getting close at all. She was getting all too familiar with the gutters that lined the perpendicular edges of the field, in contrast to the gutters in American bowling that run parallel on the sides of the lane. The other team was more quiet and determined and was quickly picking up on more of the physical finesse of the rolling techniques. Of course, they lacked any SJU teammates and were not having any beer.

Don and Wendy had to leave mid way through the lesson to see about picking up the UNDA car they had reserved to take Don to the airport early the next morning. However, when they got to the security office, Kathy was away so they decided to check back later on. So, it was back to the Henry Street residence to prepare dinner for our soon to arrive guests.

Again, Wendy took control of the kitchen and Don took care of cleaning up the place and putting out the place settings, silverware, and other accoutrement for the meal. Wendy prepared a chicken stroganoff with noodles and an accompanying dish of green beans and mushrooms. There was also bread and then for dessert Christine’s Pavlova and the last of Don’s shortbread.

Our guests arrived on time and Natasha did us all the honor of bringing along a fine bottle of red wine. With the wine for starters, conversation soon flowed freely. Although Don wondered how his female guests would get an accurate picture of the usual Don and Wendy kitchen dynamics since she was doing all the visible work while Don’s lot was to converse and occasionally offer to help!

We discovered by stealth conversational tactics necessary in intercultural communications a great deal about Natasha’s immediate future plans. Unlike many young Americans, she was not interested in world domination or absolute power in the business sphere, but was planning to continue to travel.

She was taking vacation the following week to go to Uluru with a friend from Melbourne (who has a young child and whose partner is a musician in a well known group in OZ. They would wind up in Darwin for some concerts and sightseeing, all much anticipated by Tasha (sounds like Tasha’r’ to American ears) as she encouraged us to address her. She showed us some photos of a fairly recent trip she had taken with a friend to Indochina, seeing amazing sights in Vietnam and Laos in both urban and rural conditions. A brave and adventurous traveler!

Christine has also traveled much in Asia and lived in Japan for several years. She said that she would eagerly return if the opportunity presented itself and Wendy remarked that if she was offered the directorship of the CSB SJU Japan program she would contact Chris about going along as her assistant director and an agreement was made on the spot or is it spot on!

The dining experience was quite tasty as Wendy had done most excellent food preparation and presentation. The most excellent Pavlova followed and the last of Don’s shortbread made an appearance as well so that Tasha could try it. Don failed to find the time to make a batch to leave behind with Wendy as he had planned to do, so this was the bitter end of his baking or the sweet finish to look at it another way.

The pleasant and enjoyable evening filled with good conversation, laughter and ample food and wine came to an earlier end than it would have on another evening. With Don facing a 5:45 a.m. flight from Perth, our guests did not want to stay too late and arguments to the contrary were not accepted. Hopefully Wendy will be able to build upon this time to create more opportunites to socialize with Chris and Tasha, two clever and welcoming folks who made our time in Fremantle that much more pleasant.

So, after the departure of our guests, Don handled the lion share of the clean up and dishes which was only fair given Wendy’s amazing creative efforts that provided the bulk of our tasty feast. Meanwhile, she made use of her time on the computer to get ready for tomorrow and to catch up with important e-mail both foreign and domestic. Then they both went over to the UNDA security office and checked out the Hyundai for the trip to the airport. The compact car did fit nicely into the Henry Street residence courtyard and was easier to handle than the Toyota from Bayswater rental even though or perhaps because of the fact that it was a standard shift.

With all that needed to be done, bed time was not until after 11:00 p.m. It would be a short night as Don set his alarm for 3:00 a.m. with the intention of leaving for the airport by 4:15 a.m. This was the first time the alarm had been set on this clock in a real world situation, as opposed to a drill. Would it go off on time or would someone miss their flight and go into high anxiety? Find out in the next thrilling installment of 2yanksdownunder!

A Subiaco Saturday

2006-08-26T23:26:00.000+09:00

While the Dockers and the Eagles battled it out. Christine and I decided to do something more intense. We went to see a movie at the Leederville Luna Cinema.

I had originally planned to go to King's Park in Perth this morning but the weather looked a bit rainy and dark, so after waiting a bit and doing some grading, I decided I would take the neighbor dog, Mick (the Irish Terrier) for a walk.

I took him down to Dog beach where he was very excited to meet other canines. He needs a bit of work on his manners (He is a teenager after all), but the other dogs were actually also a bit uppity since they were off leash and kept running over and getting him all excited.

Then after lunch I heade4d out toward the train station to meet Christine in Subiaco. On the way I saw a man with a mostly bald (or shaved) head who had a little tuft of pink hair on top. He was sitting with a woman at a noodle shop eating a wonderful looking soup so I stopped and asked if I could take his picture. Thus I met Dave and Jenny and learned about some really good places to eat in town (including Maya Masala and this little Vietnamese place).

Christine met me at the Subiaco train station and wow was she looking glamorous. She had a new hair cut with a new red color and was wearing elegant black with a red glass necklace and an orange scarf to set off the new hair! She took me by to see her house. What a perfect place! She has the decor matched precisely in colors of blue and white. With cool drinking glasses with geometric blue shapes on them and a dazzling white kitchen with matching appliances.

Her couch has blue cushions which match perfectly the lovely Japanese cloth on the wall that has (blue of course) drinking gourds as its main theme.

The front of the house has a little garden and the back has a bigger garden partitioned off with matchstick blind type fencing. The second floor has bedrooms and a bath with laundry and then the really extraordinary aspect about her place is the third floor; a sunroom that she calls the library (pictured here). You can't see the huge windows here.

What a marvelous place to read in winter. (It has Northern exposure with a huge window facing the park (Remember everyone that north faces the sun down here).

We took a quick peek around town and then headed for Leedrville. Here is part of the shopping district in Subiaco (so readers have a sense of suburban areas.)

The cinema is really interesting because it is spread out in a labyrinthine design (with long halls to theaters 3 and 4 (the small ones). On the way there is a snack bar with this interesting space!

We saw the very depressing film 2:37 about some very demoralized highschool students. It was nicely edited with the stories of 6 teenagers (7 actually) being intercut with commentary by the characters. Eventually the interconnections of their stories become clear and there is a very nice use of repeated time to form an intensely interesting plot structure. Each teenage character looks initially happy and well adjusted, but each also has a secret (as characters in films so often do that leads to their misery and the audience's suspicion that he or she may be the person who has committed suicide behind the locked door of the highschool bathroom. The end is a wrenchingly realistic protrayal of a suicide by wrist slitting that seems to go on for ten minutes. Both Christine and I were a bit shaken as we navigated our way out of the theater.

