Albany and Perth (The Christmas)

Albany and Perth
(19-25th December 2007)

This is the fifth time I went to Hubby’s office trip. I have been very customized with everybody and vice versa except for the new employees. It’s such a waste that my previous company didn’t have this kind of trip and outing, where everyone can know the rest in very informal situation. I think it would be fun and nice?



18th December 2007

Met everyone in the airport at 10 pm. There are 33 people going on this holiday. Seven couple with outsider spouses including me and Dor, Alan’s spouse, hubby’s good friend. We’ve been tagging along for many times and we’ve blended in. After tedious group check-in, we proceeded to the immigration and some had dinner, some had supper, some went for duty-free shopping. Got bad gastric problem but it wasn’t really bad, at least I can say that now.
Past midnight, at 1 am we board the plane.



19th December 2007

The flight was okay, but not as fantastic as our previous flight with SQ. The entertainment on board was limited, like movies and games and it’s not displayed according to demand. The food was not really good but I guess it’s fine for the odd hours of the flight where most passengers preferred to sleep. They provided us with clean sock, toothbrush and paste to refresh ourselves in the morning. Because we are seated in the middle row, we missed the sunrise.

Reaching Perth at 7.15 am, the weather was pleasant. We met up with Paul, our driver and tour captain, with his cowboy hat and formal uniform, white shirt with blue tie and blue pants. He was a very friendly and happy bule.

As Australia is very strict with the things we can bring in to the country, we needed to pass by many stages of checking. Any kind of food and drinks are strictly prohibited, they even had a Beagle dog to detect whether there are food or drugs in the bags. That was why it took sometime to gather everyone before we departed with a big coach. There was a super auntie from Indo, she was caught bringing a big package of rempeyek and a bunch of ... banana.

We had a short stop for breakfast, and we found our dearly missed fat Aussie’s French fries. Brought tidbits and drinks for the journey. Everyone felt unsafe without having snacks on their side because we were all empty handed of the restriction from bringing any food. We stopped at one small mall, not everyshop had opened, we dropped by the megamart, shopped for snacks and drinks. Soon after, the coach was full with any kind of snacks again. It's amazing how effective was half an hour for hungry people.

We went to Dolphin Discovery Centre in Bunbury. It took about 2 hours plus to reach there and everyone were still quite energetic although we didn’t have enough sleep at all since last night. It was hot but windy on the beach as it reached midday. There were no dolphins in sight, usually they came out to the shore but maybe they were on holiday. Pelagic. Always unpredictable.

So we hung around the beach and watched the show of dolphin, anything about dolphin. Turned out this cute creatureare quite nasty. Group of male dophins like to kidnap female dolphin from another group for mating, they would pursue the female in captive until she gives up, escapes or dies. Cheee...

Dolphin Discovery Centre is a non-profit organization to dolphin research, education, conservation and tourism, located in Bunbury, approximately 180 kilometres south of Perth in Western Australia. Facing Koombana Bay to the North, the Centre enables people to interact with Bottlenose dolphins in a variety of ways.

Visitor can swim with the dolphin under certain condition. Koombana Bay is a good place for dolphins to give birth as the water is safer from shark, it's also protected from irresponsible human activities.

We took another half an hour ride to Ferguson Farm for the farm stay. The farm is located high in the hill. The weather was pleasant with cool wind and dry sun. Along the way we were greeted by the golden field with short or tall golden grass. There were green row of grapes, and free cattles roaming around. There were more birds than human. More cows than birds. More valley than cows.

We were checked in to the cottage. Our cottage was a nice cottage with two bedrooms and a mezzanine room with five beds. At first we ruled the whole mezzanine floor but then we moved to another cottage in a room with four bunks for our own. Each cottage has a spacious living room with comfortable couch, dining room with facilities like fridge, microwave etc. It is a high class hotel standard. The only setback was, we had to share the place with others among our group, because each cottage had 2-3 bedrooms but only one bathroom, luckily with separate toilet and shower area.

Dropping off our baggage, we started to gather for a long awaited lunch. They served hot soup, meal and delicious bread and for the very rare time of my life, I loved the fresh milk. I drank two cups and that’s my world record. It was nice and fresh and didn’t work up my lactose intolerant. The soup was great for the cold weather and of course, bunch of hungry people.

