Year: 2007

Sunday was overcast (as was the whole past week!). Despite rumours of spring, the weather continues to be wet and cool. But for photoing flowers overcast is fine and the rain did not interfere with our weekend plans, so we can’t complain really.

Once again we lucked out and found a wonderful tea house for breakfast in Toodyay. They also happened to have a photo exhibit of orchids, and the photographer popped in when we were there. We were not sure where to head to best see the flowers – although I had been hoping to see fields of everlastings, we discovered that you need to drive pretty far north to see that. We had a few recommendations of good areas, but kismet intervened. The photographer turned out to be part owner of a vineyard where they have discovered several varieties of orchids. They are in the process of developing both the vineyard and the botanical park. They were just up the road, and open today for tours of the wild orchids. So our day was set!

On the drive out we did manage to find everlastings mixed in with the forest on the hillside (at right above) and other wildflowers (sample left above) – still very pretty.

Since the Mt. Vernon Estate & Botanical Park is just in formation, we were one of only a handful of visitors. And it was just as well that we had a guide, since we would have missed most of the orchids. The two more obvious ones are the cowslip orchid (yellow at left) and the blue china orchid (at right).

The owners are hoping to have the area zoned as protected due to the variety of orchids on the property. At least 2 of the species are rare orchids. A botanist from Kings Park is due to visit the property to identify some of the species. Even as we were hiking around we managed to spot an orchid or two which they had not yet mapped. They are very hard to spot to the untrained eye – they are mostly very small and blend in very well with the surrounding vegetation.

While many of the orchids look similar, on closer inspection you see that they are in fact different. The spider orchids come in several flavours. There are bearded and smooth varieties as well as colour variations. At the very left is a bearded and beside it is a smooth. The grouping of 5 above are dark tipped spider orchids. At right below is an antelope orchid.

The kangaroos are a mixed blessing. The orchids mostly occur close to the kangaroo paths. It is believed the roos carry the seeds and necessary fungus for the orchid to grow on their fur which then gets rubbed off into the nearby vegetation. But the roos also trod on and eat the orchids. Given the amount of damage they do, the owners hope to erect a fence around the property to keep the roos out and to protect the orchids.

The other two photos here are spider orchids also I believe, but not sure of the specific species. The red one was especially interesting. And despite not investing in a ‘macro’ lens, I think Mike did a respectable job of capturing the flowers.

And so having had our fill of fine food, monastic relics, raging bonfires, good company, orchids and wild scenery, we headed back home. And as Kyle put it on the drive home “That was a good weekend guys – thanks”.

Ok, enough bribery….. I need something to do after all.

After a couple of slower weekends, we ramped up again this past weekend and were quite busy. Friday evening Mike got together with school mates to watch the footie playoffs again. Now both Freo Dockers (Mike’s team) and the West Coast Eagles (last year grand champions) are gone. Looks like it won’t stay in the west this year.

I helped raise funds for the school chaplaincy again by heading to a Bingo night with Phillipa, Richard and some others from the school. Wow, you actually have to concentrate – I have a new found respect for all those Bingo fanatics! Our table – including me – did quite well in the winnings. It was a fun evening and another Aussie experience since the bingo here is quite a different variation from ours.

Saturday we rose semi-early and headed north to check out wildflowers and New Norcia. The countryside in this area is beautiful with rolling hills and meandering rivers. We started in New Norcia just after noon. New Norcia (click to check it out) is the only monastic town in Australia. The entire town and the surrounds is owned by the monks. They are of the Benedictine order.

When we first arrived, we popped into the museum barn where the tools and farming implements were exhibited. This magpie followed me in and proceeded to tour the building along side us. He found many bugs and crumbs on his journey, so was rewarded for his bravery at being in such a confined space with us.

After a nice lunch at the hotel (fruit flies in the vinegar aside), we took the guided tour of the town which is the only way to gain access to the buildings. The first missionaries arrived from Spain in 1846. They started with 30 acres of land and at their peak had 200,000 acres and control of close to a million acres. Today they own 20,000 acres and despite the Catholic church’s pressure to turn it over to the church, it is in fact owned by the 20 or so full fledged monks of the monastery.