So, for decompression it was off to a truly wonderful Japanese restaurant where after debriefing on the film, we relaxed a bit and eased into a delicious meal. Christine had a chicken ramen soup and I had a combination Sushi.

The interior design of the restaurant was also fun! The chairs had screen-like areas in the backs that revealed the image of a woman's face and although most of the decor was drop dead elegant and serious in blacks and reds, there was this funky mural on the wall of an old anime (cartoon really) character, Astroboy.

With such a fantastic ambiance, we chatted about the movie and other big events in Christine's life and had a marvelous time.

Four More at the Door Ready to Explore

2006-08-26T22:59:00.000+09:00

Tuesday August 15

We had quite a few errands to take care of around town on Tuesday, but the main event (which in fact necessitated most of the errands) was to be dinner with four of our students at the Henry Street Residence. Invitations for our second small group dinner had been offered to Kyle, James, Brent and Laura.

None of them had any schedule conflicts, nor did they know that it might have been better to invent one, since the first dinner group from the week before had given their comrades a good review of the evening. Evidently those that disliked vegetables found other aspects of the evening more than compensated for having to consume plant matter. Or, they were really into the whole schadenfreude scene and wanted to let the next group take the same or similar dietary hit that they did completely without warning?

Wendy has undertaken a mission to expose the students in the small dinner groups to some new and different foods within the context of providing a home cooked meal. Don knew that after making a small objection to the nature of her mission, that the wisest thing to do was not to interfere unless absolutely necessary; and even then what real impact would he have?

So, Wendy took control of the kitchen while Don focused on the clean up and getting all the appropriate dishes, glasses and silverware set out. Lamb was to be the main course with green beans, potatoes and Wendy’s special Louisiana style ‘dirty’ rice accompanying. Ice cream, chocolate and shortbread would be available for dessert, if things got that far.

Everyone arrived and it turns out they brought a bottle of wine to contribute to the feast. However, we started them out with a session of beer sampling, four different types of local brews of differing varieties (Pilzners, ale, etc.). So, beverage sampling began and appetizers were served as we all became conversational.

Dinner was served and with little persuasion everyone moved over to the table and wine was poured. Kyle told us he was soon to travel to Melbourne to take his MCAT exam. He hopes to enter medical school and would like to become a pediatrician or a family practitioner. He and Bethany have been going out for six years! Laura says that she has more free time here than back in MN since her participation on the tennis team at CSB demands a lot from her. She has been running regularly to maintain her physical conditioning in the absence of the usual training and competing. She has also been exploring the shopping options in Fremantle with some of her mates.

Brent’s enjoyment of baseball led him to bring his glove along and has led to him having an interesting conversation with an American woman he met while playing catch who also loves the game.

We cannot speculate at this time what implications this will have for Mr. Mergen, James told us a bit more about the theology class that most of our group is taking and considers to be difficult and or confusing. Don tried to practice his sense of irony by getting James to talk a lot about quietism, which he was willing to do. Don and James had a detailed discussion about U.S. geo political policy and world affairs under Bush II.

Desserts came out and all of the options were put on the table: ice cream, chocolate and shortbread. Don explained how with the tradition established just the week before, that Laura would get to take the left over chocolate back to share with the other CSB students as Jaya did previously. There were not too many overt objections to this, maybe due to everyone having had their fill. Soon enough, as conversation wound down, our responsible group pleaded the necessity to return to the P & O to grapple with homework assignments and they were gone.

Don promptly set about cleaning up and washing the dishes while Wendy saw to her e-mail and class preparations. A full evening that seemed to go very well. Only one more full day for Don in Fremantle before his long journey home to MN.

Monday August 14th (Now with more stuff!)

2006-08-26T10:10:00.000+09:00

Naval Leaves or Don Plays Ketchup in OZ from MN

Don’s last few days in OZ promised to be busy ones as we had filled up the free time in our schedule with a variety of social gatherings.

A last view of our little gated community street for Don (ws):

(The Cappaccino strip in Fremantle)

For Monday, Wendy had class preparations to complete for her Ethics course later that afternoon and then afterwards our landlord John Lynch was to come by that evening at 6:30 p.m. and the three of us were going out to dinner. It was still early in the morning in the wilds of Western Australia, so the big question was would anything get in the way of these plans? It was soon clear that the U.S. Navy would not be interfering.

While Wendy toiled on the computer, Don witnessed the departure of the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk when he was returning to the Henry Street residence from a grocery trip to Coles. The carrier steamed out of port at quite a brisk pace with far, far fewer sailor and officers visible on the deck than when it arrived the previous Thursday. Don of course wondered what happened to all the sailors? Perhaps some of our men and women in uniform had decided to stay behind? With places like Fremantle or Perth to explore, it could have been tempting for lonely and adventurous sailors to go A.W.O.L. Warning: not meant as words of encouragement for bad habits! Do not be late!

Wendy finished off her class preps and Don prepared a lunch for himself and Wendy. After she left for class, he wrote about their weekend trip for their blog. When she returned a couple of hours later, they took care of some household chores and then got ready to go out.

While Wendy was teaching her afternoon class, Don was preparing for all of our students to arrive at the Henry Street residence to celebrate August birthdays and February half-birthdays with ice cream and cake. Plastic plates, plastic ware and plastic cups were all brought out of careful storage and placed in the staging areas in the kitchen and dining areas. Cold drinks, cakes and three flavors of ice cream made their way to the counter.

This time, Zach and Kelsey were the celebrants, so Wendy had an easier time of it with writing names on the cake she baked (there were seven celebrants last month!). Since Zach’s actual birthday fell on the day of the upcoming Thursday Ethics class, he tried to barter with Wendy to have class cancelled, or at least to give him walk. The reader can use their imagination and try to figure out what kind of answer he received. Don thought Zach should have just sent the Zachbot 2006 to class while and not said a word to her while the real Zach could go out.

While Don was helping everyone to get their plates and bowls full of treats, the students turned the tables on him by revealing that they had decided to add a farewell to Don component to the group celebration! In fact, they had passed the hat around and purchased a Stella Floonie for Don at the Fremantle Markets that past weekend. Don graciously thanked one and all for their generosity and said how rewarding it had been to be a part of the program even if only for a few weeks. He noted that having another Floonie to take home to MN would help remind him of good times in OZ.

Mass quantities of treats were consumed and then our group was off to the P & O to prepare a group dinner feast. We were invited, but already had made dinner plans with our landlord John Lynch.

