Thursday, November 27, 2008

My Holidays Volume 3 - MoHer's depart and Sydney

Rightio, I guess we're coming up to the last final few days of the Scot invasion and I thought I might throw in my stop-over in Sydney just to round out this post.

Friday:

The last full day of the trip for our friends. We still had heaps to squish into one day and so it was rather busy. First on the agenda was Boo and Mouse went on an adventure with my Mum. Mum wanted to treat the girls to something special and shouted them a pair of real Ugg boots each. There was a shop in Cannington that made them customised and so they headed out there for the morning.
Christian had to go on a time management course for work (now that he's a spiffy team leader he needs to know how to manage time I suppose - a super power I already possess!) and so it was just me and the boys at home. Chris disappeared into the study to commandeer Christian's computer and Matt and I lounged around chatting and listening to my next door neighbour's fantastic music choice. Andy was at the top of his game that day - instead of just one or two tracks played over and over we were treated to a whole mixed tape! Hurrah! The best part was the first song he put on was (and I don't actually know the proper name ) what we call the 'Pussy' song. I think it might be about a cat but after singing about it being kicked outside in the rain the music stops and this woman's voice says in a corny accent 'Pussy...sore...wet!'.

Dodgy as all hell.

So we had a good laugh about that as Matt got bombarded by Molly. I think Molly may have known that Matt's time as her bitch was coming to an end because she got as much wuzzing in as she could.





Mum and the girls arrived home about lunch time, laden down with not only Ugg boots but everything other conceviable thing my mother could have bought for them. Mum doesn't know the meaning of the word 'excessive' sometimes...

Mum has always said that she would adopt Boo and so we made sure that we got a photo of us together.


After lunch we finally headed off to Caversham Wildlife park. After being pushed back from the first day and then rescheduled and rescheduled, we finally found time on the final day! Hurrah for furry, cuddly animals!

First of all we went and watched the 'Meet the wombat and other wuzzy animals' show. I took a billion photos of us all with different animals but I'll just post this one since I know I have a trillion more photos to post. This is Boo and I with the wombat who we were told isn't actually fat or overweight but is 27kgs of pure wombat muscle! It was her nap time so she just lounged on her back and let everyone stroke her. A bit like a 27kg Molly...


I have a thing for taking photos of toilets (I was going to post my other ones on here but have chosen not too) but the signs for the toilets at CWP were way too cute to not get posted.

Disabled.

Women.

Men.

We headed off through the roo enclosure and got up close and personal with lots of roos and wallabies. We got to feed them all too.



We wandered up towards the camel rides and found a farm animal display. I thought of LaMa when I saw this guy :)


Boo, Mouse and Matt opt for a camel ride. I have been on numerous camel rides before and know full well that a dress is not suitable riding gear and so I chose not to participate.



We were running out of time as we had plans to have dinner at King's Park before heading off to the Freo Prison Tour and so we raced around the last few enclousures. I really wanted to see the dingoes and I finally did. Yay!

Aren't they just so sweet???


I honestly think Malta must have some dingo in her since she looks almost exactly like this little guy.


Last and definitely least were the Tasmanian Devils. Ugliest things you will ever see in your life but very cool at the same time.


We rushed home to get changed into warmer clothing so we could race into the city. Christian's super charger on his car had been playing up and was making an awful racket so he had caught the train into the city and was going to meet us at King's Park and then catch the train into Freo. We met him up at the Park and raced down to the Tree Top Walk to see if we'd made it before it shut. We were the last ones over before the shut the gates and I was so glad the guys didn't miss out on the experience.

Christian took this photo of us at the very top of the walk.

You can't really see if in the photo of Mouse but there's a really nice view of the river from the top as well. You will just have to be satisfied with this great view of Mouse ;-)

After the Tree Top Walk we decided to walk up to the DNA tower and climb that too.
King's Park is full of really nice walkways all through it and so we got to walk through various tracks to get to the tower.

The tower itself.


Christian had walked all through the city and couldn't be bothered and Chris is scared of heights so they stayed below while we made the climb. This is a photo of Christian looking up at us while Chris sits on the wall.


Slightly windy and very bright but still a fantastic view from the top.

The tower used to be called 'Jacob's Tower' (there is a stairway in King's Park called 'Jacob's Ladder as well) but it seems that since everyone calls the tower the DNA tower they may as well change the name!