The scenery outside was breathtaking. The sky was vivid strong blue and it was reflected well to the lake visible from the place we stood, combined with the hilly scenery with all the cattles and beautiful yellow grass. We were introduced with the Aussie’s famous friends in summer, the bush flies. The flies could get so irritating because they kept buzzing on the face. We had to be careful not to laugh without covering our mouths. Few flies would be enough for dinner.

Farmer John is the owner of the farm, he did almost everything himself. He used the cute farm car to drive us to the hilly area so that we could get up close and personal with the cattle. It was a bumpy and interesting ride. We drove through the hill with scary turns on the edge and the beautiful lake we saw from above. After sometime, John stopped and looked confused.

“The cattle should be around here. But I wonder where they ‘re gone. I can’t find them.”

We were laughing imagining the cows , bulls etc was running away from us and the master. Anyway, it was a very very big farm and wide area, so they could be anywhere. And not to forget, they are also pelagic. Today seemed like not our day for pelagic spotting. As the first group, we decided to roam around looking for the cattle or just hanging around when John went back to pick up another two groups. We went up trekking on the hills. The flies was really irritating, but the scenery was very nice. The dried up tree bark, golden yellow bush and tall grass. We climbed up few hills and rolled down the next. The weather was hot but it’s not humid, and the wind was cold, so it was a comfortable weather for me. We saw the second group appear from the other end of the hill and we rode back to the cottage area, while third group was waiting to get the ride.











Around the cottage area, there are many calves, cows, bulls, goats, sheep, emus the Australian big bird, ponies, rabbits and guinea pigs. There was a swing under the big tree and we took turn playing happily like kids. There were also a basketball court and big trampoline where all the adults went like crazy. Jumping on the trampoline was indeed fun, started by standing in the middle of the trampolin, then slowly jump, jump, jumppp...! The trampolin will guide you and keep you jumping, with a bit of effort from the riders to make it higher as they wish, you can put in a little bit of action like turning right or left, bending knees, upside down, tendangan putar etc he... the stopping part can be quite tricky that might make you ended up bumping by the butt.

We had some activities like feeding and milking the cow and watching the sheep shearing. The sheep shearing in this farm is only for tourism activity, because for shearing activity to be profitable, the fur has to be in certain length and the number of sheep sheared has to reach certain quota. To shear a sheep, first the sheep was guided to the place and given food. After that, holding the sheep's horn, it was made into position as such that all the feet were in the air. The sheep seemed to be very calm in this position then the shearing can start. One by one of thick fur was dropped on the floor.













We played with the rabbits and guinea pigs also. The farmer who showed us the sheep shearing brought two daughters and they were playing with the rabbits all the time. The girls and hubby’s boss who brought her children, went for pony ride. One of the girls got stung by the bee because they happened to step on it while walking with bare foot.

We had delicious dinner, farmer John, wife and kids served nice food. They even cooked rice for us. From the dining hall overlooking everywhere else, we could see that the cattle were finally back. After dinner, few of us follow John to the pond where he laid some trap to catch grayfish for breakfast in the morning. He put in some meat in the fish trap and lowered it down to the pond. The pond was light grey in colour because of the soil of the island, as the island is getting smaller year by year, some lily and nice wildflower grew around it.



We finally took shower. After shower, apparently many people was very tired having been able to rest properly, they were knocked off and sleep, but two third of us were gathering for the camp fire or more popular as bush fire. John had set up nice foundation of dry wood and seatings around. The fire provided nice warm through the cold weather. It was very cold that night. At nine o’clock, the sun finally disappeared and we could see nice display of sky. We saw the bright colored pink planet Mars. As usual, we could see Orion. Looking at our interest with the star, John led us to see the Southern Star formation. He brought us to the field behind the garage where the bush fire was. It was dark and very cold but the field was open to sky where we could see the valley and big starry sky. We were located far far away from the city and people and so close to the peaceful nature. From the farm, we could see sky everywhere, the brightly dark purple red sky; it was hauntingly beautiful and cold.

Before it was dark

Many of us hadn’t been to any camp fire since years ago, many being old timers and some females who didn’t go through army time never been to camp fire at all. My last camp fire was with Kapa, when all of us would gather around for a night, singing and sharing stories or just enjoyed the beauty of the nature. For my particular latest campfire, we did it during our Orientation week for new members, on the mountain where we hung out our wet clothes around and enjoy the best soup on earth, cooked on the fire.