So, in the wake of the mass departure, Don and Wendy got intensely busy cleaning up before John Lynch could arrive and see any chaos or disarray in his place.

John Lynch showed up on time and Don met him at the door with a mock look of concern and said: “Oh John, didn’t you get Wendy’s telephone call?” He was quite startled and was clearly wondering if we had canceled on him, so Don had to confess that he was just having a bit of fun. In spite of having been told that Australian humor tends to be dry, almost all of Don’s attempts to use this type of humor have not been understood by local residents. When I later mentioned this to John, he informed me that Australians do not expect Americans to have a dry sense of humor, that we are also known for lacking a sense or understanding of irony. I guess that this will have to go uncommented upon here for now.

With quite a bit of effort, we talked John into coming upstairs and having a chat and a beer before we sought out a restaurant in Freo.

Once we did set out, we wound up at a place that John knew would be open on Mondays (when many other places are closed) since it catered to a substantial business clientele; this was the Essex which turned out to specialize in sea food. Wendy had prawns prepared in a way that only she could describe and John and I indulged in sumptuously prepared fish with accompanying vegetables and salads. John had a bottle of good white wine brought to the table and opened up and so we were forced to take a share of that as well. Dessert consisted of a plate with slices of a variety of fresh fruits: strawberries, pears, apples, and oranges. There was some really good conversation too, but since I cannot recall it so well after nearly ten days, that can be kept confidential by default.

After dinner Wendy wanted a coffee, so we stopped in at Ginos. Christine Sullivan our liaison had recommended the place as the best breakfast spot in town, but was there was not even the tiniest bit of room for food, we had beverages instead.

The decor was fantastic, with lots of beautiful art on the wall behind John and a nice flashy counter with pictures of sail boats
onthe wall near the cash register. Wendy plans to go back as the atmosphere pleased her greatly.

It was a little sad to walk home that night, knowing that Don would be leaving all this behind in less than 48 hours! (ws)

The evening ended with John strongly encouraging Don to return to Australia for the last few weeks of the semester in spite of the cost and the long, long distances to travel.

Hello Emptiness

2006-08-24T22:11:00.000+09:00

Wendy here. Well the honeymoon is over. Don has flown away home and I'm feeling cranky, lonely and tired.

And even worse FAT. Yup I finally had to face reality and recognize that living on all the pastries, icecream and cookies I could possibly imagine is not doing good things to my waistline, so... it was time for the inevitable - a diet. So although I had to spend the major portion of my day grading.I have slowed down the calorie intake and when my brain got too tired to think, instead of eating, I took a walk up High street to see what I could find. Here is the view from Pakenham of our little gated community.

I actually headed off in a different direction at first, but ended up trying to find hills to climb and this brought me back around to High Street. On the way I encountered colorful parrots flying around. (This never ceases to amaze me - they are so bright and cheerful and they chatter noisily even though they can be hard to find once they land in the trees.)

High Street climbs a hill that leads to a large war memorial on the top. Each side of the memorial is dedicated to a different war effort. One side says 1918, one says Gallipoli, One says Palestine and the fourth is dedicated to the Fallen Sailors and Soldiers. Along the edges of the hill crest are smaller monuments - to the Dutch for their martial support for example - This monument had fresh flower bouquets laid upon it. At the central monument here was some kind of religious gathering. I heard praying and then saw the group head off in a little mini-bus. They looked very serious.

You can see Perth from the top of the hill off in the distance tothe East:

The way home gave me a chance to look at some of the typical historic architecture.

This was an interesting car parked along the side of the road.

This is now a hostel or hotel of some kind, but is a beautiful long colonial building with the most gorgeous iron-work I've yet seen here. Unfortunately the picture does not really show the details of the work.

On the way home I crossed through the High Street Mall (pedestrian and shopping zone.) I include this photo because I pass this way almost every single day that I am out and about. Past the same buskers with their off-key singing and cracked voices and the people reading their newspapers and all the tourists looking for the perfect plastic souvenir to remind them of their stay.

On the way home I ran into Ros Fairhead and so I accompanied her to her volunteer office. She donates her time once a week to a place that offers inexpensive legal counselling for the poor. She was looking stunning and imposing in dark clothing with her hair pulled up. I was sweaty from my hike wearing my cheap souvenir t-shirt and jeans (My underwear even showing as I had forgotten I was wearing low-rise jeans after visiting the ladies room and had tucked my shirt in! (How embarrassing!) She had taken me to the theater the night before and it was a fantastic production!

"Tough Girls" is based on the real life events in Victoria, about police corruption and a gang war that was the sensation of Australia during the 1980s. (There was even a major mini-series written about these events) The web site explains it better ( http://www.deckchairtheatre.com.au/productions/2006/toughgirls ) says:

Victoria’s underworld is tearing itself apart, and the new order is yet to be revealed. Tough Girls is a new musical theatre work by one of Australian theatre’s brightest stars, which looks at the women crucially involved in these events.

Tough Girls is about the tough girls in crime families, inspired by the very public life story of Kath Pettingill, the matriarch of the criminal family involved in the Walsh St police killings in Victoria. Set in a caravan park on the outskirts of Melbourne, the play is about the similarities and complicities between the good and the bad guys, the banality of evil and the Australian underworld that is busy destroying itself.

I really enjoyed this production. The music was great, the acting was fantastic and the writing was excellent. The play presented real thought-provoking commentary on some major ethical issues and on the difficult lives for women in worlds that are dominated by men. I suspect this play will win some major prizes in the next few years.

Caversham quatro

2006-08-22T10:45:00.000+09:00

(Couldn't resist yet another attempt at that silly Honey darter - grin)

Well now, in the continuing saga of the Caversham park experience...

after the camel rides (and before she left us to our own devices) the guide took us around to the Koalas. This is of course a very exciting part of the tour, because Koalas are cute and soft as well (a quality lacking in the luxuriously lumpy, but more cuddly wombats). Koalas are eating machines that do nothing much besides eating, (having sex, I hear) and sleeping.

They are slow animals, that have to eat huge numbers of leaves to keep going and so they spend most of their waking hours feeding singlemindedly and are pretty much oblivious to the human fuss going on around them. We were fortunate to get to see a couple of baby koalas (who were not as secure and jaded as their adult companions.) With all the noise and flash of cameras the poor little baby was shaking and took refuge on the back of an adult who was not her mother.

Another animal that we got to see for the first time is the Tasmanian devil.

These creatures from Tasmania have a bite 4 times stronger than a dog and are known to be quite ferocious.