The first missionaries here fully integrated with the aboriginals. The diaries of Bishop Salvado are extensive and he recorded them in many languages. Today they are being translated and are likely the most comprehensive notes on aboriginal life.

For the first 50 years of the monastery, Salvado concentrated on creating an agricultural village. After his death the next 50 years saw it become a more European type monastery. Craftsmen were brought over to produce the paintings, carvings and buildings in the European tradition. As you can see from the photos, they spared no cost in hiring skilled artists and craftsmen. During its history, the monastery also included a boarding schools for boys and girls – aboriginal and white. Today it still has an education centre where schools can come for a few days, but the boarding schools are closed.

Recently many of the paintings were stolen. They were quickly recovered, but not after substantial damage. One painting was totally destroyed. The others have been restored and are again on display in the buildings and art gallery. Today the monastery is still renowned for its bread – and we were lucky to manage to buy a loaf even late in the afternoon.

Then we were off to Toodyay. Toodyay turned out to be a great little town with lots of character – and we found a wonderful dinner spot. We had booked a room in town, but our destination was to check out a bi-annual tradition. One of Mike’s school friends invited us to their “Mother of all bonfires….. BONFIRE by Blackwell”. Her parents live out in the country near Toodyay, and her parents host this unique event.

This is the wet time of year, so having gathered all the debris from his property for the past couple of years, it is time to burn it off. We arrived in time to see the unlit mountain of wood which was several metres high. To give you a sense of scale, the large top log in the photo on the left is about 20 feet high.

So a crowd of 40 or so sat around and drank beer, ate and watched the fire burn. Again another Aussie experience thanks to friends at Pinjarra HS. Then back to our beds in Toodyay to head out flower hunting on Sunday.

Feeling much more refreshed after a full nights sleep, Saturday and Sunday had us venture into the mining world of GOLD. After a yummy ‘camp breakfast’ with jaffles (cast iron sandwich maker bread, egg, cheese and bacon cooked in the fire pit), we headed out to the mines.

On Saturday we visited an underground mine. The mine we visited is no longer active, but is still maintained as a tourist site. We only went down 1 level in the elevator shaft – it actually goes down 12 levels. The lower levels are now flooded since they are no longer pumped out.

Sorry for the delay folks – I’ve been making plans for our wrap up trip and yesterday when I was ready to post, blogger was having problems – but I’m here now. I must say though – I have a new found respect for travel agents. Perhaps if you know your markets you can be much more efficient, but I find it takes me an awfully long time to find hotels and cars and flights and tours and….

This past weekend however I did not have to do the organizing – the teacher exchange group again looked after this one for us. We headed to Kalgoorlie on Thursday after school. We convened in Perth where a ‘team van’ picked us up and the 12 of us headed off. It was a long drive and we did not arrive till about 2:30 am on Friday.
So with minimal sleep, we started our Friday with a visit to a local aboriginal school. Unfortunately a parent of one of the students had recently passed away and the funeral was on Friday – so many students were absent. We still had a chance to sit in the classes with the students however and it was especially fun for me to be back in the company of a class of pre-primary kids and to read with them. Memories of helping out in Patrick & Kyle’s classes when they were young! We also caught a maths lesson where we even got to count Smarties.

The school itself had a wall painting by well known aboriginal artist Mary McLean. She has a very unique style and she has received high honours – her work hangs in Buckingham Palace and she has been granted honourary doctorate degrees. Mary paints out of Kalgoorlie and had her work not been so out of our price league we could have met her to get a custom piece!

The school had prepared for our visit, and we were treated to a kangaroo stew which had been slow cooked for almost a day along with fresh baked damper by the pre-primary kids. Turned out we did not really need the packed lunch we brought!

As part of the aboriginal education program, local elders are brought into the school to do cultural education. We were lucky to have the boys present their dance as a rehearsal for an upcoming show. They also had a practice run at getting painted up.