Around the campfire, John told us stories about the time he worked as teacher for Aboriginal kids, how they went out for a walk and how they met a huge monitor lizard and Aboriginal kids tamed it down by one shot in between the eyes before they cooked it for dinner. It was a very interesting story. He retired and now stayed in the farm, he did everything pretty much by himself with his wife, from tending the cattle, growing wine, milking cows and handling the cottage. He was busy all the time with his jeans and overall. We told him how much we envy his lifestyle that eventhough he was busy all the time, it’s nice dealing with nature, animals, far away from the city stress. Every holiday season, his kids will come for holiday and help out in the farm when there are many guests staying there.

But farm is not just fairy tales for animals. John told us how some animals like young male cows are normally being sent away because it’s too expensive to keep them, since they are not producing milk and not suitable for meat. There are two types of cows, one is the black and white milking cows which female cows worth much more for milking, another type is more meaty cows. The cross breed of these two types are the best cow, because they produce milk and meat. So it’s not always festive when the farmer has to milk the cow by machine to ensure the effectiveness of production and fresh milk on every Aussie’s breakfast table, or when it’s time to send a cow to a place where they would ended in the market. But at the very least, the animals are happy in the farm, where they can roam around and being cared of.

When the night was aging and became dark, we celebrated one person birthday with chocolate and donuts. John put the tripod to boil water in the billy and made us some tea. Billy is what they call for the black pot. When we asked why it’s called billy, he said he had no idea, it has been called like that since historical time and billy could be found in many songs, he joked that who knows it might be a short term for William.

Tea in tin cup

John and Billy

When the water in the billy had reached its boiling point. John picked it up with his bare hand, put in some tea leaves and swung it around. To explain it physically, he was using centrifugal force so that the tea leaves would stay at the bottom of the pot. Maybe it was the nice time and place, the tea tasted really good in tin cups. We enjoyed two round of tea before we went back to the cottage.

It was a looong and wonderful day. The night was peaceful, with only some moooo sound and chipping birds, all of us slept like logs.

*****

Since we were so bothered by these creature, here are some interesting facts I dag out from internet about Bush Flies.

WHEN

In Perth, December is the peak month for bush flies (!) They breed well because of the hot temperature of summer and they breed best around the source of their nest, cow dung. So, a farm would be a best place to find them. And there are scientific reasons about why they insisted on hanging around your face.

WHAT

The female bush flies pester you most. They want protein. They get protein from your tears, saliva, the mucus in your nose -- and from blood, if you have any fresh cuts. To be blunt, they are also hoping you might do a poo. Bush flies are programmed to stay around animals, because animal dung is their favourite place to lay eggs.
Male bush flies probably hang around you mostly to be near the females! They don't need much protein. When bush flies swarm around you, there are usually about three females for every male.

Of how it sounds so gory, bush flies are actually much much less dirty than house flies.

TRUTH

Doctors say it's possible for bush flies to spread eye diseases. Trachoma, for example, or maybe conjunctivitis. But this would only happen if you were very careless about letting flies get on your eyes. (And even then, the flies would have to have been in contact with an infected person's eyes.)
If you want to hear ghastly stories about flies and disease, read about house flies. Compared to house flies, the bush flies are as harmless and sanitary as boiled water.

How to Get Rid of Them

Houseflies like to go inside building, while bush flies are against it with all their might. So, if bush flies happened to stuck inside a house, they would gather around the window, hoping to get out. So one way to avoid them, except the net hat, is to simply wear a shopping bag on top of your hat. Let the bag’s handle drop in front of your face. Why bush flies won’t go near you, because to go to your face, they have to go inside the handle of the bag, and that is against their genes not to go inside. They stay outside. And they can’t work it out.

All of above are very interesting facts I found from Jim Heath’s website.

It’s a shame that I didn’t read this earlier otherwise I would be more than glad to hang a bag on top of my head….



20th December 2007

Woke up early in the morning at 5.45am, because we wanted to watch John picking of the fish trap. Had early shower, packing everything and off we went to the pond.
John was already there, what he needed to do was just to pull in the trap and we should be able to find the grayfish inside. Nonetheless, the harvest was not good, against what he always had. There were only few grayfish inside.

We took few more walks around and had breakfast before we proceeded to the next journey. It was a pity that we didn’t spend more time in the farm, because it was a nice interesting experience. All the while my idea to have perfect life was to stay in a farm. Although that has pretty much changed from outback farm to seaside, it’s still a nice option though.