On my own, I set out to see things we had whooshed by on our tour. I really enjoy the reptiles and here were some lizards who were out in a pen enjoying the sun:

Here is a wombat in his pen. They can move amazingly fast and this one had just come from feeding and was covered in
food from the feeding trough.

There were several exhibits of bats. They were hard to photograph because they are dark creatures back lit against the bright blue sky. Here are a few (Fox?) bats that I managed to capture on disk.

There are all kinds of rodent like animals in Australia. These (I believe) are Quokkas, an animal found on Rottnest island not too far from us in Fremantle. There were several other similar animals including one that sounded something like pademum ( I keep thinking of Starwars - when I hear it).

We had a wonderful time at the park .I'll close this section with my favorite picture thus far. This is exactly how I felt when I left after all our wonderful adventures.

Caversham for the Birds

2006-08-20T19:17:00.000+09:00

I was particularly taken by the fact that there were free flight cages in the park and I could see many of the birds I had been hunting with the camera but had been unable to really capture except as tiny blur spots in a sea of bush. I have ordered a bird book which has not yet arrived, and so I tried to remember as many of the names as possible (and of course I failed!)

This of course is an echidna (and it does lay eggs, I believe, but doesn't really qualify as bird (nor have I seen or tried to photograph one in the wild). I vaguely remember when I was a tiny little girl my father telling me something about monotremes - platypuses and echidna(s?) - egg-laying mammals in Australia, but don't quote me on that!

These are owls. I think maybe barn owls. I managed to get bars instead of birds on the screaming owls. They had a nice selection of diffferent kinds of owls at the park.

All the different galahs, cockatoos and parrots mystify me. Here is a pink cockatoo of some kind.

This was a bluebird (I think they actually call it a blue wren) that was loose flying around the park (not a zoo specimen). They are brilliant azure and I'd been missing them photographically for a while. I'm glad to at least have ablurry shot of one.

This was one of the birds in the free flight cage, a pigeon of some kind. They had cages for each of four or five regions of Australia. Alas my memory fails me as to what it is:

There were many water/marsh birds in this cage. This looks like a stork to me.

And this one pleases me aesthetically because of all the white blossoms surrounding the white bird.

This little guy kept sticking his head through the wire of his cage. I think it was a lapwing. He has beautiful painted features and is quite an industrious little fellow.

Finally here is one with a little color. It is a bird with a double name (like a wang wang (but that is not quite right).

Caversham Wildlife Park Zwei

2006-08-20T18:57:00.000+09:00

This is a blue-winged Kookaburra. While we were there he actually performed his laughing call.

One of the neat things about the park is that they also have camel rides and although reputedly we will have an opportunity to ride camels in Broome, I decided to take the plunge and do it here. You never know what might happen between now and then.

Riding a camel causes a jerky rocking back and forth in the saddle. I got the feeling, that my camel really didn't want to carry me. He tried to brush me off on a fence post (an old riding trick that horses use on the inexperienced learners.) Even though I'm no "Ahab the Arab", I stayed the course and pretty soon Clyde was behaving like a gentleman. We rode on horse style saddles and not the platform saddles that one sees in Middle eastern countries. I was hanging on for dear life as it was, and cannot imagine having to perch on top of the other type of saddle without being plunged off by the motion of the camel's gait.

I believe this is a bush tailed possum, but it sure doesn't look very bushy (maybe its bush like outback).

And this is a wombat in his cage out back behind the petting area. She looks a lot more happy here!

After our guide left us we were able to wander around the park at will and there were lots of interesting cages and nooks and crannies we had not yet seen.

Caversham Wildlife Park

2006-08-20T17:19:00.001+09:00

I expect this topic to be drawn out over several posts since there are lots of animal pictures to share. Today the American students piled into a bus and headed off to Caversham wildlife park a zoo that allows personal interactionwith some of the animals. It was a wonderful opportunity to see some hard to find animals as well as get a good view of ones that are seen mostly darting from tree to tree. Here two red tailed Cockatoos approve our arrival. (Unfortunately you can't see the red on their tails, but up until now I've only seen these as black shadows that zoom into the treetops.

If you like kangaroos then you'll getr an eyeful today. There were huge pens with dozens of kangaroos of different species, sizes and ages.

They lounged around and pretty much ignored us even though we tried to tempt them with lots of kangaroo goodies.

We saw red kangaroos and grey ones and one other kind I've now forgotten. They are the softest animals imaginable.

Don would have a great tagline for this one, but I'm unable to find a funny line.

This is a wild white tailed cockatoo who was sitting on a cage full of White tail cockatoos. I guess he was lonely.

These are lizards whose tails look a lot like their heads:

These may be blue skinks (I'm not sure anymore)

A highlight of the trip was getting to hold a wombat. Here the tour leader shows us how it is done.

Of course I had to try this! They were a bit squirmy (they are animals that love to dig and the noise and large numbers of people no doubt made them rather nervous.)

This is a peregrine falcon Australian style (larger than the ones I am accustomed to in the States.

(Stay Tuned for part two).

Don Gone!

2006-08-19T14:46:00.000+09:00

The day after Don left, I began an exercise program. The morning was rainy, but the walk was pleasant. I met some local historical women and they encouraged me in my exercise undertaking. When Don was here I never noticed that the roundhouse has a tunnel underneath it. There is a museum inside the Roundhouse itself and under it there are some display cases with historical artifacts. On the other side you can walk along a small beach. If you turn right you can go out to a little light house. Very early this morning there was lots of harbor noise and I discovered the source to be a Singaporean ship which was leaving as I approached the lighthouse. They had mustered their sailors on the deck and from a distance I could see their little white sailor caps and khaki colored uniforms. As the ship sailed off the marched with outstretched legs into the belly of the ship. It was a fetching display observed only by a few of us out on the quay. As far as I can tell most of the people that would frive up and leave almost immediately, were there to use their cell phones.(I could think of no other reason for them to stay for such a short time. (No suspicious people came to their car windows, nor were identity cards or secret microfilm exchanged as far as I could tell.)

Prints in Denmark

2006-08-18T13:32:00.000+09:00

Then it was time to visit the coast and see a beach with large rocks resembling elephants bathing where strong waves crash into them causing water to spray upwards forcefully.

While we ate in the parking lot we saw several birds fly through.

I tried to photograph them (as usual with minimal success - but here is what I got:)

We had lunch in our car and then went down to this beach to see the awesome force of the Southern Ocean, the only thing between Australia and Antarctica!

It was breathtakingly beautiful!

The wind was strong and the waves were sometimes enormous as they crashed against the rocks.

We walked down some stairs to get closer access to the beach and the rocks. The water wasincredibly blue and clean. This may have been the most impressive aspect of our trip south.