Before heading into Freo we posed as Christian took a photo of us in front of this massive Boab tree.


And up close.


Boo and Matt decided at accompany Christian on the train to Freo and so Mouse, Chris and I headed off in my little car. Christian had thought that given peak hour traffic and the trouble of finding a park in Freo we would all arrive at approximately the same time. We had a rather clean run into Freo but I did have to drive around the block three times before I found a park opposite the train station. By the time I had rounded up enough change to make the parking last till we needed it I thought we'd wasted more than enough time for the guys to have arrived but when I rang them they were still at Perth train station and the next train wasn't due for another ten minutes! Apparently the walk to to station had taken longer than Christian had though it would.
Mouse, Chris and I killed the time by loitering around the station and taking photos of toilets and by the time the others arrived we realised we'd have to wait till after the tour to get dinner.

We wandered up to the prison and still managed to get there early so we killed time waiting for Smerk to arrive by having a looksie in the gift shop. At this point I still hadn't gotten anything for my Dad and I left in two days so I thought I'd get him something from there. Freo was the first prison my Dad ever worked at and I thought it would be rather fitting. In the end I chose a mug (he loves his tea) and some keys (which I thought looked like replicas but found out later from Dad that they were the real deal since they had about two hundred copies of each key and churned them out regularly since they broke often. Sounded like real maximum security to me lol). Smerk soon arrived to complete our devilish group and before too long our tour was on the way.

I took this photo before we started the tour. It's of the front entrance and it's actually one of about twenty photos I took trying to get it looking all mysterious and cool looking.


This was our guide and how bad is it of me that I can't remember his name? I think it was Max or something...anyway he was pretty funny in a dead-pan kind of a way.


This guy reminded me heaps of Dave Hughes, an Aussie comedian but apparently I was the only one who saw this. He came busting out of one of the solitary cells trying to scare everyone but I think most people saw it coming.


The gallows. The last person to be hanged there was Eric Edgar Cooke, the serial killer.

There were numerous cells that contained artwork done by prisoners. When they heard the prison was to close they allowed certain prisoners to cover the entire walls of their cells with paintings. This was my favourite.

This sign indicates the cutting edge of maximum security features. Many an inmate turned back after encountering this sign.

The tour finished and we said our goodbyes to Smerk for the night. We'd be seeing her again the next day as she was coming to the airport to say goodbye. The rest of headed back down to the car after grabbing dinner at HJ's and I spent most of the walk trying to convince Christian to drive home since I was tired and I would ride in the boot of my car. He thought I was joking and so he and Matt headed off ot the train station and the rest of us piled into my car and started driving home. We hadn't even gotten out of Freo when my mobile rang. It was Christian and there wasn't a train for about an hour so we turned back towards the train station.
I'm sure many of you can see where this is going...
Christian drove home and I comfortably lay in my boot, watching little pieces of Perth fly by through the small gaps between the parcel shelf and the window. I must say that for a little Corolla my boot is rather comfortable to lay in. People will have to bug Mouse if they want a photo since she is the only one who was clever enough to get one.

We rose the next day and had a sad morning packing. No one wanted the trip to come to an end :( Soon however it was almost time to go. Barb had come round with the kids to say goodbye and she took this last photo of the six of us.


Smerk also arrived before long and she spent a bit of time being licked and loved my Molly.


On the table of this photo of Smerk you can see some of the shells Christian and I collected at Cervantes.


Finally we got a photo of all of us MoHers. WoM, Boo, Nettie, Madmouse and Smerk.


We packed all of the luggage into the cars and headed off to the airport for the final time during this trip. It was 34C and I think the guys were beginning to feel slightly glad that they were heading back home to a cooler climate.
We got them checked in and then spent the remaining time having lunch and doing last minute touristy shopping in the duty free stores. The minutes ticked by and then it was time to say goodbye. There were lots of hugs and tears and it struck me yet again how lucky we are to live in such a technological age. Not long ago becoming such close friends with people on the other side of the world would have been almost impossible without having known them prior first. But here we were, a group of complete strangers who only had a website to link us now the best of friends. We were truly lucky.
And so we watched them head through the gate and Smerk, Christian and I made our way back to our cars. We said goodbye to Smerk and Christian drove me home since I was crying too much to drive the car myself.

