Shark Bay World Heritage Site

Day 2: We got to meet the pet kangaroos, who have been rescued as babies when their mothers were hit by cars on the highway. Two of the three were very friendly and happily came over to sniff us and be stroked. The third wasn’t that interested in us, and preferred to lounge in the shade. There were also sheep, guinea pigs, chickens and a cat – who knows what other animals there were out of sight!

We did a short riverside walk before our long drive, but the walk was much less pleasant than the scenery warranted because of swarms of persistent – though harmless – flies. On the plus side, it made us thankful to jump into the car. 

The first stop, after three hours, was at Billabong Station – I kid you not – which is a ‘homestead’, meaning a one-family settlement in the middle of the wilderness. We picked up ice creams and continued on the road to Hamelin Pool, our first taste of the Shark Bay region and UNESCO heritage site. Hamelin Pool is famous for being the best living example of stromatolites. Stromatolites, for those of you who aren’t evolutionary biologists, are groups of cyanobacteria that are similar to those found in 3,500 million year old rocks. They are the earliest record of life on earth, and are what created enough oxygen for other forms of life to emerge. Up close, they look a bit like bubbly rocks, and they do solidify into rocks if they are compacted. 

Hamelin Bay, where they are found, was one of our first glimpses of the incredible green-blue ocean of the Western Australian north. There are lots of markers of human history as well as the more distant ecological past, with remains of the various economic enterprises that have been attempted in the regions, some more successful than others. Wool stations, sandalwood, pearls, and lots of fishing are what we’ve seen so far.

We weren’t allowed to swim at Hamelin Bay, so we stopped at Nanga Beach, which is on the west coast of the Peron Peninsula that juts up into Shark Bay. We had the beach all to ourselves for most of our visit, a very long stretch of sandy beach with millions of tiny shells crunching underfoot and a long, shallow entry into the water. The boys are really into the Waboba ball now, so they were entertained in the shallow water making it skim and skip along the surface. It was a bit too windy for me, with my gradually worsening cold, so I spent little time in the water and then did some yoga stretching in a patch of sheltered beach.

The last stop before our final destination of Denham town, was Eagle Bluff. This is a lookout spot above a bay renowned for exciting marine life, such as lemon sharks and nervous sharks. We spotted something in the water, smallish but potentially sharkish too, so we scrambled down the bluff to get a closer look. 

Of course it was gone by the time we got down, and we realized that the view into the clear water was better from up high than close up. We had to scramble back up the sandy slope (that's me in the picture, with windblown hair), and suddenly the kids were desperate to get to the house to watch X-Factor.

Denham is a quaint little oceanside town, a bit buffeted by the strong westerly winds. The boats hang out offshore because the water is shallow for quite a ways into the harbour. 

Our rental place is up on a hill so we get a nice view of ocean and also lots of breeze. The owners live upstairs, but we have a huge space on the main floor with a big ‘rumpus room’ (1970s, anyone?) with a dart board, a large yard, patio with BBQ, and lots of sleeping space to keep the boys happy (i.e. separate beds!).

Sand surfing and cheering the Dockers

Day one of the holiday: We left Perth at 9:20 and drove up the coastal road, first stop at Lancelin at 11:00. We rented boards from a gas station and headed over to the dunes to try ‘sandboarding’, which is like snowboarding but on sand. It’s tougher than snowboarding, because your feet aren’t strapped in and you have to walk back up once you have gone down the dune. 

You can control your speed to a certain extent by choosing to wax the board for speed or let it get sandy to slow down. But you can’t do a lot of other control! Our main challenge was making sure the board didn’t go over rocks, because we had been warned of losing our $50 deposit on the boards. Sol and Chris took to it quite quickly; Rio and I were a little more cautious, but we all had fun in the end. 

I liked it best as a toboggan, sitting down and sliding in the sand. I used my feet for control – the only down side of that being that I would send sand flying up my shorts. Having covered ourselves in sunscreen in advance, we all walked out of the dunes with a layer of sand stuck onto us.

After that, we went to the Endeavour Tavern to watch Perth’s local footy team, Fremantle Dockers, playing in the Grand Final against the Tasmanian team, Hawthorn Hawkes. The tavern was enormous and absolutely heaving with people, but it had a nice outdoor space and was able to cope with the large crowd reasonably well. 

