Category: Australia – Western Australia

And here are the remainder of the photos from our Rottnest weekend. On Sunday Kyle and I attempted to squeeze in a very quick snorkel (no luck; the water was too rough and we did not have time to get to the other side of the island where it was sheltered). Mike meanwhile headed into town to catch some photos from the tour we did in the dark on Friday evening. He also visited the cemetery which we had not been to.

Photo’d here on the left is the quod, from the outside and below from within. It is now part of a resort, this being tourist accommodation. The centre of the quod is where the aboriginal slaves were hung if that was their sentence. The location will be turned over to the aboriginals once a decision has been made on an appropriate memorial for the spot. Given the large number of aboriginal tribes, that is not an easy, quick decision.

There are two churches on the island – the one here below is the original (a service was taking place, so no inside photos).

Once Kyle & I reunited with Mike, we hit the local bakery for a sweetie and a marvelous loaf of bread to take home. Then it was onto the ferry and back to the mainland (we had to leave the island early as Kyle had some tests to study for – after all we are here for more than a holiday you know!)

But before we rushed back home, we strolled around the sheds in Freemantle, and visited the submarine which was on display. There was also a ‘tall ship’ in dock which students and others can go on to learn to sail, or just to tour.

Then it was back home to work!!!!

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We spent this last weekend once again with the educational exchange gang for a Professional Development weekend learning about (and enjoying) the Rottnest Island Environment. They really are a dedicated group to organize and donate so much of their time and effort on our behalf – MUCH appreciated!

Rottnest is a popular getaway for Perthonians – just a 1/2 hour by speedy ferry ride off of Freemantle (just west of Perth). It has many unique and interesting features. There are essentially no cars on the island. The island authority vehicles and busses are all that are allowed (we were lucky to have an island van follow us along on the bike route so that we did not have to carry all our gear!)

We also visited the tunnels under the gun where the munitions and engines for the gun resided – you really feel a sense of history as you walk the steps of those who worked here. Most of the content is now gone since the scrap metal was all taken away after the war. Only the gun remained due to its weight. 

All around the island there are lookout posts and pillboxes where men were positioned as lookouts. Check out the warning post below the graffiti on the this one munitions station.

We returned and a had tour of the barracks before dinner (Mike took photos on Sunday which I will post tomorrow). After dinner, we did an evening walk into town and toured the original settlement. Again, lots of history. The island was also an aboriginal prison from 1838 to 1931. The original prison is now tourist accommodation – kind of creepy to me. Given the islands history, there are also many ghost stories which we were treated to!

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We continued our long weekend on Sunday with a visit to Albany and surrounds. Mike found some interesting shots around the town while Kyle & I checked out the tourist info centre to plan our days itinerary.

First we hiked up to a lookout point from within the town. En route there were again memorial trees dedicated to those who fought in wars.  Next stop was to drop by the oldest farm in Western Australia. Albany was the first settlement area in WA, so there is lots of history in the area. Had lots we wanted to see so didn’t go in, but did browse around the lovely gardens.

The local guide recommended ‘The Squid Shop’ for lunch which we did. Bit of a wait for our order as it’s a very popular place, but worth it. The shop was near the pier with the typical pelican regulars. This fellow in the image landed on the light post straight over Mikes head.

Our next stop was back down to the coast for more rock formations. The bridge is a natural bridge formed by the erosion of the granite rocks. That little speck on the rock is Kyle (if you zoom to  enlarge you may be able to actually see him). The rock face to the right was quite spectacular also – very subtle colours which you cannot see in the shadows here. The bridge will eventually erode away to form a ‘gap’ similar to the black and white image which follows in the gallery.

These rock formations really do emphasize the power of the ocean. Standing listening to the waves pound on the rocks it is hard not to be humbled next to the forces at work. Beautiful and scary all at once.

It was then getting late in the day, but we decided to squeeze in one last visit – to the Whale World centre. This is not a museum to whales, but rather of Whaling. Very informative and they really did hide nothing – all the gore of the industry was on display. This whaling station was in production until 1978 when it  folded due to financial reasons – the ships needed replacing and the cost of whale oil was plummeting due to new synthetics – so they shut down. It was only recently made into a museum.

Dad will appreciate the photo of the engine – pulled from one of the ships. They even fired it up for us. Not so familiar to Dad would be the harpoon on the front of the ship. The nose of the torpedo has an explosive inside and is meant to explode shortly after connecting with the whale. Quick painless death if they shoot it in the head successfully. They would go out at 4:30 am – 3 ships and an aircraft for spotting. Spend the day shooting whales, tagging, inflating (so they don’t sink), releasing. Then at the end of the day, they’d pick up the ones killed and drag them back to an off shore rock (mini island). Next day the processing would take place. One by one the land crew pulled in the whales and took them apart for ‘rendering’. Almost the entire whale went into the cookers – only the bladder was tossed back to the ocean. Lots of blood and gore – photos on display showed it all.

