closing down

Well, I think it's about time I closed this down. It's done its job of recording some of the emotional stepping stones. It's a year and one month since we landed in Perth and we are feeling more and more settled. The weather is undeniably good, it's the middle of winter and when the sun shines, we are wearing t-shirts.

I'm keeping a record of photos on flickr, anyone interested, you can find me under mikeandsuj. You'll find more "brisk walks" photos of Perth then and now, a set of Perth Lunches, and a collection of rainbow shots during the wet season. I'm also on facebook so please feel free to contact me there, and if all else fails, you can find me on gmail.

more brisk walks

In one of the many underground arcades (the town planners are strangely fond of the subterranean for such a sun drenched city), there is a long row of old photos from around Perth. I was thinking of reasons to go for more brisk lunch-time walks. I decided to take a photo of the old photos, and then tried to find the building or view as it looks now and get a photo of it too. Here's the first. Cheers to Harry, who calmly pointed to the building while I was looking all around trying to find it.

Not the most scintilating series of shots I admit, but it is better than scoffing sarnies over my keyboard.

Season of low sun

It's that time again, you might get a bit tired of sunrise and sunset photos soon, but starting a day's work with these views is too good an opportunity to miss. The building in the second photo has the C restaurant in it. Haven't been there yet. It revolves 360 degrees. but does get rudely in the way of my morning vista. I love those high, scattered clouds, especially in an azure sky, has a feeling of madness about them. The mist in the first photo was spread all over Perth, pooling in the hollows of the Perth basin and the sun was picking it out in spots. The perspective reminds me of those Japanese woodcuts, all done in vertical planes.

rainy nights

Rain rattling hard on the roof, and the air conditioning ducts pipe it straight into the bedroom, 4am, head back under the duvet and drift back into some very funny dreams. The water filled the local park, although I've a strong suspicion the park is really just a big drain, cleverly disguised as a field.


Park in the morning, originally uploaded by mikeandsuj.

It had all gone somewhere by the time I walked home this evening.


Park in the evening, originally uploaded by mikeandsuj.

My bus arrives around sundown now, the evenings are drawing in, and by the time I get home it is dusk.


Board at the bus-stop., originally uploaded by mikeandsuj.

Dodging showers

Showers today, the one day I ride to the station. Managed to dodge the showers, but the gray skies and autumn colours made for some nice contrasts.

Brisk walks

Went for a "nice brisk walk" this lunch time. Co opted some friends to come see the oldest building in Perth. Wholly underwhelming, but there it is, just a little yellow box, next to the supreme courts. I guess you don't have to be big to be historic. My companions were Sim, Harry and Jason. We finished the little tour off along the river front. I was there on Monday and it was calm, and full of little jelly fish and small schools of puffer fish. Choppy to day though, but sunny none the less.

Smelly trees

I came out of the train station yesterday, and was unlocking my bike when I caught the scent of burning paper. At least that was what my nose thought. It was a pleasant smell, but sometimes smells come through wrong. You can be smelling something and thinking to yourself, "that's candyfloss" but there is something about it doesn't sit right. It feels a little skewed, makes you a little dizzy. It's a bit like looking at one of those optical illusions where you have to focus past the plane of the image to see the 3 dimensional picture and your eyes feel like they straining to see something that you can't quite resolve. Suffice to say it wasn't burnt paper. It wasn't until the next morning I realised what the smell was. I was riding past a stand of tall eucalyptus. The morning air is usually fresh and relatively still, and it was full of the scent of these gum trees. But this isn't the astringent, nasal smell I would have associated with eucalyptus oil. In no way did this reminded me of blocked noses and steam baths. This was rich, warm and spicey. It had a food like quality, as though it were more like the smell of something you would drink warm from a flask. I've recently begun riding to the train station. The heat has moved out of the morning air and riding somewhere doesn't seem like such a chore. The mere thought of it earlier in the summer could bring on a sticky vaneer of sweat. The suburbs around me are very green, with a large number of cycle routes linking paths and cul-de-sacs. Riding through the pockets of scent emphasizes the effect of smells on mood. I'm not an advocate of aroma therapy. The whole "smell to get well" movement seems to me to be another example of smartly marketed placebo. However, come Monday, there is no denying the marked difference in my disposition after riding the bus, with it's associate cocktail of perfumes and colognes, compared with riding my bike and the warm aromatics of the gums.

Celebrations and speciation.

Australia day.
On the 26th of January, after a hot steamy Saturday, we followed our neighbours to the southern foreshore of the Swan river just in the curve of Waylen Bay

From there we got a somewhat distant but definitely panoramic view of the incredible fireworks display that Perth put on for Australia day. It went on for half an hour! Resources are concentrated on the Australia Day display, the New Year display having much less spent on it. Understandably so, when Sydney spends so much on it.

Australia Day is celebrated on the day in 1788 that Captain Arthur Phillip founded a British penal colony at Sydney Cove at Port Jackson, New South Wales, (thanks Wikipedia). Actually that article has some really interesting stuff to say about Australia Day, like the fact that some Aboriginals call it "Invasion Day". You can see their point!

Bio-diversity hotspot.
I've been listening recently to a lot of podcasts produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I learnt from one called "The Science Show" (another fine example of Aussie literalism), that Western Australia is a bio-diversity hot spot. Large areas of the bush are made up of a dense patchwork of different habitats. If you walk through them, they change every 100 or so yards. This is unusual since you usually find this in areas where habitats have been subject to a lot of stress. For example the rainforests where the comings and goings of the climate have alternately shrunk down the forest to isolated islands, (allowing for periods of speciation) and then expansion of those islands, so the species that were once common are now significantly different to be sexually incompatible. But Australia has been geologically and glacially dormant for thousands and thousands of years.

Apparently, the cause is the impoverished soils. There have been no new soils spewed out from volcanoes nor glacial till left behind by grinding glaciers. And weathering has exposed and eroded down deep mineral reserves in such concentrations as to make the soil positively poisonous. But plant life has been here so long, it has had time to adapt. And part of that adaptation strategy is, when you drop your seed, you drop it close to Mum! The chances are if you spread your babies far away, they will fail to compete with some other species that is already well and truly settled and adapted to that area. Best stick with the parent in the neighbourhood that they have already made their home in. Which results in this dense and very varied patchwork of diverse species!

So when you hear on the news next, that Australian men and woman are staying at home until their mid-thirties, you will appreciate that this is just what Aussie species have been doing for millenia, and is just an adaptation to some seriously harsh environments.