The game was exciting, but the Dockers went behind from the beginning and spent the entire game trying to catch up. Each time we scored, the Hawkes came back. It was pretty close compared with some of the matches we’ve seen in the lead up to the final, but it wasn’t quite the Dockers’ magic moment everyone on the west coast had been hoping for. It was the Dockers’ first time making it to the grand final, and Perth has been decked out in purple and white with anchors for the last couple of weeks in the build up. The kids played footy on the beach with their Dockers’ ball in between the quarters, but were very disappointed with the end result.

Sol said it was even more exciting than watching the Canucks playing!

After lunch, another long drive, with a brief stop in Dongara for groceries and a leg stretch. The scenery has gone through several transitions, from Perth’s forested slopes to a more windswept, scrubby dune landscape, to green pastures and farmland near Geraldton where we are spending the night. We are staying in a very comfortable little cottage on a farm south of Geraldton; wishing we could stay longer, actually, given how charming it is.

(That's a picture of the main house, not the cottage we stayed in next door). And apparently there are pet kangaroos here, though we arrived fairly late so didn’t have a chance to meet them. The geese have left their signs around, and the mozzies chased the boys inside, but the excitement of the evening was spotting a little lizard on the wall. (Chris didn’t mention the spider he found when pulling out the sofa bed). We played a cutthroat game of Magic after supper, and I won for the first time in a multi-player situation, which was quite momentous for me. 

Sheep farming in the country

This weekend we got the opportunity to experience an Australian sheep farm. Granted, with 300 sheep it is considered a 'hobby farm' rather than a commercial farm. My colleague Ray Marchetti is an auditor by day and a farmer on the weekends, getting back to his Italian farming roots. We had to venture farther out of Perth than we have been so far, a good 2 hour drive at our speed (Ray expected an hour - shows you how Australians drive. The speed limits here are much higher than in Canada. We were on a two lane country road and the speed limit was 110 km - compare that with the Pat Bay Highway from Victoria to Sidney, a four lane divided highway, where the speed limit occasionally reaches 90 km).

Ray has 300 acres, with rolling hills, a creek, sheep paddocks, a big tractor and multiple small farm vehicles. The youngest of his five children, Noah, was at the farm with his cousin James on Sunday when we visited. Noah had the job of identifying which sheep needed their bottom wool shearing to clean them up before being sent to market, while James was in charge of rustling up the sheep Noah identified. It was a pretty physical job, as the sheep aren't particularly keen and they charge around in big herds whenever a person comes near them. Ray had the battery-powered clipping shears and was in charge of that end of the job, flipping over the sheep with the most matted wool to get right along the underbelly.

We had the opportunity to discover just how physical it is to handle sheep, as each of us was handed a baby lamb to cuddle when we arrived. As you can see, I'm struggling a little to hang on. Poor Sol got a good hoof in the chest as well.

Ray gave us a tour of his 300 acres in a big four wheel drive truck, which nonetheless managed to get stuck in the mud near the creek. Luckily, he was able to pull it out with the tractor. Meanwhile, we did some exploring and the kids found themselves walking through some spiky grass - it makes sense now why grass grows in 'blades'!

The highlight of the trip for the kids, though, was undoubtedly the opportunity to drive the ATV and motorbike, which they each got to try. Apart from Rio not being quite sure how to brake, they took to wheels and motors surprisingly well. For Sol, his dirt biking experience at Western Speedway had prepared him, but it was Rio's first driving apart from go karts.

But for me, the highlight was the sweet little lambs, baaing away in the fields. Even with their scraggly bottoms, they're pretty cute.

Maritime Day and beyond

This Saturday we went back to Fremantle for our tourist activity of the weekend, as we hadn't properly explored the town or its museums. We started off with some squash at the Hilton club, the boys against each other (Rooney vs Rooney) and me against Cara Allan, a woman I was matched up with by the club owner.