Following our shoreline walk, we got back into our reliable vehicle and headed inland, to the town of Mount Barker. Once there, we located the Banksia Farm, recommended to us by botanist Steve Saupe, recently returned program director for the CSB SJU Australia program.

There, we took a guided tour by the proprietor who started off with a really interesting talk about this fascinating species of plant, the Banksia, and a table full of fun banksia objects to touch and play with.

We saw banksia pod animals and blew banksia whistles and learned about aboriginal uses for the plant.

We then took a walk around the grounds which are covered with numerous common and rare forms of this amazing plant or tree. He had about 77 species of banksia including some from South Africa.

The banksia were interesting to Wendy because her father had collected a similar species the Protea. There was no visual similarity for the most part, but occasionally there would be a whiff of foul scent that was reminiscent of the protea of long ago.

This lasted over 90 minutes but the time passed so quickly! (Wendy took many photos only a few of which will be posted here!)

The last part of our day was a long drive back to Fremantle along the Albany Highway. The karri forests were long behind us, and the land here was quite flat and filled with scrub trees and grazing fields. Interestingly, numerous colored parrots lounged about the shoulders of the highway. Some crows were also hanging out along the road, which is no big deal, but parrots, that would not be seen back home! We could only guess that the nearby trees had dropped pods or something that was food for these birds near the road, and that is what drew them to the ground.

We were warned that we had to take care at dusk to be alert for kangaroos crossing the highway, a nuisance that can be fatal for the roo and the unwary driver, a problem much like that with deer in the U.S. Fortunately, we did not have a close encounter with a roo. We did drive through some intense rainstorms in darkness but made it home all right. Well, we got very, very close to home before getting unexpectedly lost. Don got unfairly peeved at Wendy whom he thought would be navigator (actually it was her father who was a navigator in WW II) but somehow they chanced upon a familiar road and made it back to the Henry Street Residence. This was quite an amazing vacation and considerably enriched our time together here in OZ.

Wendy and Don Go Parking (This one's for you , Min)

2006-08-18T13:14:00.000+09:00

Then it was on to a tourist spot, the Pentland Alpaca Stud Farm!

Although the Pentland farm was clearly designed for families and children to be able to meet and pet a variety of interesting animals, we were not going to allow the significant population of childless adults to go unrepresented.

Entry was a mere $6 each and we were in the park with a bag of feed to attract any reluctant critters. Caveat, no feeding the koala bears or the very young goats.

They had two male koalas who were awake and feeding. The knowledgeable and friendly park attendant supervised our petting the bears while they had their breakfast of eucalyptus leaves, the only thing that they consume.

The park maintains a grove of 3,000 trees to provide food for their bears! The bears were incredibly soft and paid little attention to us.

We also got to feed and pet some kangaroos.

One of them grabbed my right arm above the elbow and pulled me down towards it to get some more food,

however, the feed bag was in my left hand! I leaned forward bending my right arm in a V so that my right hand could scoop some feed from the bag and divert the roo which caused it to let go.

It's claws were thick and sharp and its grip quite strong and I did not want to risk it tearing or ripping my clothing by struggling.

We spent about an hour here feeding and petting various critters: camel, goats, sheep, calves and alpacas.

And this Dingo dog. The Dingo is indigenous to Australia as members of my family will tell you.

Soon it was time to say goodbye to the friendly animals and head down to the coast. Goodnight, John Koala! Sleep tight.

I'll See You in the Sweet B and B

2006-08-18T12:55:00.000+09:00

The Mount Lindsey View B & B. There we were looked after by Debbie who is originally from England, and her husband Ron, clearly an Australian, but whose forebearers had come over from Germany.

The B and B has 3 lovely rooms each named after a wine. Ours (with a wink at Sideways ? was Merlot) but it was not an overcommodified room at all. It was beautifully decorated in dark merlot colors with a little bottle of port and all kinds of candies at the bedside.

The rest of the house was also quaint and inviting. The dining area warm with a fire in the iron stove and a lovely view out at Mt. Lindsey across a vast expanse of lawn.

We again had a good dinner in town at the Denmark Hotel which they recommended. It was an interesting place full of families and working class people out to have a good weekend time. You went up to the counter to order your meal and they had tables packed into the place to the maximum capacity. It felt more like a bar than a restaurant or hotel. We were jammed up against a pillar with a bamboo floral arrangement and next to a couple of tables with large extended families.

Wendy had kangaroo steak (which not anything like chicken) with salad and sweet potatoes and Don had spicey salmon with rice and salad. One of the garnishes that came with Don's dinner was so potently spicy that he was sure Wendy would enjoy it so he encouraged her to have some. However, since he for some reason failed to warn her that the innocently appearing item packed a punch, she was completely taken by surprise and was not pleased with her mate. We finished the meal with a wonderful slice of rasperry cheese cake and headed back to the B & B for a well earned sleep. A full day for Don's 49th birthday.

The next day, we were served another hearty and tasty Australian breakfast which would fuel us for another full day (and of course there is a picture, Victoria).

Also, we met another couple, Ian and Rianne, who were staying there for a getaway for their 18th wedding anniversary. They were immigrants from South Africa who lived in the nearby town of Albany. He is a math teacher for the equivalent of junior high and she is a nurse. They had numerous helpful suggestion of things to do in the area for our last day of our trip, Sunday.

We started our day by driving through a nearby part of town at our hosts suggestion where wild kangaroos could likely be seen. We (particularly Wendy) were not disappointed as there was a group of five or six lounging in a sunny field where we could stop and take numerous photographs. (Well, two actually)

This achievement was evidently an important one to accomplish on our getaway and would enhance the sense of fulfillment that comes from a vacation.

Birds almost Seen and Almost Photographed

2006-08-16T15:16:00.000+09:00

Much pursued bird that refused to be photographed clearly.

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Parrot in a tree near Glenhaven

Wild parrots in trees (Pemberton)

Interesting red bird on the Glenhaven lawn.

Honey darter bird that still did not want to be photographed.

Parrots outside of Glenhaven bed and breakfast.

Karris and Tingles and Banksia, Oh My!

2006-08-14T19:32:00.000+09:00

Our drive down to the south coast from Pemberton along the Western Highway was quite beautiful. Frequently the winding road was swallowed in a canopy of trees such that sunlight was considerably dimmed or during the brief rains we barely got wet.

We stopped at a turn out and had lunch in the car and then proceeded on to the Valley of the Giants.

The one time the rain actually caught up with us was at the canopy walk high up in the trees. We had to put on our rain gear and ascend the walkway in the drizzle.