There were several skeletons on display along with the tools of the trade. The skeletons were interesting since they were mounted low – you really felt the size on the animals. We had seen large whale skeletons before, but they are usually mounted overhead and so you lose the scale a bit. We were quite rushed as they were closing, but very interesting and informative – worth the visit.

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Monday morning found us back on the road for some final touring before heading home. We were looking for a beach from one of the flyers, but ended up at a deserted point – but there was one bloke out there fishing away from the shore – quite peaceful.

Our final stop for the day was at the Gloucester Tree. We parked outside the park and hiked in along a short stretch of the Bibblumun trail (runs from Perth to Albany).

Nice forest – but there are lots of signs warning not to wander into the woods due to the snake risk! We stuck to the path. Kyle did venture off a couple of feet to climb onto a fallen and cut tree so that you had a sense of scale however. 

And that giant tall tree is the Gloucester Tree – it is a fire spotting tree – 63 metre climb to the top (which we all did – and my butt can still attest to that 2 days later!). It is one very long ladder climb to the top. The view was great from the top – but it was the feeling of being on the very top a single tree that was unique.

Back at the bottom, someone was feeding the ring neck parrots – any where there are humans with food the wild life becomes much less sensitive to our presence. As Mike was taking his shots, one of them landed on his shoulder – too close to photo unfortunately! (Can you spot all 5 of the birds?)

We did make one more stop at the beach in Bunbury since the weather is really warming up again, and it’s a long drive.

Right now as I type this, it’s 37C here and headed for over 40 again today. Records are being broken with the heat. Guess summer’s not over just yet!

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We started our day at our old stone cottage in Denmark. It was on the side of a riverbank. Further up stream were some mangrove swamps – sans crocodiles this far south.


Before heading out for the day, we caught this spider having breakfast. It decided to leave the first beetle – on the left – for later (just spun it up a bit to make sure it didn’t escape). But the second beetle – the one being dragged into the spiders den – was a quick snack right off.

While our destiny was elsewhere, we naturally had to stop at the local tasting outlet – this time the toffee shop. Much to Kyles and my approval, Mike went off to photo whilst we sampled the treats. The farm was quite picturesque with the typical farm animals. And again, the ever present crows and scenic trees.

We first headed to the Valley of the Giants – the
remnants of the Karri and Tingle Tree forests. There is a forest top walk which ramps up to the top of the trees allowing a wonderful view of the forest.

The vibration on the bridge is extreme – it was difficult for Mike to get any decent shots since there was always someone walking. The sway on the bridge was several feet without even trying to make it do so!

There is also a forest bottom walk where you get a very sore neck from looking up.

The forest is primarily Tingle and Karri. There are both Red Tingle and Yellow Tingle trees. The red have very shallow roots, so widen at the base for stability – and also have redder bark. The wider ones are often split due to age and fire damage. Several of them you are able to stand inside of (if you can avoid the spider webs)

These trees are amazing in their ability to survive. You see great chunks of a tree which has been destroyed by fire and yet the tree just plods on growing new branches and picking up where it left off. The Karri trees lose their bark and are very smooth.

There are also scenic views back into the hills behind you from the coast. This area is much hillier than where we are living.

Further down the beach after a short walk (where we spotted our first large lizard), you come to Elephant Rocks. In the panoramic image, the white dots on the large rock on the right of the photo are people standing at the base of the rocks – they are quite large. I think I would have named them Whale rocks tho’, as they remind me of whales more than elephants. 
The rocks in this area are mostly granite with veins of quartz.  However there was this interesting slice along the side of the cove which seemed to be full of iron and the patterns in the rock were very different than the
surrounding landscape.

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We started our trip down to the southern coast on Friday when I picked up Kyle and Mike from school and we started the over 4 hour drive down to Denmark. Our route first took us through Dwellingup where the fires did the most damage. It was eerily quiet and the devastation left you feeling empty. We passed several homesteads which were either fully or partially destroyed also.

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Another great event kindly organized by the exchange group here – special thanks to Ted & Lindsay. We were able to experience a very intimate weekend with Australia.

Picked up Kyle and Mike from school on Friday and headed up to a camp near Gingin – 3 hour drive or so north. There was a group of about 13 of us all together – less this year than in the past, but still enough for a good time.