We board the coach for a ride to Busselton Jetty. It’s a waste also that we couldn’t stay longer than some half an hour in the jetty, otherwise we could make a nice long dive because Busselton Jetty is the longest wooden jetty in southern hemisphere, stretching almost 2 km out to sea. Nice reef had grown underside the structure of the jetty.

The beach was nice long sandy beach. We hung around for a while, to watch the blue sky and seagulls.









I haven’t been to many places, but so far I agree that Australian sky is the most beautiful sky. The color is really bright and fresh, with rich amount of white snow cloud or totally clear blue sky without any obstruction. It’s the prettiest sight.

Next destination was Jewel Cave. Different with Halong Bay’s cave in Vietnam, that was crowded with tourists, we had private trip as our own. Jewel Cave is a very pretty huge cave accidentally discovered in 1957 by a group. They found a hole and when they tried to go in it was an endless bottom where Jewel Cave is located. The cave is rich with magnificent shawls, stalactites, stalagmites, flow stone, rock formations and even a fossil that is estimated to be around 25000 years old. Some source says it’s a Tasmanian Tiger’s fossil, and some says it’s a possum. It lied there perfectly on one of the inaccessible cave ground.
It was cold and mysterious inside the cave. When the artificial light was off, it was totally dark and slightly spooky. We had the guide explained to us about some interesting facts of the cave. She showed us the weird stalactites that grew sideways and everywhere so it appeared like a spiky stalactites.

The accidentally found entrance





























The fossil


The tour was quite exhausting because we had to climb up and down the stairways. The cave was at least forty meter depth, some passage were so narrow and low that we had to duck down along the way. At the end of the journey, some of us were out of breath.
Departing from there, we were heading to Margaret River, Pemberton area. We stopped along the way for lunch. But because we were behind schedule, the lunch was cut short. We had the best fish and chip and salad in a restaurant with unique ambience. Too bad we had to rush to finish the meal that we didn’t have enough enjoyment.





The next ittenary is the common tourist ittenary. Factory. We visited chocolate, cheese and candy factory. I have to say that I imagine to visit chocolate factory like Willy Wonka’s, but it’s far from that. They have a very wide selection of chocolate, dark, milk, ginger, sultana, you name it, they have it. But apart from that, there were only one room for the chocolate making display. Two big wheels that spun around with the milk and chocolate and some chocolate making activity. Nice to know, but I wanted to see Hoompa Loompa with their gigantic chocolate river and garden. I guess it only happens in movie. Damn movies! They spoilt the reality.
In cheese factory, nothing much to be seen except cheese shopping. Everyone spent great deal of buying chocolate, but here, we only bought ice cream, anyway, we wouldn’t buy big chunk of cheese and chew it in the coach, right…..But the ice cream was really good, the chocolate chips and the peppermint..slurppppppp…

Next destination is Candy Cow, a place where we stopped to buy candy. I found my new favorite snack, honey crunch. It’s a nice snack with golden yellowish chunk of honeycomb that melts in your mouth.

We visited a winery where we tasted five types of wine. Not an expert of wine, each one tasted almost the same to me. There are two type of wine for each red and white wine. But I forget what are they, oopsie, I wasn’t pay too much attention, I was imagining the scene of A Walk In The Cloud among the green leaves of grapes. I couldn’t help but thinking whether they really made the wine by jumping all over the fruits like what I saw in that movie. Movie again. Mas Nunu. Ahhhh.

As request of the boss, Paul, the tour captain drove us to the Peter Kovacsy studio, where we went to see his gallery of wood craft and glass work. He was not around, but we could go around to enjoy his stunning display of wood. My favorite ones are The Golden Temple from glass and Safe Passage from wood. When he did his major art work from wood, we were told that he liked to roam around in the jungle and picked up pieces of jarrah wood that scattered around and converted it to master piece. Now he concentrates more on glass work.