We all had a good run, while Chris did the grocery shopping, and then we went to try out "Fremantle's best Indian restaurant", called Maya. Since it's the only Indian restaurant we have tried, in Fremantle or Perth, we couldn't scientifically test the guidebook's review, but it was certainly very good. Rio tried the lamb rogan josh, which was a little bit spicy for his taste but he enjoyed the meatiness of it. Sol had butter chicken, despite noticing that it had "little cream" listed as an ingredient, and also enjoyed that. Chris and I shared a palak paneer dish which was bright green and very tasty, as well as an eggplant/capsicum curry.

We wandered a bit in the trendy shopping district of Fremantle, and the boys had a good browse in a souvenir shop while I found a great bulk health food store and stocked up on some of the weird and wonderful ingredients that I have been missing.

After that we headed over to the docks and discovered that we had timed our visit magnificently to coincide with Maritime Day. There was a lot going on in various parts of the docks, but we wanted to visit the Maritime Museum so that was our focus for the afternoon. We explored the boat displays from down the ages, hanging at all levels in the sailboat-shaped museum. Then we did a special tour of the submarine - it's claustrophobic enough that they only take 10 people in at a time, and the tour is very in-depth and informative, taking a full hour to get in and around it.

My level of maturity was revealed when I discovered that my favourite part of the tour was learning the Stop Snorting Routine - though I have to say that it is surprisingly difficult to stop snorting when you are instructed to do so.

Sunday was Father's Day, which gave us a chance to make up to Chris the underwhelming father's day he had back in June when we were in Skagit. Although we did start the day in a similar way, with the morning spent watching two soccer matches. We had Rio's penultimate soccer match and Sol's final match. Rio played at home and Sol was away at Gosnells. Rio had to take his turn in goal for the first half of the match, and was kept quite busy with shots because the other team liked to leave one or two people lurking near goal while our defenders liked to play up in the attacking zone. He also used his hands outside the crease (it's a very small crease area) so he had to defend against a blistering free kick from very close range. His reactions were sharp, though, so they ended the half 0-0. In the second half, the other team got 3 cheap goals from poor goal kicks by the inexperienced goalie, but Rio had some satisfaction of scoring from a centrekick with a surprising run down the middle, a shot that hit the post and then a goal on the follow up.

Unfortunately for Sol, Rio's game made him late for his own match warm up, and by the time he turned up, they had a full roster of 15 players (they are not allowed to field more than 14 for any match and they aren't organised enough to figure it out in advance). So, he had to just watch and cheer for his final game of the season. Disappointing, but good that he had enough team spirit to stay under those circumstances. Now that his practices are done, he has decided to keep his skills and fitness up by getting up early to go for runs, and by training on his own in the yard or at the park nearby.

My father's day treat to Chris was to take him for 9 holes of golf at our nearby Wembley golf course, while the boys went to their first CISV Perth event. The CISV event was pretty small and mellow, but it was good for Rio to get the opportunity to try it out - and because it meant that Chris and I could go golfing on our own. Not that we wouldn't have wanted to have the kids golf with us, but the course had a lot of very long holes and it would have taken us a lot longer with all four of us - as it was, we were quite slow and let the people behind us jump in front after a few holes of feeling embarrassed by our slow progress. The course was really nice, with wide fairways divided by forests full of all of the cool Ozzie birds, including some noisy kookaburras. There isn't much undergrowth, so we managed to do the whole course without losing any balls, and in fact we gained two when hunting for our own balls in the forest. I think this means that we have to golf at least once more while we're here, perhaps on a course with lots of water features, so that we can use up the balls and not have to bring them home with us. (Luggage weight for the return journey is already a big consideration in all of our decisions about what to buy and what to do without).

After golfing, Chris went out for some cricket with the boys while I made his favourite (gourmet) mac n'cheese for supper and a mocha cake. It was warm enough to eat outside on the patio, though a little funny to be eating in the dark but warm air. The boys have both suffered some bug bites on their ankles, which have swelled up to give Sol a Cankle.

The final excitement to share this week has been the school sports carnivals. These are the opportunity for the four school "houses" to compete against each other for house points, as in Harry Potter. At Rio's school, the kids had sprayed their hair in their house colours and brought in decorated stuffed animals and other accoutrements. There was a very large parent paparrazi, well served by a cappucino van and a bake stand run by the parents' association. It was the warmest day of the week so far, so the kids were throwing off their shoes and donning their hats and sunscreen. In fact, most of them chose to participate in their sports events with bare feet, something which surprised me but Rio adapted to it happily.

