The Mayne Adventure: March 2011

Well, as you no doubt have heard, Caleb has had some work on 'The Strip" which is the industrial strip that stretches from Rockingham to Kwinana, approximately 40km south of Perth.I too have landed work in the job of my dreams (those dreams being described as nightmares...) at Woolworths in night-fill. On the days off and the weekends, we have been frolicking in day trips around some of the south-west's more spectacular attractions. Here are the highlights for you, in chronological order...

Weekend 1: Bussle in Busselton, the Jetty

Corals on a Busselton Jetty Pylon

Our first visit to the Busselton Jetty was a dissappointment as only 200m of the jetty was open to the public, so the first Saterday afternoon we got, we headed back down to check out the entire jetty. As mentioned before, this jetty is 1.8km long, and is known for its terrific snorkling and diving at the end. We snorkled around the old pylons where there are some spectacular coral arrangements, many fish and stinging jelly-fish. It's a great walk out to the end, and has some spectacular views by sunset.

Busselton Jetty by sunset-light

Weekend 2: Perhaps the most pretty, although impossibly perplexing, Perth

Being only 50km south of Perth, I dare say we will exlore this capital fairly thougholy. I think its also safe to say, that Perth is a thriving, sprawling metropolis that you do not want to drive in peak hour! Also, after so long on straight highways, our trusty MIO has become a casuality of the Mayne Adventure, and died for some inexplicable reason (possibly falling from the dashboard one too many times due to a malfunctioning suction thingy) This means we have to navigate the old fashioned way with a refadex and a finger. Of course, it's handy for a map to show the difference between bus lanes and car lanes, or for Lisa to be looking at the correct map, but to be quite frank, there are so many failure navigation stories on my part, it borders on really, really sad. So I will skip over them.

We visited Perth one Friday when Caleb had to do a confined spaces ticket. We went to the Perth Mint (where photography was not allowed, due to all the money involved) and to the Bell Tower. Both were a little different, and and interesting introduction to this state's capital city. The Bell Tower, while it swamps the one in Kingaroy for awesomeness of bells (it has 18, some of which date back to 1600s from St Martins in Trafalgar Square in London) the whole purpose of the tower baffles me. Clearly, somebody was REALLY into bells. The tower has virtually no other purpose other than to house these bells. Random. It does provide a great view of the city though, and would be a cool venue for something.

Weekend 4: Freedom in 'Freo'

We've come from over-east, aboard a silver beast

That's been broken several times and left us stranded

Set up in Rocky, jobs, money but not cocky

To fix the silver rodeo before the Kimberley

While here we make the most, so to you I can boast

Of all our jaunts and travels of the South-West

This weekend we learnt the lingo, and ended up in Freo

Thats Freemantle for all you who don't know the West.

I know, it's lame but you can't blame a girl who is on a mission to procrastinate until lunch time. As you have no doubt guessed, I am writing this entry week by week, until I have enough little jaunts worthy of a post. I am currently in the library for a full day waiting for our car to be fixed (well, not fixed, merely getting a new clutch in the hopes of avoiding a clutch malfunction up north hand having to fork out over double somewhere like Karatha).

The Ovens Sub at Freo

We went to the Maritime Museum in Freemantle, where while it was not the most well set up of museums we did have a pretty impressive tour of an old submarine. Thankfully it was not underwater. And also thankfully, I will never, EVER have to work on one. I think I would go mad! Freemantle itself is a nice city full of old buildings and obviously thriving with multiculturalism due to immigration. At times in the south-west, you almost feel as though you are in South Africa - due to the outrageous amount of South African accents you hear.

Weekend 5: Crabs and Combing

In case you are wondering, I am
attempting an impersonation
of Caleb's impersonation of a crab

blue swimmer crab...its red because its cooked
yum

This weekend we travelled north and south. On the Saturday we headed south to Mandurah, and while everyone in Kingaroy was having a grand old time at the Food and Wine Festival, we were living it up (well, in a manner of speaking) at the Mandura Crab Fest. We ate a freash (but frozen) blue swimmer crab, walked around, saw some motorcross and did all that fun stuff for a day, before we had to head home so that I could go to work. Then on the Sunday we headed to Cottesloe Beach, one of the most popular beaches in Perth to check it out. We learnt that you don't go to Cottesloe on a nice Sunday afternoon, because everyone goes to Cottesloe on a nice Sunday afternoon and it is virtually impossible to find a free space (There are plenty of full ones!). Once we did manage to park our car, the beach, while yeah, ok it was just a beach, it did have some pretty funky sculptures!

Cottesloe Beach

The In-Betweeners...

We have also been doing some relaxing around Rockingham on the weekends we weren't jaunting - going to Rockingham Baptist and catching up with people from there which has been great, also studying in a 12ft van which at times can prove to be an interesting challenge. We are lucky because the caravan park we are staying in is right next to a lake, or recreation park with lots of walking tracks and the like to get some exercise in. And, let me tell you about Bill. Bill is one of the caretakers here, or groundsman, whose mind is obviously not what it used to be (one morning we woke up with 6 sprinklers of Bore Water surrounding our van. It smells like rotten eggs) but he is the loveliest old duck! Always up before us, moving his sprinklers, walking with his cane, asking us how we know about his children when we had only had a discussion with him about them the day before...sweet.

Well, it appears we have completed enough jaunts to warrant a post...So I will meet you at the published post on the blog!..(i.e. here...)