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.

Catching up.

Rottnest 17th Nov

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We spent a great weekend on Rottnest Island, which is about 11 km off the coast of Perth. It's a small island, no cars, you just hire bikes to get about. Sujata hasn't been on a bike for sometime, but her apprehension evaporated once we got going. There are really good roads and without cars to worry about we struck out manfully on Saturday night and rode at least one and a half kilometers (phew!) to Geordie Bay.

The beaches are sublime, just like every where in Western Australia. In fact it's very hard to find a beach that doesn't appeal anywhere in or around Perth. Then we returned via The Basin to the main settlement called Thompson Bay. We ate in The Lodge Hotel, which hosted a magnificent Thai buffet. The food was fantastic, full of great Thai flavours. For $40 a head we ate like puppies. The Lodge was nicer than the Quokka Arms where we stayed. The Arms were ok, the rooms comfortable and well supplied, but the Lodge was more restful and less funtional. The Arms also managed to forget about both our lunch and breakfast.

Thompson Bay, a very small collection of cafes, restaurants, shops and facilities is the main settlement. For the number of people that come to Rottnest, the place is amazingly quiet. Walk 200m out of town in any direction and all you have is quiet rolling bush on ancient sand dunes, the wind and the sky. In the middle the land is flat with 4 or 5 shallow lakes. The island used prison labour (mostly black) to run a roaring trade in salt from the lakes. History is kept very alive by dedicated teams of volunteers who man a musuem and run free walking tours.

We saw rays in the harbour, dugite snakes (7th most poisonous) long black things but not interested in us at all, a sea eagle and many, many quokkas. Quokkas are little wallaby type things with rat like tails. They have a very dozy expression and wander about the bush and the town in equal measure. It is as though they are stoned, and everywhere seems like everywhere else to them. Entirely unconcerned by people, one actually saught us out for a stroke whilst we were cycling.

Sunday we cycled down the east and south coast about half way across the island and looped around through the middle back to Thompson Bay again. We took in Salmon Bay which really is a fantastic looking stretch of surf. Kira and Raya shared a trailer on the back of my bike. Kira loved the chance to take in the countryside. Raya slept, still at the age where the nomad genes in us turn on and say "we're moving, boring, go to sleep".


Whale watching 4th November

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We really did see some humpbacks fluking (sticking their blowholes out to breath and then bringing their tail flukes out of the water and arching them through the air). But they were some way off the boat and judging scale in the water with nothing for comparison is difficult. It was also frustrating to be unable to get closer, I mean without the 40 tons of metal we were bobbing about on. To be able to swim up to one of these elephants in the sea would be a lifetime experience. But we were tantalzed with their tails, waving effortless "goodbye", whilst straining for another glimpse aound the shoulders of others. We'll plan do to it again on a better boat. The Rottnest Express is quick for getting to the island, but not the best design for unhindered sea staring activities. Great day out though, the kids romped about on the boat, the weather was ... (have a guess). And we poked around D-shed in Freemantle Harbour afterwards in the market and cafes.

OOOO H-H-Hot

Someone turned the sun a couple of bars over the weekend! 31°C on Sat, 36°C on Sun and 39°C today! And it's that hot holiday abroad heat, where the only action that makes sense it to fall over on to a soft surface, outside in the shade, near water with a beer. We have no pool, but a surfeit of friendly neighbours and well met mums from Raya's playgroups and a huge public baths just 2 minutes walk.

Our furniture arrived last month and the house lost its "Holiday Home" air. Getting our mattress was strange. Lying on it for the first night, we were both taken straight back to our bedroom in Kingston. Our bodies remembered the feel of the mattress. The physical memory of our old bed was there.

Suji had our first encounter with a Redback today. It dropped off the roof on to the washing line. She dutifully took a rather shaky photo of it, and then sprayed the bejeezus out of it with kil-o-bug.

12th August I can see for miles and miles and miles and ...

I know everyone says it, and I know it's stating the obvious, but this country is so big! We drove out to Wave Rock this weekend. It's 350 kilometers east of Perth, in the Wheat Belt. We split the journy over Friday night. It had been raining all Friday, articulated lorries overtaking at over 110 kph!