As the day touched the dusk, we arrived at Gloucester Tree, Pemberton.
GloucesterTree is a gigantic karri tree that stands up at 61 meter high. It had become a famous tourist destination where people tried their adrenalin brush to climb the tree. The only way to do it is to track in 2 cm diameter width steel s stuck in the tree with hand and feet. It was a bad day that I wore a very inelastic jeans, but nonetheless, one step at a time, I managed to climb it up. Honestly, it was scary but worth it. Half way up, I started to have a little bit of regret because my leg started to feel wobbly. Only seven of us, including me, hubby and Alan and four other male colleagues, made it up. There were three observation decks above and the wind was very strong up there. We couldn’t see those below and as we reached the top the voices were carried away by the wind. Posed for a while, ka-ka-kka-ka-kaa, shivering with the wind. We started to go down. I tell you, going down is always my weakness. It’s far more scary to go down than climbing anything. And going down this tree rates high up after going down rock climbing. It was scary with wobbly leg, and at one part, there was a branch in between the steel structure, and that was a challenge, one slip, and we might fall gratta gratta gratta along the steps or worse, free fall to the ground. And of course, the scariest part of going down that beats rock climbing is, we have to look down while doing so. We had to concentrate on the steps, with strong winds, it could get difficult. When we finally reach the ground, I had shaking legs for half an hour and I felt pain for the next two days as if I had gone through extreme frog jumping exercise.







But it was great and I would do it again if I had the chance, without that damn jeans that made me climb like a grandma.

We hung around the place for a while, there were many beautiful birds roaming around. Too bad we didn’t bring any breads to attract them to us, although they were close enough. We tried to fool them by using wood chips as baits, but we wouldn’t call them bird if they can’t differentiate wood chippings with breads, would we..





We checked in Gloucester motel. We had one whole rows of room for ourselves. The hotel was very modest and beautiful. It had nice bright toilet, finally, toilet for our own after we had to share it with five other people in farm stay. The weather was cold, but the room had heater and bed warmer.

The dinner was magnificent. They decorated the room nicely with Christmas decorations. Each of everyone has Christmas popper where we could find our party hats and small cute gifts. I got red plastic jumping frog and hubby got a yellow plastic trophy. The menu was wow, we had every kind of meat imaginable, from turkey to ham, from prawns to mussel, and the most breathtaking part was the cakes. They had all range of cakes from strawberry to blueberry, mango and etc. I had never eaten so many cakes but it was really good. The creams was very thick but fresh and yummy, it didn’t taste too sweet. Full and happy, we went back to the room for shower. Around the dining area, they had many entertainments, although some were not in perfect working condition. They had fun charity jackpot machine, game machine, giant chess, football table etc.



Just when hubby took his shower, I relaxed on the bed and heard some noises outside, followed by fla la la la la and two shadows emerged. I took a peep, and there were Morris and Joel standing outside, wearing Christmas hat and singing carols. I grabbed the hotel’s soap bar and gave it to them, after I finished up laughing. At least they were satisfied with it, because I was the first one to respond, although with soap. Ai Wa was with them too. Leaving my husband, I went out and followed them, giving precious information about who and who in the next room. Serena from the next room with her husband was pretty excited, so was Alan. They went out to join us too, by the time we reached the third room from mine, the carols had swollen to bigger group and all of us shamelessly sang for money or candy. The group got bigger and bigger as every victims went out and join and it got wilder when some victims actually gave out coins and money. Mhahaha. We sang louder and more persistent. When Hubby and Dor went out from shower amd couldn’t find their spouses, they went out and joined us too. When we reached the bosses’s room, the terrace was not big enough for all of us.





After we had visited every room, the fun was over for a while. But we gathered again for chit chat and drinks as usual. Too bad it got smoky. Paul joined us also. After a while we went back to the room and knocked off again, cozy in the bed with heater.



21nd December 2007

Nice breakfast in the motel. I love this motel, with its nice bedroom, food and surrounding. We had good breakfast, although Western food started to dig our longing for Asian food. We boarded the early coach for Lavender and Berry Farm. I have been wanting to go to Lavender farm for long long time, and this time, I was lucky that we hadn’t missed the season. Dropping out from the coach, we could see the Lavender blooming around. Clap your hands between the Lavender leaves, and scrub them gently, and you could have the nice fresh lavender smell on your hand. I don’t like the processed lavender fragrance or anything with lavender perfume, but fresh lavender smells really nice.

There was a beautiful lake where many ducks were swimming around and kwek kwek kwek. We were looking for Donald when three small ducks were walking towards us from the water. Paul sad they were Hewey, Dewey or Kwik Kwek Kwak. I loved the quacker sound and ducks were not as fierce as swan. It wasn’t hurt when I let one of them nibble at my hand. Some other ducks were sunbathing and having shower by dipping their heads below the water.