Later in the afternoon, we were off to visit the Royal Flying Doctors Service. This is a privately run service which now receives some funding from the government for operational activities, but still no capital allowances. The service is fundamental to life in the outback. It is the only access to medicine for many people – these doctors actually do fly around practice and assist local clinics in addition to emergencies. The service was conceptualized by Reverend John Flynn in the early 1900s before either the planes or the radio service required existed. But as planes became more advanced and a simplistic radio box which could be used by the average person was designed, Flynn’s concept became reality and by 1928 the service was running. And they’ve been fund raising ever since.

Kalgoorlie itself is a gold rush town. So as you would expect, there are lots of bars as there is not a lot to do in Kalgoorlie. We visited one bar which had a mine shaft in it. It is covered with a thick glass plate, but you are able to look down into it as seen here. And after a quick drink, we were off to our next stop.

And Kalgoorlie has other activities associated with lots of men in one place with few women. To get a well rounded education (which of course teachers are after) of the local life, a trip to Kalgoorlie would not be complete without a tour of the local brothel. There are only a handful of them left, and they are ‘tolerated’ rather than legal. There was a law passed allowing the existing brothels to continue, but no new ones are allowed. Today I suspect they make more money on their tours than on their service. At a couple of spots on the tour the guide required an assistant to demonstrate the ‘equipment’. Lucky us, the Montgomery’s were both chosen as the guinea pigs! Oh well, I got to be the volunteer to feed the dolphins in Monkey Mia, so I guess it balances out in the end!

During the day we also had some time to browse around town and check out the scene. Mike found another bar with this ‘Ned Kelly’ in it, and we found another ‘Monty’s’ Cafe. This time it was named after the import/export dealers who owned the warehouse where the cafe now resides. From the newspaper articles on the walls, the Montgomery brothers did not sound like very nice blokes.

Also around town (just out of town I believe), Mike also browsed around the local cemetery. It’s not difficult to tell which plots belong to those who found gold and those who did not.

After a full day, we packed in a bit early to get set for another busy day on Saturday!
(view here of Kalgoorlie from the top of the museum)

Our time markers continue to tick. Patrick has now landed back in Canada. His trip home was one he will remember for a long time I’m sure.

We started at out in Mandurah by leaving an hour earlier than planned. We had to rise at 3:30am to get to the airport in time for Patricks flight. In setting the alarm however, I somehow managed to put the time ahead an hour without realising it. So we ended up rising at 2:30 am and we were well on our way to the airport before discovering my error. And Patricks lack of sleep was to continue as you’ll hear.

After a rather lengthy meander at the airport, it was finally time to say bye-bye to Patrick. As expected I choked up and had tears running down my face as I hugged him and wished him “Happy Birthday”, “Merry Christmas”, and “Happy New Years”. He then seemed to disappear very quickly beyond the security gate. I’m not sure if he was embarrassed by his mother, or needed to leave before he got weepy too…

His first flight to Singapore went smoothly as did the connecting flight to Los Angeles. That’s when things went awry. After more than 24 hours in transit at this point, they landed about 1/2 hour late. But then they were held on the runway for over 5 hours due to a problem with the customs computers. Since it was Saturday evening in LA, I’m sure that contributed to the lengthy delay. By the time Patrick got into the airport, he had missed his connecting flight and the place was deserted since it was the small hours of the morning. Unlike Hong Kong and Singapore airports, LA has no public internet access computers, so Pat had to make phone calls to let us know what was going on. Patrick left a message with Mikes parents (Marucia and George), but of course they were already at the airport, and then phoned us to give us an update and let us know “I’m not dead…”. He had to wait for the Air Canada booth to open at 4 am to make alternate arrangements.
He managed to catch the 7am flight to Toronto and finally was picked up by George & Marucia around 3 pm on Sunday. They of course had been expecting to pick up Patrick earlier and had been back and forth to the airport twice by this time. So after 40 odd hours in transit, Patrick had a nice steak dinner and then crashed. I hope to talk to him later tonight when he wakes up!

And once again, here are some remnant photos to round out the July trip selection. These include the menu at Monty’s Cafe in Darwin, Mike donning his dust protection gear, another drive past a bush burn off, and Steve holding a long neck turtle which we encountered on one of our journeys near a swamp.