However, when we got higher up the storm ceased and the sun came out. The long metal ramps swayed with the wind and almost seemed alive themselves.

When they would cease swaying, young boys would try jumping up and down on them or even moving from side to side to restore the movement to the structure.

There were quite a few more folks braving the elements to catch this experience, so we were far from alone. The Tingle trees are very broad at the base and tall like the karris.

They have shallow roots and frequently due to lightening strikes or anomalies of growth and development, the lower trunks can be partially or completely hallowed out so that one can stand inside the 200 foot tree or even walk entirely through it.

After the canopy walk, there was a trail on the ground through an adjacent grove of karris and tingles that we took.

Then we went on a drive through the rest of the National Park and made it to the coastal town of Denmark as dusk was falling.

Here, we stayed at another B & B that Jim at Glenhaven recommended, (And Wendy is breaking the rest off here for another blog post!

B & B Heaven or Glenhaven

2006-08-14T18:56:00.000+09:00

(Sheep or rocks part deux? Answer - sheep)

We drive on through a mixture of good weather with occasional short rainfalls. We stop very briefly in Bridgetown, which seems set up for shopping, and see the Jigsaw Puzzle Museum.

We proceed onwards and pass through the town of Manjimup without stoppping. We are later told by our host that this was a good decision. The town claims to have natural wonders, but is really a shopping center. We continue to seem numberous trees with bright yellow or gold blossoms, they turn out to be called Wattles. Some are native to OZ and others were brought over, and regardless, they seem to thrive.

The afternoon is wearing on, and sunset is around 5:40 p.m. with darkness completely taking over some time after 6:00 p.m. We turn towards Pemberton and Wendy agrees to call the Glenhaven B & B on the mobile (term used here in OZ for cell phone). She is soon on the line with Jim Merraman, who along with his wife Jackie, runs the establishment. They have a vacancy and we are there in a few minutes with daylight to spare. Jim is hosting solo as their daughter just gave birth to their first grandchild up in Perth a few days before. He welcomes us and since we are the only guests for that night, we have our choice of rooms. There is also a living room and dining area that devoted to guests. We bring in our bags while Jim prepares us tea and scones (and even shortbread!). Alas, due to celiac I can only enjoy the scones and shortbread vicariously through Wendy.

Kookaburra

The three of us chatted for some time and Jim discloses that he immigrated from Scotland and was a scientist up in Perth studying immunology prior to he and his wife leaving to open up the B& B. He shares numerous ideas and recommendations of things to do and see in the Pemberton area and we feel that coming here was a real blessing for us. He also tells us about a place that serves excellent dinners and we make a reservation and soon head out to the town only a couple of kilometers away.

In Pemberton, our restaurant is actually in a small motel and one would never assume that anything gourmet could be located there, however, we had a very pleasant meal,

I had local trout and Wendy a lamb curry. Fresh local vegetables accompanied the main course and salads and we finished with fresh strawberries in Cointreau topped with real whipped cream. We ate in the very back room which was more elegantthatn the bar section pictured above. They also had a chess table with beautiful LARGE chess pieces. Don didn't want to be pictured eating, but didn't mind having his picture taken here.

Then, it was back to the B & B for some more tea and another chat with our host, Jim. We spoke more about sightseeing options for the next day and the breakfast menu for morning.

We slept well but were woken up by very unfamiliar if not totally eerie bird sounds in the morning. Since neither Freddie or Jason were known to live in the area, we were convinced that it was all just normal for OZ. Breakfast turned out to be a total feast, with eggs, bacon (more like Canadian bacon than our usual fare in the U.S.), tomatoes and marinated mushrooms. Juice, tea, toast and jam or cream rounded things out quite nicely.

Wendy and Jim turned out to share an interest in photography and he took us into the private section of the home to his computer and showed us some of his work.

Glenhaven Bed and Breakfast. The best ever!!

Our Bedroom

Tea Room

Our host who is garrulous and very entertaining.

Our B and B from Outside

Well, we had to leave sometime, and it turns out that 10:00 a.m. was check out. So, we loaded up the vehicle, settled the bill and headed into Pemberton. It is likely that Wendy and her mom Lynn will return to stay here in September. During September and October, the south comes alive with thousands of species of wild flowers bursting forth. There are more varieties here in Western Australia that anywhere else in the world! I will miss this phenomenon, but hopefully they will see it and send a report.

In town we stop in an artists studio recommended by Jim and purchase some gift cards with illustrations of Australian flowers. These will make excellent gifts for certain family members. Next we visit a woodworkers studio, the works are outstanding but extremely costly. So, we let the artists creativity please our eyes but not impact our wallets.

After that, it is back into the forests. We visit a nearly National Park a few blocks distance and view the Gloucester Tree. This karri tree is a fire lookout. Numerous three foot spikes have been driven into its trunk in a spiral pattern ascending upwards over 200 feet to a lookout post. I go up a few wrungs to about 30 feet, but there are quite a few people high up ascending and some descending. I decide not to spend our time seeking my own glory and instead Wendy and I go on an amazing walk in the tall trees along a well marked path.

Afterwards, we drive a few short kilometers to another park and come to a different lookout Karri tree.

Here I do go a bit higher, about 25 meters or about four storeys upwards to a small stand. A sign here states that getting to here was the easy part and the rest will be significantly more challenging. Well enough is good for me, and I carefully make my way back to level ground.

It is now time to leave the Pemberton area and make a long drive to the South coast near the towns of Walpole and Denmark. There is a forest area called Valley of the Giants, and not only are there more Karri trees, but the rare Tingle trees are also located in this small region. Moreover, there is a so called Tree Top Walkway of several hundred meters length that slowly ascends upward bringing one into the tops of the Tingle and Karri trees more than 100 feet above ground for what is promising to be a unique experience. Wendy has been most eager to go there, and with afternoon approaching I know that we must leave for there now as she cannot be let down.

Nannup Of The South or Karri Us Away

2006-08-14T18:27:00.000+09:00

Leaving the coast from Bunbury we plunge into the wilds of forested hills as the sky gently released rain and mist upon us. Of course, with the car controls switched 180 we activate the turn signals on the right lever and then flip the left one for the whipers. A small town appears named Donnybrook with signs boasting that it is the home of Granny Smith Apples. This is not enough to convince us to stop and we proceed down the highway

There are numerous cleared fields on either side of this Western Highway. Some are vinyards for the regions much praised wine industry, but most are grazing fields for incalculable numbers of sheep and lambs. Of course, there are also cattle and horses in places, but they are not nearly so numerous. There are also fields cluttered with what turn out to be rocks that look as if they might be vast herds of sheep until you get close enough.