We stayed at Eshcol Springs which is run by a nice couple Barry and Alison (with help from the adoring grandchildren) – mostly used by school camp retreats and the like. Had a relaxed evening with the group having dinner, some wine & beer and some guitar playing (thanks to Lindsay and Wendy and Alison who teaches music lessons). Met Brian and Vicky – a couple from Freemantle who were on exchange to Vancouver last year. Nice to see folks returning the exchange experience from this end also – it’s nice to compare notes on experiences and get tips and tricks.

The camp is in a large area of natural bushland adjoining the lands of the Gravity Centre. Lots of interesting sites around the property.  Michael had a hayday taking artistic shots around the place, especially during the twilight and early morning hours with the ideal lighting conditions.

The family had raised a female kangaroo who now lives partly as family pet, but also runs wild. She returns regularly with her joey for food. Having been raised around humans she is quite comfortable letting you scratch and pat her. Her offspring so far have all been males, which is problematic since they get aggressive (and big). She currently has a one year old male (in photo) and another joey in her pouch, hopefully this one will be a female. The older joey has recently stopped entering her pouch and rarely suckles now – hence the growth of the new one.

We were in walking distance to the Gravity Discovery Centre which was our destination on Saturday.

The walk to the GDC followed a scale representation of our solar system. We started at Pluto (although not truly a planet any longer), and worked our way back to the sun, which landed us at the centre. The GDC is not only a visitor centre, but also a working research centre where they are researching gravity waves. A group of scientists and students live here and do studies (need to investigate if this could be a summer (or down under winter) job for Pat….right up his alley!!). This includes an observatory and a component of an International Gravitational Study – this being the only presence in the southern hemisphere, so key in the three dimensional input to the study. You can check out their research at University of Western Australia, or just check out the centre at Gingin Observatory. The inscription on the photo at right explains this equation of Einstein – “Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move”.

Unfortunately, during the tour they announced that the evening visit to the observatory was cancelled due to the expected cloud cover. The clouds also changed our afternoon plans from beach visit to wine touring – not a bad fall back!!

We went into Gingin for very pleasant lunch at Eliza’s then headed out to Riseborough winery late in the afternoon. Picked up a couple more bottles of wine (managing to share a discount with the group purchase), and then headed back for more kangaroo visits and a quiet evening of dinner and cards. Learned a great new game called spoons and retaught Wendy hearts, and we swamped Lindsay (a non-card player) with more card rules than anyone should have to suffer – sorry Lindsay :-).

 

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Finally on Sunday morning we headed for home, but with some fun stops on the way – checked out a local apiary – West Coast Honey and sampled an impressive variety of honey. Picked up a healthy bucket of Jarrah honey along with a most tasty bucket of Whitegum honey(Kyle of course insisted on the yummy one!).

And one last stop before we headed home for the guys to do their homework and lesson plans (school still is the main reason for being here after all !). Visited the Maze – with several varieties of mazes and challenges – lots of fun getting lost. Kyle was able to set record times running around the wooden maze visiting each of the ‘poles’. Also had a round of ‘disk golf’ (aka frisbee golf) which was quite entertaining for anyone watching I’m sure! Not sure why we don’t have more courses like this in Canada – quite fun.

 

Given the missed Cosmos Centre visit, missed olive grove and beach at Dunsborough and lots of other local sites, another place we’ll hopefully return to before we leave….the list gets longer as our time moves on!!

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Made our first trip down to South Western Australia. We’ll definitely be going back for more! Lots to see & do. We drove down early Saturday morning and started in Bussleton. The day was a bit overcast and as we’ve come to expect, very WINDY.

Started the day with a visit to Bussleton Jetty. Almost 2 km long, it is the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere. From most angles, you still cannot make out the end of the pier! It was used until 1972, and has had sections destroyed by cyclones and fires – restoration is ongoing. At the end of the pier is an 8 meter deep underwater observatory. Schools of yellow tails and herring along with several reef fish are common around the pier – the photos cannot capture the colours or subtlety of the fish and corals. Along the pier, people were swimming, fishing and even a couple of divers off of nearby boats. Kyle could not resist jumping in on the walk back. Also visited a local candy shop and a wine outlet.

And on Saturday evening we finally spotted our first wild roos!! (we have seen several dead on the road side, but they don’t really count).

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First of all – thanks to you folks who have sent replies – good to see the site is being visited!

Wow – we’ve managed to stay up till 11:00 tonight, even after a full day! We must be over jet lag. Had a fun day – got to Perth ‘jetty’ just in time for the trip. Took the boat cruise out to Freemantle – about 1 1/2 hours. En route we passed the homes of the very wealthy. The large one in the image below was $55 million. Were thinking of picking it up, but we were about $55 million short.

Lots of sailing on the trip – this is where Australia claimed the America Cup in 1983. That event triggered a major ‘fluff up’ of Freemantle to the tourist area it is now. Over 4,000 historic buildings in the town. 

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