And then I had to compose myself enough to get packed since my next adventure was starting the very next day.

Sunday :

I had quite a busy day, I had to pack since I'd done very little of the the night before and I went visiting with my Mum and mother-in-law Margaret.
The day flew by and it started to dawn on my that I was going to not be seeing Christian for three weeks. I don't know what comes over me, thinking I'll be ok and making these crazy plans but then all of a sudden it's time to go and I realise that I'll be all alone without my best friend and I start to panic. We're not joined at the hip, we frequently spend the night apart when he has a LAN or I have a girly night out but three weeks is an altogether different situation.
I made Christian sit still enough for me to get some photos of us together for me to look at while I was gone. This one my be blurry but it's my favourite one.


We headed off to the airport at about 9pm so I could check my luggage all the way through to Vancouver and when we got there we were told that there were delays with Qantas flights. Noooooooo! My plane had been due to leave at 11pm but now it wasn't going anywhere till 1.45am. We checked in my luggage and then headed home since we thought it would be easier to wait there on our couch than in an airport lounge.
By about midnight I was getting antsy, worrying that they'd bring forward the departure time (even thoguh logic told me otherwise). I badgered Christian into taking me back there and so we waited. My plane was delayed even more and I tried to send Christian home but he stayed with me. It was 2am by the time we were called to board and I tried to put on my brave face as I kissed my husband godbye. Travelling by myself was a huge step for me and I was scared shitless. I was also trying not to think about the fact that my plane was so late I might miss my connecting flight. It turned out I had even more time to ponder that since we didn't fly out of Perth until 3am.

Monday:

I didn't sleep on the plane at all, I just couldn't. I was exhausted by the time we arrived in Sydney but I was feeling good when the pilot announced that apart from three flights to Africa all other international connections were fine.

Of course I didn't know that he was only talking about Qantas connections and not those airlines that they're aligned with (you know, such as Air Canada). I still had an hour and a half to make it to my flight and as we waiting for the plane to dock I was running over in my head what my plan would be. That all turned to shit when there was an announcement saying that due to daylight savings having kicked in it wasn't actually 9:30am it was already 10:30am.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!
I had half an hour to make my plane!
I was texting Christian on the transfer bus to the international airport and he was assuring me they wouldn't leave without me, don't worry. I felt slightly calmer until I got to the Air Canada bay and found it all closed up. There was one lady on the counter already talking to another man and after five minutes my manners got the better of me and I interrupted, asking where I check in for my flight. I was told very shortly 'You've missed it. You have to wait till tomorrow' and then she went back to serving the gentleman.
I was only the phone to Christian in half a second, in tears, on the verge of a panic attack, wailing 'They did leave without me!!!'. He tried to talk me down from my attack and soon I was slightly calmer. I was called up to the desk, my flight was rebooked and I was sent over to the Qantas desk to be booked in at a hotel. I was almost constantly on the phone to either Christian, Barb or my Mum and although I'd be calm in between as soon as I started talking to one of them I would start crying again.
I had never been so scared or alone in my entire life!

After an hour or two once I had my luggage and I had my booking slip for the hotel I started to calm down. But I had no intention of heading out to look at Sydney since I didn't know my way around and I was just so over being scared and worried that I was quite content to hole up in my hotel room all day and sleep.
Barb was having none of that though. She got onto the ABA forum and put the word out that she had one scared, lonely sister stuck in Sydney for the day and if anyone was free, would they mind taking me out and looking after me.
A lady named Ali, who had hardly spoken to Barb on the forum since they're on at different times volunteered straight away. She, her husband Mark and their daughter Hannah came out and picked me up, dropped my bags off at the hotel and then took me out for the day. I could not believe their kidness. They shouted me lunch, wouldn't let my pay for parking and gave up their whole day to take care of me. And I had so much fun.
At one point Mark asked me if I thought it was weird that I was hanging around with complete strangers who only knew my sister through an internet forum. I said 'Hell no. I've just spent the past two weeks with friends I met online and I'm on my way to see my Dad who met his wife online. I don't find this weird at all'.

So I had a great day in Sydney and since I was with some wonderful people I actually got lots of photos of me in front of various landmarks. Here's some photos.

This is me at Botany Bay, the place where Captain Cook first arrived in Australia.


This is Hannah while we were waiting for lunch to arrive.