Even though it is theoretically winter in Australia, the climate in the southwest corner of Western Australia is much like that of Ireland. There is lush greenery everywhere and generous misting rains and there accompanying clouds. The temperatures are warm in the day and cool at night. The numerous storms or rainfall are generated by the Indian Ocean and the winds that come from the west and push across this jutting corner of the continent where it meets what is called here the South Ocean.
Although it has been forecast to be quite rainy, we are very fortunate in that there the rainfall is very brief when it happens and clearing skies appear between these mild, short duration rains. Also, much of the rain occurs while we are driving rather than when we are out walking.

We have read that the drive between the towns of Bridgetown and Nannup is "spectacular." So, we decide to cut across to Nannup from the highway and then take this reportedly beautiful stretch of road back to the highway so that we are not doubling back. Actually, the shortcut over to Nannup turns out to be amazingly beautiful. We are in the beginning of the great forests that stretch across much of the Southwest and South Coast. There are incredibly tall eucalyptus trees which are called karri trees and grow up to over 200 feet tall, vying with our American Redwoods and Sequoia as the tallest on earth. We make our way on a narrow road with no middle stripe and no handy white stripes on the edges and no shoulder. So, when Don driving means that the passenger side of our car is close to or even over the edge of the road on the Wendy side he is prompted to move over to the center (no an exact quote mind you).

Little Nannup turns out to be a place where we decide to get out of the car a walk about. The name reminds us of a documentary about Inuit filmed long ago, Nannuk of the North.

After checking in at the visitor center, we go to what is called Blythe Garden, a home whose grounds have become a place of residence for various trees, plants and flowers that would impress just about anybody. A small donation of a "gold coin" (an Australian $1 or $2 come in this color) per person is requested at the gate by a small sign and then one is free to look about the yard. We do not see or hear from the owner, although the residence is clearly inhabited. Having lived with a film professor for some years who enjoys watching horror films, I have brief flashes of Freddie or Jason like faces peering out from the window, but I am quickly disabused of these thoughts by the beauty and pleasantness of the surroundings. One very distinct and unique tree to Australia is the Banksia, and we see more here (and skipping ahead I will reveal that we later on our journey we will visit a place devoted to them).

We make it safely out of Blythe garden and wander a bit down the road from the Nannup visitors center. In the distance is a grove of fascinatingly tall trees, so we head over in that direction.

We soon arrive in a park with deliberately planted Karri trees in a park that we take a short walk inside. Wendy spots a Kookaburra bird in a tree and takes a few photos of it. They are mostly brown and white and are well known in OZ for making a distinct laughing sound.

So, we get back into our vehicle and head down the highway to Bridgetown for the promised view of the forests. We are not disappointed. Several National Parks have been created throughout the Southwest and this highway travels through a few of them, so we see a lot of forest that is uninterrupted by farms or other development. Everything in nature here is so different from back home, except where certain hillsides have been clearcut and replanted with generic pine. During this drive, I make a pitch for staying in a place named Pemberton which is in the "heart of the Karri forests." Wendy agrees to go there and see before we decide where to stay. However, when we read in the Lonely Planet guide about a bed and breakfast named Glenhaven which features Scottish hospitality we are intrigued.

A Bunburying we will go

2006-08-13T22:45:00.000+09:00

Our visit to Bunbury:

Well, Don here again, all we did in Bunbury was purchase petrol, but more about that in a bit.

Wendy loves that there is a town called Bunbury since it recalls to her an element of the comic Oscar Wilde play The Importance of Being Earnest. In this work, Algernon escapes the pressures of his family in town by pretending to visit his invalid friend Bunbury out in the country. This "Bunburying" of Algernon eventually leads to all sort of comic misunderstandings that disrupt the lives and plans of his loved ones for a time.

Back to our pending trip.

After illness interferred with our plans to travel south last weekend, we arranged to borrow a UNDA car for the next weekend, however, we would not be able to pick up those wheels until late Friday afternoon, and so we actually decided to rent a car from the local Bayswater Rental Agency and get an early start on Friday morning.

We had been advised to do a long loop in a counterclockwise fashion. This would involve a 5 to 6 hour drive on a supposedly not too interesting stretch of road to a coastal town with the familiar name of Albany. From there, it was recommended to travel along the South Coast and then turn north up through the extensive forests of Jarrah trees, the tall Karri trees and the large in girth and also tall Tingle trees. These are found nowhere else on earth and are confined to this relatively small part of the continent that is both hilly and receives ample rainfall. From the forests, we would meet the coast at Bunbury and return to Freo.

Given the weather predictions of intermittent rainfall, however, we reversed our course and decided to see the forests first, while the chances for rain were less than on the next couple of days.

Now to a topic of crucial importance for our survival on this mini vacation.

For some reason, we too were required to obey Australian laws and drive on the left hand side of the road. To supposedly facilitate this, the cars are designed with the steering wheel on the right. The key was to remember that the driver should be towards the center of the road and all would be well, at least in theory. Something else about this that was not readily apparent was that all of the controls are on the opposite sides as well. For instance, whenever we wanted to use our turn signal, we automatically flipped the stick on the left, which promptly sent the windshield wipers across the windshield and did nothing to indicate to our fellow drivers sharing the road what our changing lanes intentions might or might not be! Thank goodness we had a Toyota Corolla sedan that was an automatic, for as much as we enjoy manual transmission vehicles, one can only wonder how our coordination would fare performing that function left handed.

So, Friday morning we walk over to the rental agency, pick up the car and go back home to load everything up, however, we have to go into our alley and manouver the vehicle into our very small courtyard space while dealing with two kinds of supposedly automatic gates that have to be triggered open. It turns out to be a very tight squeeze, (....and Wendy refused to even try to do the backing in and parking. Don is a better man than I am, Gunga Din....) but the Toyota just fits into our courtyard and allows the gate to close. We scurry to load up everything for our journey and make a last minute tidying of a few rooms. Finally, we are off, but not so fast.

The streets in Fremantle are a hodge-podge of one way roads and avenues that turn and weave. Even after studying some local maps, we have to make some interesting adjustments to stay on Highway 14 which leads us to the Old Coast Road. This road turns out to be a divided four lane highway (much bigger and better than we expected) which was not to be forseen from the way the maps are made out, but this is to our benefit. Also, all the signs are in kilometers and the car speedometer as well. (Wendy wonders what he expected!) These are inflated compared to our miles and give one the psychological impression that things are further away and also that one is driving faster than back home. (It certainly gave Wendy that impression!! (grin)).