Friday night in Merriden. An old bank that had been converted to a bed and breakfast, newly opened 10 days ago. Built in 1930 and full of very carefully selected stuff. The towns seem quiet, the streets wide and the shop fronts with period facades.

Another 2 hours along perpendicular roads that run so straight, the only thing that breaks them up is the crest of the hills. On each side, to the horizon, is young, green wheat. Very similar to rural England, except the hedged boundaries are 5 or 10 kilometres away. Many of the fields have sheep scattered about. Saw no live kangaroos, just two victims by the road.

Spent Saturday night on the site of Wave Rock in a cabin. Saturday evening we walked around the 'Wave' and up onto the top. The wave really does feels like its about to crash onto the beach. The curves capture the movement of a breaker, so much so it seems intentional, carved.

The sides of the out crop aren't steep. From the top of the granite basolith you can see from horizon to horizon. It's only when confronted with the view, that the scale of things sank in. The horizon behind appears thousands of miles away, and the horizon in front seems just as far. All green wheat fields, dotted hedges, trees, small areas of scrub. In the massive dome of the sky, clouds are moving, one or two drag a grey smudge of rain below them. No mountains, no valleys, no real features. Just acre after acre of rolling countryside, truly massive.

The night is cold. Sunday morning was a struggle to heat up the inside of the cabin. But after breakfast and a scramble in and around the Hippo's Yawn we set off down the country roads back to Perth. York was a good place to break the journey. It had a sense of history with Victorian facades in the main street. It also had people wandering about, which was a novelty. All of the towns we'd passed through so far were deserted, except for a very large black dog advertising the world record for the longest queue of a dog in a ute. Apparently there were over fifteen hundred dogs in utes (o_o), (that's 1500 dogs and utes, not 1500 dogs in 1 ute).

Here's another spider piccie, zoom in and have a look at the alien head on its bum!

2 weeks in.

8th July

We've been living in the house for over week now. Met more neighbours, we have Phil and Rachel one one side with 2 boys. And Georgia over the road, all Kira's age. Kira is signed up for Rostrata Primary, about 15 minutes walk away and starts in 2 weeks once the winter holiday ends.

The house is feeling a bit more homely. We have a bed! But we're still painting it, so still on the matress. The weather's remained changeable, but when it's warm, it's nice and warm :) I've been catching the bus in the morning, and the view across the river is sublime, sun rising over mill pond water with the odd pelican gliding along side.

The sky seems much larger, the river pools out around the central business district and the bus travels up the eastern side of what looks like a lake. The CBD is small, but perfectly formed, like a set that's been desgined to keep the dimensions and impact of a much larger city. Such a large area of flat land with such a striking central feature. Since there is more sky, there is more weather. You can see a whole rain cloud moving across the scene. Combine that with the early morning light (the sun rises around 06:30) and sometimes the western walls of the skyscrapers are a gun metal grey against the dull dark of the clouds, while the eastern sides are golden bright with sunshine.

Wildlife:The morning chorus is something new! They have australian magpies here which have this descending, lilting call, and they get together to do it in thirds ... which is nice, but loud, and relatively early.

We also had our first encounter with the huge, man-eating, arachnid monster, aka the huntsman (sounds like a gladiator doesn't it!). I'm sure the picture doesn't do it justice.

Neighbour Phil offered to remove it from this dimension for us, but they are harmless, keep themselves to themselves, and run feckin' fast in the opposite direction when they see you. So hey, live and let live right! So now we have something that looks like it came from a Japanese monster movie, living in our garage door.

Suji has been exploring the locality, we have lots and lots of supermarkets (malls), a great library, pool and jungle gym in one, and some fantastic parks, one with lots and lots of touchy feely things to do. Next thing on the list is to arrange our first weekend up or down the coast, but the weather is too unprecdictable to go site seeing just yet.

Three days into it.

Set off for Dubai on Wednesday the 20th June, in a taxi at 10 in the morning. We'd had a great deal of goodbyes, some sparking more emotion than others often from surprising sources. The old house was still being sorted up until the last day. The last two pieces to go were the sofas, one having its legs amputated to get it out the door, (it had arrived via the double doors at the back, which were now locked and the keys with the letting agents).