At Bondi Beach. I don't like beaches much but even so, it was a disappointment. For it's most famous beach Ali was saying Bondi was one of the ugliest.


The Harbour Bridge. I was obsessed with this thing! I kept on taking photos of it wherever we could see it.


Ali grabbed my camera and took this one as we were driving over the bridge. I was so excited I almost wet myself! (ok, myabe not that excited but I was the most excited one could be while crossing a bridge.)


Ali and I at the base of the Bridge with the Opera House in the background.


Yet another bridge photo.


Opera House and Sydney in the background.


Luna Park from across the river.



Ali and Mark with the bridge in the background.


Guess what? It's another bridge photo! Hurrah! But this one has me in it too.


There were ants on the bridge! Well, to be fair they may have been people but they're so small in the photo they may as well be ants.



The Opera House is really, really ugly up close. Trust me, it looks far nicer from a distance. It's all blocky and concretey and awful up close. The only photo I got of it up close that I like was this one.

The afternoon drew to a close and I was exhausted. Ali and Mark dropped me off at my hotel and I couldn't thank them enough. I was the luckiest person in the world to have met this couple.

I crawled up to my hotel room and decided against falling alseep straight away. I needed a shower, I need food and as much as I wanted to sleep, I didn't want to be waking up at 4am. So I prioritised and headed for the shower. Of course I couldn't figure the bloody thing out. I turned on the tap and the bath came on! What the? I would discover in a day or two that the taps in Canada and the US are like this too but at the moment my brain was not working enough to figure out how to make the water come out of the shower instead of the bath taps.
So I had a bath instead.
Bliss. It felt so damn good to just soak there.

After I was clean and I had made a cup of tea I headed down to the hotel restauarnt for some dinner. It was standard buffet fare and I ate a little but by this point I was sleeping standing up and so I headed back upstairs and crawled into bed.

All in all the day may have started off awful but it turned out to be pretty good. I guess that's why it's called an adventure. I just hoped that nothing else would go so terribly wrong on the rest of my trip.

Monday, November 17, 2008

MoH Catchup - Volume 2

So I last left you after Friday evening in which we got dressed up, went out to dinner and then to the casino. All that can be said now is 'And onwards!'.

Saturday.

The plan for Saturday had been to spend the day in Fremantle, have dinner at Cicerellos (famous fish and chips) and then go and do the Prison Tour that night.

Let's just say that things didn't go quite as we'd planned...

We discovered before we left home that the tour of Freo Prison only ran on Wednesday and Friday evenings and so that part of our plan had to be scrapped before the day had even begun. We hadn't planned anything for the last Friday night of the trip and so we slotted it in there since we wanted to be sure that Smerk would be able to make it.
After a late start to the morning we headed out to Smerk's place and ended up finding yet another dog to fall in love with. Holly is just adorable and we all had lots of fun playing. But soon it was time for us to head off and after a quick stop in at Hillaries Boat Harbour to look around the shops, we made our way into Fremantle.

By this stage it was mid-afternoon and we were all hungry for some lunch. We decided to head down to Cicerellos at that point since we now didn't have plans to stay in Freo for the evening. We ordered our lunch and then sat outside on the jetty to eat. Let me be the first to say that lunch was somewhat of a disappointment, it was way too greasy to be enjoyable and so it wasn't the best experience with Freo's famous fish and chips!

This being us, we of course got photos.

This is actually a photo that boo took of Mouse, Smerk and I.


Boo and Matt with the killer calamari.


Smerk, looking lovely as ever.

Chris and Mouse (notice the fantastic shirt Mouse is wearing. Someone with great taste got that for her for Christmas...)

After lunch we headed off for a looksie around the Round House, Freo's original prison. When we got up there we found out it had closed for the day so we had went up to the lookout and climbed all over the cannon up there and had a bit of a gander at a wedding party having photos done. We stopped in at Into Camelot, a medieval store where I got my wedding dress from and then headed over to the markets. They were of course just closing but we did get to watch the last part of the Bad Piper's performance. The Scots seemed to enjoy this which was a surprise given that he plays the bagpipes but I guess it was a different spin on a traditional instrument.