Sol's school is so big that they divided the carnival up by year and the competitions didn't actually involve racing or competing against entrants from the other houses. Each house went to a station and did the activity, and then the results were recorded and compared to determine the winner later. Sol's house, Floreat, happened to win this time, though he didn't feel that he contributed much to that result as track and field isn't his forte.

City to Surf

The boys had the opportunity to participate in an even bigger run than the TC10k today. The Perth City to Surf run includes a 4km, 12 km, half and full marathon. This year 47,265 people ran.We couldn't really avoid running it, since the 4 km run started at Rio's school and ran past our house down to the beach. Rio's school team had the highest participation of any school, and managed to win $5,000 for their school sports program. It took Sol 21 minutes and Rio 22 minutes, with some energy to spare though not quite enough to go to squash afterwards. I unfortunately mis-timed my walk down to the finish line and Sol (red shirt, number 10 Rooney) passed me when I was just half-way there, so I didn't capture their moments of glory. But I did see at least half of the Manchester United team run past me along the way after Rooney and Ferdinand went by...

And Chris ran an alternate route to the finish line so he managed to catch the back of Rio's head as well.

Yesterday we went to our first Aussie-rules footy match between one of the two Perth professional teams, Fremantle Dockers, and a team from the east called Port Adelaide. Chris, Sol and Rio knew a bit about the rules beforehand, but I was a complete newbie. Luckily, I had our neighbours Glenn and Trish to explain things so that by the end, I could follow what was going on. The local Freo fans are very enthusiastic, in purple and white, with inflatable white anchors as their symbol - and they had good reason to cheer as Freo dominated the opposition 136 to 60. It's an extremely athletic game, with lots of running, jumping, kicking, tackling and catching. The players are tall, muscular, and can jump incredibly high (sometimes climbing on each other to do so). Though there is a lot of tackling, it didn't seem like a particularly violent game compared with North American football or rugby. The crowd was well behaved too, even though we had a crowd of Port Adelaide supporters nearby to exchange friendly jeers with. Sol wishes that we were staying for another season so that he could play Aussie-rules football. He had the opportunity to play something similar in gym class, when they did Gaelic football, which is very similar but with a soccer ball.

Last weekend was a sporting one as well, with the boys in a squash tournament all day Saturday at a club in downtown Perth. It was different from our usual tournaments, as it was one-day only. Matches were scheduled to start each hour, with 8 courts, but really you had to be there the whole time because they had more than 8 matches scheduled at a time so you never quite knew when you would be on It flowed fairly well but it meant that our heads were ready to explode from being in the squash court environment non-stop for 7 hours. Chris and I had to escape for a walk along the riverfront, which is very beautiful. Perth has done a good job of keeping riverfront and ocean front accessible to the public rather than privatising it off into housing lots, so there are lots of wonderful paths for walking, running and biking along the water.

We managed to get some city sightseeing in this weekend as well. Yesterday we went to the science museum, Scitech, where we enjoyed full access to the hands on exhibits because most people were out enjoying the sunshine instead. That was well worth while, because there were lots of great exhibits and all very interactive. (Dave Porter, I think you would have approved, although the Periodic Table they had wasn't nearly as much fun as yours at the Royal Institution.) Of course, the exhibit the boys spent the most time at involved kicking a soccer ball at a target and then watching your kick replayed on a screen in slow motion.

Today we were intending to go to the Perth Mint but didn't leave ourselves enough time to do that along with the shopping we needed to accomplish. We should take out shares in the local sports shop, Jim Kidd, because we can't go past it without picking up new cricket equipment. Today it was thigh pads and bat grips.

I was happy to finally show the family my office building and the lovely square that it sits upon. The Auditor General's Office is in the 7th floor of Albert Facey House.

And if they ever come downtown to meet me, they will easily be able to find my office by the unmistakable landmark in the square. Big metal tulips in Victoria, great green cacti in Perth... pretty representative of our respective ecosystems, I guess! (Is the photo quality good enough to spot the spies peeking out from behind the cactus?)