(Orchards are a very common sight in the South. Vinyards are everywhere! ws) This is true, Wendy is NOT deceiving you trusting readers this time. (But I might later, don't get lulled into a false sense of security! ws)

Lots of traffic accompanies us to Bunbury where we add half a tank of petrol for $42 A (equal to $34 U.S.) so fuel is significantly more expensive, at least in Bunbury!

From Bunbury we plunge off of the main road into the interior leaving the coastal plains behind and blessedly losing most of our fellow highway travelers!

A view of some of the wooded areas we drove through.

Yes, even the beginning of our time driving in the forests seemed quite promising, but even greater surprises waited for us further along into the deep, dark woods along the ever narrowing road with its innumerable curves and hills.

Four for Six: Wright On! Brothers

2006-08-10T22:47:00.000+09:00

Don here (finally) to let you know that we were basically both ill Friday August 4th through Monday August 7th. Whatever we had manifested mainly in fatigue and lethargy, both well known as being very condusive to relationship volatility, except that it turned out they undercut the potential conflicts by their very definition. That was a good thing since we spent lots and lots of this time together doing very little except hanging around the apartment, sleeping, and doing the occassional necessary errands.

Consequently, we had to cancel the arrangements that we had made to borrow a car from the University of Notre Dame and travel south of here to see the incredible forests and the sweeping south coast of southwestern Australia. We thought that we might pick up the car just for Sunday to make a short day trip, but by the time we got ready to do this, we felt completely exhausted and had to give up on the idea. Our illness was maddeningly deceptive in that we would feel fine for about one or two hours and think that it was behind us only to suddenly feel completely and totally exhausted and have to take to bed (in Don's case) or log on to the computer and try to force out some work (in Wendy's case) before giving up and taking a nap. Wendy had to teach her class on Monday afternoon and made arrangements for four of them to come over to the house on Wednesday for a dinner with us.

By Tuesday we were actually really a lot better and finally got out there around town for some serious shopping and errands. We made a last minute invite to Christine Sullivan from UNDA to come over for dinner that very night and she accepted. She has done a lot to make things go smoothly for us and for our students and we wanted to have a chance to get to know her a bit better and thank her for all her efforts. Wendy made a nice lamb curry which was accompanied by basmati rice, a mixed greens salad and some good Australian red wine. Christine is an avid sports enthusiast and answered a bunch of our questions about Australian Rules Football and gave the best description of the game of cricket that we have heard. Cricket actually made sense after what she told us!

On Wednesday, Don did his long planned "big buy" in Australia. We went across the street to Bodkin's Boots and Don purchased a pair of Blundstones, those funky boots he wears much of the year with the loops on the top on both the front and back that make them easy to put on and remove. Next it was over the the gocery store to get supplies for the days main event.

That evening our first small group of students were to come over for dinner, we went by our favorite "bottle shop" or liquor store, The Sail and Anchor. There, our man Clint has provided a lot of help selecting wines and beers to serve guests and for ourselves, and we put ourselves in his hands once again. We acquired four different kinds of unique Australian beers and a couple of wines for the upcoming dinner. We knew that the students would be terrified since they would not have us outnumbered by many and so we thought that we could serve up some foods that were not their usual fare to really throw them for a loop. A cunning plan, well though out and implemented with precision.

When Zach, Marc, Dan and Jaya arrived, they had brought along a bottle of wine for us which was totally outstanding. I got out four frosted mugs and offered them beer from our recently acquired selection. They were familiar with one of the kinds, but were eager to try the other three so we split those with them one after another and got feedback about the taste and preferences. Once they were relaxed and conversational, we guided them over to the dinner table. How would the tastes of young central Minnesotans (with very specific likes and dislikes) fare when colliding head on with the unexpected and different kitchen creations of Don and Wendy? We would soon find out!

We served them noodles with a chicken stroganoff that Wendy had prepared slowly over the course of the afternoon so that the flavors would have a chance to mix nicely. Accompanying the main course were baked Aussie potatoes, a mixed green salad, and green beans. We finished with a plate of chocolates and shortbread for dessert. Conversation was fluid and we learned that Dan is a licensed pilot, having taken time away from St. Johns and attended school in North Dakota to acquire his skills. Marc is preparing to take a trip to Singapore with one of his UNDA business classes that he is looking forward to. Zach is making Australian friends at the local pubs and since his last name is Swan he introduces himself that way. The Swan River is nearby and so the fact that that is also his surname makes him very easy for the locals to remember. He is looking into getting a part time job at one of the local businesses to fuel some of the traveleing he hopes to do after the semester ends. Jaya is taking psychology classes here at UNDA and is a dietetics major at CSB, her family lives overseas in Europe and so she is an experienced traveler. It is early in the term, everyone seems to be doing well although the nature of classes here is quite a bit different and they are still getting used to those features of UNDA. The evening seemed quite a success and we will have our next group over on Tuesday August 15.

Thursday moring around 9:00 a.m. we got a call from Tony Fairhead letting us know that a U.S. naval vessel was sailing into Fremantle harbor at that very moment. We quickly grabbed our things and headed out to the train station a few blocks away. Before we even got there, we could see a massive aircraft carrier slowly sailing into port with hundreds of sailors and officers dressed in black uniforms lining the perimeter of the craft, it was the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, named after the location where the Wright Brothers made the first flight back over 100 years ago. The ship would be here for four days and it was possible that some of our students would get a chance to tour the Kitty Hawk!

That afternoon, we saw many sailors (men and women) and officers in their neat distinct black uniforms about town. We stopped and spoke to a group of four young men. Wendy asked if there were any of them who did not want to take shore leave, because I had speculated that out of a crew of about 5,000, there were probably a few malcontents who just loved the ship and did not leave it. The sailors said that practically everyone wanted shore leave, but NOT during the first 24 hours, since they were required to wear their uniforms at those times, but not for the three other days. We asked where they were from and then wished them well, hoped that they would be safe and thanked them for all that they are doing for the rest of us and our country. It is rumored that they are part of the Afghanisan and Iraq campaign and so we decided that we would not write anything about this visit until after the ship departed.

We spent time meeting with the Student Life Office at UNDA and then Sue Wade specifically to let them know that our students were interested in any tours of the Kitty Hawk that might be arranged. At that time, it was known that perhaps a small group would be able to go, so we were thinking that we could arrange a lottery to select winners from those of our group who were interested. All was up in the air, but our interest was known to the folks that had their ear to the ground.
(And luckily all who wanted to go, got the opportunity to tour the ship while it was in harbor).