It was at about this time that Smerk looked down and discovered that the tail of her dragon brooch had fallen off somewhere along our travels. Since this piece is very dear to her, we all volunteered to retrace our steps and see if we could find it.
Unfortunately we had no luck and so we bid her a sad farewell for the day and crammed into my car for the return trip home.

Sunday.

The ever fateful Sunday. The day my heart almost stopped. The day we all will never forget.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The day started off well for me since it saw the return of the prodigal hubby, Christian. Yay! He had returned from Adeleiade with good news. His Nonno was getting much better and looked like he would be released from hospital soon and also Christian had caught up with his older half brother. It wasn't until recently that Christian learned of the existance of Ben, and had not had the opportunity to meet him and so he jumped at the chance. Ben is apparently very nice and they got on very well and there will hopefully be a visit from him soon :)

The plan for the day was to head down to the Bayswater Bird Sanctuary to have a bbq and meet up with some of my friends. In the end it was only Mike out of my mates who managed to make it but Smerk came down after Tai Chi and Barb, Mikey and the kids also came down.
Apart from being a tad windy, it was a wonderful sunny day and we had fun kicking around the soccer ball and throwing the votex around.

Christian took control of the awfully slow bbq but acknowledged that the meat probably would have cooked faster if we'd just left it in the sun.


Did I mention it was windy? Christian looks like a sumo-wrestler!



Boo assesses the soccer ball.


Mouse and Chris enjoy the sunshine.


It was about this time that things started to go wrong. One minute Wil, my youngest nephew was standing next to a nearby tree, looking at the bark, the next he was gone.

Completely gone.

The reserve is basically an oval and we were to one side of it backed up against the bird sanctuary (a large pond surrounded by trees separated from the oval by a canal) and a couple of hundred metres away from the river. On the far side of the oval is a toilet block and a little past that is more grass and a new playground. We all took a few minutes to scan the area since he really couldn't have gotten very far (he'd been there a second ago!). We couldn't see him and so we all separated, heading in different directions. I headed down to the river since there's a gazebo there where birds nest that we take the kids to occasionally that I thought he might have headed towards. Mikey headed over to the water tanks, Boo went to check out a kids party over near the playground and Mike, Mouse and pretty much everyone else checked out the playground on their search.
I couldn't see Wil anywhere near the water and no one I asked had seen him so after a good look I headed back to where we'd been sitting, confident that he would have shown up by now.

He hadn't.

A lady from the group sitting next to us was on the phone to the police requesting a search party and Barb was in a full panic. Matt and I headed down the footpath that led along the canal towards a carpark and behind us came Barb, screaming for Wil. Every hysterical scream tore at my heart and our search grew more and more frantic. Everyone who passed us we stopped and they immediately helped us look. I headed right round the top end of the sanctuary, thinking he might have gone to the lookout while all the while behind me Barb was screaming and screaming out to Wil.
After having no luck there and asking everyone I found if they'd seen Wil, I headed back to Barb. I tried to assure her we'd find him but she said to me 'It's been half an hour. If he made it to the water, he's surely dead. I'll never see my baby again'.
Barb started wading through the water of the canal and I thought I'd head back down to the river's edge, hoping I wouldn't find what we were all starting to fear we would. As I crossed the grass I saw Christian's lean frame coming towards me, Caleb in one hand, Wil in the other.
We called to Barb that he'd been found and she and Mikey just hugged the life out of Wil, just so relieved while everyone cheered. After a while she handed Wil to me, turned to Mikey and just started howling. She cried so much she made herself sick.

I don't think anyone there had dry eyes. We were all so relieved.
Everyone wanted to know where he's been found and Christian explained that he'd found him in the playground (even though six other people had already looked there), standing by himself in the middle telling everyone who walked past that he'd done poos.

The police arrived shortly afterwards and advised us that they'd called off the summoning of the search party and told Wil that he was never to scare his mummy like that again.

After a day like that there was only one thing any of us really wanted to do. We went back to our place and got drunk.

Mikey looked after the kids while Barb, Boo and Mouse started doing vodka shots and after we'd gotten our initial does of alcohol we sat down and watched Hairspray. After that the kids had fun dressing up in Boo's jewellery and when High School Musical was put on the dvd player, I made a hasty retreat.


This is Wil, all dressed up.

Mouse and I.


I think it was somewhere towards midnight that Mikey rounded up his brood and took them home and Smerk followed soon after.


Monday.