To finish off the day, we stopped at my favourite fruit and veggie market, in the neighbourhood of Subiaco. This picture shows some of the more standard produce on offer, but there are also all kinds of cool Asian and Oceanic fruits and vegetables that we have yet to explore fully. Plus several nice bakeries, tasty food stalls, a health food store with good bulk offerings, and the best - and cheapest - pita breads I've eaten. Haven't tried the Chinese massage yet, which is reputedly great, but Rio did get his haircut at a hole-in-the-wall barber today.

My last picture of the day is another creature, this one not quite as cute as the others we have seen. It has been a long time since I have lived in a climate that supports a large population of cockroaches, but this one gave Sol a good fright when he spotted it in the mirror, on the bathroom wall behind him. He didn't look long enough to realize that it was not a spider, though it certainly has hairy legs.

Baby lizard on the patio

The wildlife theme continues... the animals just seem to make the catchiest blog post titles. This little lizard (who may or may not be a baby - might just be a small species of lizard) caught my eye as it ran across the patio outside our bedroom this afternoon.

We have had a busy week since I last posted. Last Saturday it was sunny and warm, so we went to the beach again and this time Chris and I ventured into the water even though we haven't got wetsuits like the boys. I have to say that with the breeze off the water, I didn't find it that warm, so I splashed about a bit and then stretched out on the beach and watched the boys jumping the waves. Rio was keeping up a steady stream of conversation with the ocean, while Sol was working on his boogie boarding. Sunday we had the usual soccer in the morning, and then we went out to Bayswater where we saw the finish line of a big kayaking race down the Swan River. The finish line was pretty calm waters, so not as exciting as watching them come over the rapids. Since many of them looked quite beaten up (blood even!), it seemed the race was challenging.

This weekend we got down to Fremantle on Saturday. The kids played each other at the squash courts and I played someone I had been matched up with for a fun hit. We went to the Fremantle Harbour front and had fish and chips, for which the area is famous. It was rainy so the kids didn't go on the big enclosed ferris wheel/London Eye type thing or the massive trampoline; they are vowing to get back there when it's sunny. We explored the Fremantle Market, which was full of funky little stalls selling everything from local artwork to boomerangs to vegan Thai food. The boys were offered a job wearing morph suits and walking around the market, but we didn't have time so we've promised to come back another time to try out the wacky suits they had on offer. We spent the rest of the day with Georgina and Fedele and their 3 boys, who had come from Perth to Victoria last year on the same secondment program. They have an amazing backyard, with 5 olive trees laden with olives, a mandarin tree, two orange trees and some lemons, as well as a beautiful swimming pool and a garage full of lobster pots (Fedele is a lobster fisherman). The kids played cricket and their gorgeous dog Patch joined in, until it was too dark to see the ball. We looked at their photos from their time in Victoria and it made me realize that our part of the world looks just as exotic to them as their country seems to us. They felt that a year wasn't enough time to really experience everything they wanted to, and wished they had been able to stay on. It also reminded me that we don't do enough exploring of our own 'backyard' - they may have seen more of B.C. than we have!

Today after soccer we finally took the kids into see more of Perth city. We went to King's Park, which is an amazingly large and lovely park that has a panoramic view over the river, the downtown core, and all the way round to the south and Fremantle as well.

We walked through some of the botanical garden, which contained the vegetation of all of the regions of Western Australia. So impressive to think that someone carefully analyzed, named and catalogued each of the thousands of species, checked and cross-checked it all. Chris played with the camera's macro setting and got a few nice shots. The boys were most impressed with the bottle brush, which was so strong they could brush their hair with it.

There was a really cool glass bridge through the tree canopy. To Rio's disappointment, I managed to convince my brain that I wasn't going to fall through the tiny cracks, so that I could walk across with only slight vertigo.

By the time we had gone several kilometres around the botanical garden and looped back, we had only covered a very small portion of the park. I foresee many more visits in the future, perhaps with a picnic next time.

I don't think we'll get to Uluru on this visit, but at least they've had a chance to hug a big red rock.