Legs strung like piano wire we rode into Gatwick. No queues for check in, security nor at the gate. We were ushered on to a large plane with very nice seats and a little screen in the seat in front. The kids were immediately presented with giftsd galore and Kira sorted out the advanced menus on the gadgets in front of us. Five hundred movies to watch and just 15 hours to do it in. We ate and goggled for the next 6 hours, landing in Dubai at around 01:20 in the morning their time. Raya had crashed, but Kira was still going with lids like lead.

We scurried our way through Dubai's bling malls, such hussle and scrambling around so many people. Dubai airport (what we saw) was mostly given over to selling, with air passengers very much a by-line. Not much signage, although there were enough staff around to make sure we didn't get too lost. We spent a little time wondering how the pram was going to make it to Perth.

We all stumbled on to an identically sumptuous plane for Perth and took off at around 3 am. Cameras on the underside and nose of the plane meant we could see just how fast and how high up we really were, (although a lot of that was lost in the dark). The kids were well and truly gone now, sleeping deeply across the majority of the seating available. Suj and I slept with the blankets on our heads. In the true style of sky hospitality, a firm tap on my shoulder announced the arrival of a chicken curry at around 5 am. But eating does pass the time, especially when every thing slotted, Tetris style on the tray.

So all in all the flight was far better than expected. We shuttled the bags through a multitude of x-ray machines, (they should just x-ray the plane when it lands). I popped my back lugging the tonnage of suitcases off and on belts and trolleys (we were 1 kilo under the excess baggage marker). Met with my new boss and taxied into Perth to stay a couple of nights at the Travelodge.

On the next day (Friday) we collected the hire car and took possession of the new house. And now it really dawned on us what it is we have to do. Unfurnished means unfurnished. We need Fridge, Freezer, Microwave, full cutlery, something to sleep on until the beds arrive, stuff to sit on ... the list goes on but you get the idea. It started on Saturday, at Ikea!! Now it's Sunday, and so far we've decided to rent and buy, get cheap standby stuff and only buy what we like. So things are not exactly going to plan, but at least they are going.

We've also walked and driven around a small percentage of Perth. Impressions so far:

The roads are wide and straight, with retail or residential along them, rarely a mixture. All the frontage appear to be one storey high. The other place we've been where things appear planned out like this was L.A. The narrow, 3 storey accommodations above the shop fronts in the U.K. must appear very cramped to the Australians and Americans.

The house fronts, when not dominated by car ports, either have no lights on, or the blinds are drawn. Combined with the distance between the front of house and the street, they give the effect of everyone being very withdrawn. Again, our open windows looking in on TVs and flocked wall paper must seem to border on the exhibitionist to the trans-Atlantic and Pacific folk.

In the 3 days we've spent in Perth, we've been in Borders book shop and Ikea, we've seen MacDonalds, Subway, John Lewis (David Jones) and many other stores that are either the same as over in the UK or are recognisable in style and content. Lots of people write about the "Everywhere Town" that the multi-nats have developed, the same brands in the same high streets in every major city. The running theme "familiarity" comes back in to play. We weren't expecting to find high streets steeped in Australian culture. But we didn't know what to expect outside of the usual high street names. Their existence here just means we know what to do, and things feel familiar. While that is nice, it's also a little deflating. But only a little, who are we kidding, if we were brave enough, we'd be in Rio.

Outside of the global brands, the white culture here harks back to Anglo-Saxon heritage, with references to the Mediaeval. Churches and bells, themed shops. The other strong influence, (apparent in the street planning), is the States, with Malls, drive thru's, NY skyline. Sometimes you look out of the cafe window and it feels like Main Street, Disney Land. That's not to say that Perth is an immitation, just that the ambience you get from the surroundings is familiar.

The weather so far has been strong rain showers rapidly interspersed with warm sun. But I've been informed that is what they're having in blighty also. The main difference being, this is winter, that is summer :D

Noticed that I keep trying to look at things and commit them to memory. Like today on the train, I found myself trying to imprint the sights and shapes of the gardens, houses and landscape I was passing. Decided it was like trying to tattoo water so gave up.