Christian and I have played Supa Golf for years but in the past few we just haven't had a chance to play anywhere near as often as we'd like to. Basically it's like normal golf but there's no handicaps or anything, there are only four clubs (A Bigboy, Jigger, Striker and Putter) and the fairways are shorter (much shorter now since there was evidence they had moved the greens on most holes). Oh, and did I mention the balls are bigger and are fluro coloured?
We had planned to play Supa Golf on the Monday but when we got there we realised that it was actually still school holidays. The place was packed. We still got to play but instead of doing 18 holes we had to settle with nine and we had to play the back nine, aka the Valley of Death. We've dubbed it thus due to the fact that it's played on the side of a hill that runs down to the river. It makes things rather interesting...

As you can only have five players per hole we split into two teams, girls vs guys. It was so busy we often had a long wait until the teams in front had finished so even though we girls teed off first we'd be able to watch the guys play through.

This is the guys perfecting their golf strutt.



Ahhhhh, we found a drop bear on hole 12!



Tiger who?



Getting into the swing of things.


Everyone really enjoyed playing but Matt seemed obsessed with it. He kept nagging to play again and we had to promise to let him play again at some point on the trip to stop him from abandoning us and gatecrashing the game of some random players.

Caversham Wildlife Park had been next on the agenda but due to the fact that it was still school holidays it found itself yet again rescheduled. There was no way we were going anywhere near furry animals when kids were also on the loose!

We ended up stopping in at the Margaret River Chocolate company to have a taste test. It's way too expensive to actually buy anything there and I much prefer the taste of Cadbury's but free chocolate is free chocolate and that about sums it up.

Tuesday.

Pinnacles day! Hooray!
We were up early and after stopping by to pick up Barb and Wil who were coming along, we were on the road. It's about a three hour drive up to the Pinnacles and I had with me Boo, Matt and Wil while Mouse, Chris and Barb joined Christian. Now I'll admit that the scenery on the way isn't very exciting so I didn't expect a lot of exclaiming over it or anything but after a while I was thinking it had gotten rather quite.

Everyone in my car bar me was asleep!

Doesn't that make for a fun drive? We stopped of at a roadhouse for a pee break and then continued on, finally arriving about elevenish if I remember correctly. Wil needed the potty and Boo volunteered to take him. They only have bush toilets there and if he fell in the hole I didn't want to be responsible for that ;-)
Christian and co arrived shortly afterwards and drove straight past us! I was so sure that when I waved to Mouse she waved back but obviously not! Wil survived and we continued on, driving most of the way through the park until we found everyone else.
I won't post photos from while we were there, one because I didn't take many and two I've posted them before (see link above) and really, they haven't changed much. The only one I will post is this one of Christian which I really like. I think he looks a bit like a model but he gets rather annoyed when I suggest that to him. That hasn't stopped me from getting two big copies done of it, one for me and one for his mum for Christmas!



We only stayed around for about half an hour because the flies were terrible! If it weren't for flies I'd like summer a whole lot better. Before I go on I must say now just how impressed I was with how the guys handled the heat. Granted it wasn't that hot for us but we're used to temps getting well over 40C. It was about 33C that day which was a good 10C hotter than it had been all summer in Scotland I was told. The guys were real troopers and didn't even complain about it (unlike me who whinged the entire bloody trip to Edinburgh about how cold it was!).

Our next stop was Cervantes so we could have some lunch at the beach and maybe go for a swim. As we were leaving the Pinnacles Wil made sure he said goodbye to everything. 'Bye rocks!', 'Bye sand!', 'Bye flies' and so on and with a little egging on from Matt he said goodbu=ye to everything he thought had been there too. 'Bye Dinosaurs' (he thought the rocks were dinosaur fossils), 'Bye tigers!', 'Bye lions!'.
It was all very cute.

We got to the beach and I found it waaaaaay too cold to even consider going for a swim. The water was quite calm for the beach so if it had been hotter I might have considered going for a dip but I didn't want to freeze. I'll share this photo with you that I stole from Boo even though I don't like it much. I only have photos of Scots in bikinis and I'm not going to put those on here without their permission but I feel like I have to post at least one photo of the beach (I posted a short video of the beach on my last Pinnacles post so you can see what it looks like there).