Chris turns 40 and there is a rose-breasted cockatoo on the lawn

Yes, Chris has caught me up again, with the big 40 today. His family managed to get their birthday cards to all turn up yesterday and today, which I found very impressive. The boys scrounged some bits of paper and made their own cards, with strong focus on the ageing aspect of the birthday. (We didn't bring paper with us, and haven't stocked up on craft supplies as part of our essentials shopping - I guess we're trying to figure out what we can live without for 6 months. It's kind of liberating, being free of stuff and having to improvise - although I have to admit I succumbed and bought a cookbook holder and apron today as they turn out to be essentials for me.)

It was a beautiful day today, at least the two ends of the day that I experienced outdoors. It was the perfect temperature for cycling in to work this morning, with enough sunshine that I didn't need to wear my jacket but not so much that I felt hot by the time I got to work. It was lovely and sunny at lunch when I went for a walk from the office, and still sunny at the end of the day for the ride home. In between, I could see some very dark and magnificent clouds passing through, but they didn't result in more than a passing shower. We do get good views of the skyscape from our 7th floor office space.

And what did I see on the lawn when I arrived home? A Galah, also known as rose-breasted cockatoo or Eolophus roseicapilla, happily chomping on a worm or some such.

Chris took the boys to their soccer practice after work, while I made black bean burritos, guacamole and chocolate mocha cake. The avocadoes are very nice here, and it's exciting to have lemons right in our garden - I'm trying to find lots of recipes involving lemon or substituting it into anything and everything. 

The few weeks here has made us realize how lucky we are in Victoria to be close enough to our various activities that the boys can get themselves to and from without us. Here, Chris has been doing lots of chauffeuring. Soccer is a 15 minute drive away, so he goes and stays there from 4:45 to 7:00 for the two practices. Yesterday they went to squash for the first time - it is the closest club to us with a junior program, and it's half an hour drive away (40 minutes on the way home as the traffic was bad). I'm back from work later than usual because it takes me a bit longer to get home and also longer to get out of the building once I leave my desk at 4:30 (bike locker and changerooms 8 floors down in the basement, with lots of swipe-card controlled automatic doors to get through). So I'm not able to do any of the chauffeuring, unless I work from home which I may request to do in a few weeks' time. I am very impressed with how accommodating the workplaces here seem to be with respect to flexible working schedules to allow families to meet their needs. At least half of the people in my unit have developed their own working schedule, and there is a complete acceptance of this at all levels, no sense of pressure or concern.

The soccer and squash have been interesting so far. Sol is on a Division 2 team, largely because that was the team that had room for him part way through the season (although this leaves them with 15 players and they are only allowed to bring 14 to each match, so if everyone is fit and available, someone will have to sit out). The team is mid-table, but I would say the level of play is not nearly as strong as his team from last year in Victoria. They would be the equivalent of a Division 1 team in this system (above it is the premier league, equivalent to HPL). Rio's team is in the top league for U9, the "A" level, but the level of play is lower than he is used to as well. But what they lack in skill, they make up for in equipment - the kit is quite impressive, with a special shirt for training and one for matches, a jacket, and for Sol, a kit bag. (Registration is a lot more expensive, to cover all of this stuff).

The squash is a select group of juniors, which will provide the boys with some challenge. The club has a Friday junior program, a select program on Wednesdays, and a round robin on Sundays - which is a bit similar to Cedar Hill, but far fewer programs. There is a one-day tournament coming up in a few weeks sponsored by Prince, called 'bronze' level, so hopefully it will be competitive. The boys found the courts very different, with very low bounce off the walls. 

I went to squash myself for the first time last night, and also found the courts really unusual - low bounce, and also the T is further back than I'm used to and the court is slightly larger. It will take a while to adjust, but suffice to say that low drops are highly effective in this set up. The social night was quite friendly and well organised, and we had the right number of people so no one had to sit out. This meant that after an hour and a half, I was pretty wiped out, that being my first squash in a month. I thought I would be very sore today but I did enough stretching so that I'm only a little bit sore.

Chris is intently watching the Ashes Third Test match at Old Trafford, which is a big news item here at the moment, with Australia trying to redeem its dignity after two losses. I hope that England give him a good birthday present and perform well, but at this point, the Aussies are looking more promising than they have for a while.