Upon returning from our trip to Darwin, Patrick headed back to Gingin to wrap up his volunteer stint at the Australian International Graviational Observatory. That week he managed to finish up the video and even helped with a display at the Gravity Discovery Centre. With 2 weeks left in Australia, we have worked on filling in the gaps on local tourist visits and getting his university life ogranized.

Patrick missed the cutoff date for applying for residence this year so despite making the deans honour list, he does not have residence. After searching on the Mac website, and with Joannes help to visit, he has rented a student housing room in a house right near the university. Looks like he’ll have access to good facilities and be even closer to the Engineering buildings than he was last year in residence.

Rounding out Patricks tourist venues, our first stop was to visit the Perth Zoo and Kings Park where Pat had not been. Patrick and I spent the first part of the day watching monkeys, orangutans and reptiles. Next we had a nice lunch then did the tour of Kings Park, even doing some walks which were off the beaten path and new to me. The horticultural area of the park is quite different now in the midst of winter. The weather has been incredibly wet these days, with rain a daily event, often accompanied by very high winds. But the day held off for the most part and we did not get too wet. We also took a trip to the local stromatolites (which are actually thrombolites here). Not overly exciting to look at, but knowing that the ‘rocks’ are actually living organsims is intriguing.

For Pat’s last weekend here Mike, Patrick & I headed to Rottnest Island. For the first time in many weeks we had 3 consecutive warm sunny days – so even though it was winter, the visit to the island was very pleasant. We enrolled Patrick into an introductory scuba dive for the day. He did not need a diving certificate – just an intro to the equipment and then he dove accompanied by a dive instructor. We headed over to the island on the early ferry. It was almost empty as you can see – and very early as you can see also!

The dive wasn’t till afternoon, so we had the morning to explore the island. We stopped by the bakery for a treat and to check out the quokkas. This little fellow (between Pat & I peeking over the bench) was hoping for some food which we failed to give him.

We visited the Kingston Barracks where we had stayed our last visit to see the defence posts set up in the second world war to protect the harbour at Perth/Fremantle. We also showed him the aboriginal prison (now a hotel) and the local cemetaries.

We dropped Patrick back at the dive shop and once he figured out that the wetsuit goes on with the zipper at the back, he was off on the boat to check out the scuba scene.

He used the underwater camera, but it was difficult to manage when loaded down with diving gear. I can certainly concur – just with snorkel gear it was hard enough to hold steady. He had a fantastic dive despite the lack of quality photos and saw many different fishes and corals. They swam through lots of ‘gorges’ and tunnels and he managed with no problems.

Meanwhile back on the island Mike & I sat back on the beach and relaxed. The beaches were now deserted (it is winter after all), We also checked out the ‘Pilot’ ship as seen here. Since the approach to the Fremantle docks was so dangerous, between 1848 and 1903 ships would be met by a pilot boat. The Pilot (an experienced sailor) would be rowed out to the ship, board the ship and then guide it into the harbour. The pilot boat would follow into the harbour then return the Pilot to the island. The round trip would take up to 28 hours, with no rest in between. The staff on the boats had a very rough life since all their ‘spare’ time when not rowing was filled. They had to provide all the fish for themselves as well as everyone at the prison.

Patrick returned and we headed over to the island pub for a drink before heading back on the ferry to Fremantle. We checked out ‘the shed’s at Fremantle and then headed back home.

We’ve since returned Patricks guitar – he really enjoyed it and the staff at Crescendo Music where we rented from were wonderful people.

Also this week we attended a guest lecture by Sir Roger Penrose at the University of Western Australia in Perth. We had run into Dr. Blair on the ferry back from Rottnest and he told us of this talk being given by one of the leading mathematician/physicist/philosophers of our time. His talk was titled ‘What happened before the Big Bang’. He was an engaging speaker and despite the many times we were each scratching our heads, we all came away with a new view on the life cycles of the universe.

And now we are in the final throws of packing Patrick up for his flight home on Saturday. I think he’s had enough of living with the parents again, and he is excited to be going back to see friends and the rest of the family. And while we are ready for him to return also, we’ll miss him as soon as he steps on the plane. sigh.