Christian and I walked up and down the beach collecting shells and we found some real pretty ones. Christian went and found me a bag which I quickly filled with shells and coral and commented at one point that 'You can't take the whole bloody beach home with you' to which I replied 'I can bloody well try!'. He seemed to get caught up in that compulsion that you get when shell collecting ('Oh, just one more - oooh that one's pretty! Oh, so is that one! And that one! Oh, just one or two more...') and went and got another bag so in the end we had two shopping bags full of shells. I cleaned them up when I got home and lay them out to dry and they filled almost every gap on a large bath towel.

It was quite late by the time we headed back home and I was exhausted. Barb offered to drive my car home for me and so I joined Chris in the back of Christian's car and settled down for a nap. I knew already that sleeping in a two door Japanese coupe is not comfortable but I revisited that lesson. I was folded almost double with my knees against Christian's chair and a towel against the window as a pillow and my back in agony. Didn't stop me from falling asleep though.

We got home and discovered that the fridge that my uncle had given us was tripping our clipsal switch. Dammit! We transferred everything back into our little fridge and regrettfully turned the big one off :( Of course I forgot to take my bulbs out of the freezer and discovered them about a week later and they bloody stank!

The guys played the Wii again that night and I managed to capture this photo of Christian and Matt playing nicely together. Cute but manly!



Wednesday.


Wednesday was the day we were supposed to go to Rottnest Island but it didn't quite work out. Christian hates Rotto with a passion and was only going to go as a gracious favour to me but I knew he would have been miserable. I had only just gone in July but I love it there so that wouldn't have bothered me too much. The kicker was it costs fifty bucks for the ferry ride over and by this stage we were just running out of money and the same was going for Boo and Matt. Holidaying is nice and all but dammit, touristy things cost the earth and I still had a trip to Canada to get through. Mouse and Chris were still keen on going and in the end I think they had a nice time. I've been away before with a group and it's hard after a while when you don't get to spend any quality time alone with your better half so I'm glad they got a chance.

Matt got his wish about golfing as he and Christian headed off for a round while Boo and I headed up the hill to have another visit with my Mum. It was a nice relaxing day and after all the 'go, go, go' of the past week it was nice to just slow down a bit.

Thursday.

Zoo day! Yay! I love the zoo!

Our plan for the day was to head to the zoo after lunch, go and watch Christian play soccer and then go up to King's Park for dinner.

The zoo was great, as it always is. We got lots of photos of us around the zoo and also of the animals so I'll post my favourite ones. Christian takes much better photos than me so the really good ones are his.

This is a pretty little temple type thing with animals all over it. I have no idea why but we took this photo with us looking into the sun. So please excuse the squints.



And here we have one of the most exotic displays at Perth Zoo - the Smoker's Enclosure. Notice how these wonderful creatures bond into a pack as they keep a wary eye on observers...


Don't even ask...


Ahhhh, we're on a collision course!


I don't like the apes/monkey/gorilla enclosures but this guy reminded me of how my nephews sulk.



Tiger!!! We love the tiger. He was asleep when we got there but almost immediately woke up and watched us. He did look awfully sad that day though. Poor guy. I'm sure he'd much rather be outside eating us than inside watching us.


Dingo! The dingoes are cool and they act almost exactly like dogs. I've seen the keepers in there before playing ball with them. It's hard to remember that they're wild animals that will eat your baby the moment your back is turned.



Painted dogs. This is one of Christian's photos. They were a long way away.


Another of Christian's pics. Sleeping lions. Awwww, how cute!


The Meer cats snuggle up. The one on top was on lookout but apparently keeping an eye out while getting cuddled is ok.


We left the zoo just on closing time and headed up to Loftus where Christian plays soccer. The guys play outdoor rebound soccer and so while they played and got all hot and sweaty the rest of us sat there rather cold. It was that time of the year where the days can be quite warm but the nights are rather cool especially if your dressed for warmer weather.
After the game (it was a draw 1-1) we decided it was too cold to have dinner at King's Park and besides it was too dark so we settled for a drive by just to see the lights.

They weren't on!

Bastards. The main driveway into King's Park is lined with this towering gum trees and they each have a different coloured light at the bottom of them that lights them up and can be seen from the city. It's beautiful and enchanting and unavailable! Dammit.
So we headed home, to have dinner and watch the lights of the tv as we watched more episodes of The Middleman. And so it ends for another day.