Lavender farm, what can I say. It was beautifulllll, with all the purple flowers and the colorful wildflowers around them. We bought an empty punnet where we could fill it with the berries we picked up on our own inside the farm. The small berries were very sweet and soft, while the bigger and nicer looking ones were sour and hard. There was mild rains one in a while, but not enough to get us wet. I enjoyed picking of the berries in the cold morning weather, while shoving some in the mouth for the taste to decide which and which berries were nicer. It didn’t look as there were many berries, but at the end when everyone had gotten their punnets full there were still many berries around.
We played around the duck lake for a while before departing to Albany.





It took us around two and a half hours to reach Albany. Paul told us so many stories, in between my sleep, I heard the interesting story of Banjo Patterson. Here is the story shared by Paul.
Banjo Paterson wrote a song ‘Waltzing Mathilda’, it’s a well-loved song that has become unofficial Australian theme. At a very first impression, I thought Waltzing Mathilda s a story about a dancing girl, but it’s far from that. I’d try to tell it the best I can, it’s a nice story.

There was a drifter who liked to go backpacking. It’s not like modern backpacking. What they have with them is a sack or bedroll which they carried around on their shoulder as they roamed around the jungle, the bushes, the field, the desert with the sky as their roof and the grass and sand as their bed.

This young man happened to stop by a town where he met his love of life, a girl from a rich family called Mathilda. The family was against Mathilda’s wish to marry this drifter, so she ran away with him. They went together and spent their life backpacking around and became a well known couple. Forty years went by, and one day Mathilda passed away. The drifter was drown in sorrow and he continued to do what he and his wife loved the most, backpacking. He named his sack or bedroll as Mathilda. In that way, Mathilda would be always be with him wherever he go.

It’s unknown to me whether the drifter was Banjo Patterson or a person he knows, because I couldn’t find the story in the internet. Patterson as the original writer sold the loyalty of the song for five pounds, because he didn’t want the song to remind him of the sorrow.

Waltzing itself does not mean dancing, but backpacking or walking along the bush track. Mathilda is the bedroll, so the song means backpacking with a sack.
I love the song, on the way in Albany, I found a nice gem of a music box made from jarrah wood with Waltzing Mathilda tune. Here is the link if you want to listen to the tune, click at the end of the page. Nice love story. Viva Paul.

Watzing Mathilda

Albany is a nice small town where the residents of it are committed to the environment. According to Paul, there are many hippies that lives among the trees, to embrace the nature. They build their homes from natural resources and do their best to be environmental friendly. It’s true as it was very difficult for us to find even a plastic bag for our use. Every shop we went and shopped use paper bag and we saw many small wooden low profile homes along the way. The people were nice and the weather was pleasant, I definitely love to spend some time here. It was a nice peaceful town.
There are many jungle along the way, some of the famous are karry and jarrah wood, we made a stop at the woodcraft center where I found my Waltzing Mathilda music box.

We proceeded to Valley of The Giants, the tree top walk. It’s higher but more steady than Melborne’s tree top at 40 meter high at the peak point. Each span consisted of maximum 20 people and we could see nice scenery and giant trees from the top. At the ancient tree walk in Ancient Empire, we could find gigantic tingle trees with very big holes on the bottom.

After Valley of The Giants, we had lunch on our own at Denmark area, where the forest meets the sea, a small town with beautifull beaches and parks with a mere 5000 population, southern coast of Albany. In season, there are activities like Whale Watching where people can have close encounter with the whale, but that activity has to fit to another type of holiday for us to enjoy.
We didn’t have much choice for lunch and settled to try Kangaroo burger. It sounded horrible at first, but the other choice was crocodile burger. Kangaroo meat tasted quiet weird to me. It was tender, meaty but didn’t taste like meat. I can’t say that I like that particular lunch. I just don’t enjoy the punchy fellows being on my plate, but experience is an experience, although I have never been adventurous in delicacy.

After lunch, we went around for grocery shopping and again, we got hold on Bundaberg Ginger Beer, a very very good ginger beer and it’s even better on the country of the origin when they pack those in glass bottles. Although it’s called beer, it’s not alcoholic drink at all.

In Gap and Natural Bridge, our next destination, it was a nice coastline scenery with rocky cliff where natural wonder happens. The Gap is a huge gap in the rock, which on rough sea days, has spray rising up over the top. Natural Bridge is the hanging gigantic walkway that connects two cliffs. Big formation of rock that looks fragile and dangerous. It was windy on the rock and everyone was busy to take the best snap shots of the rare scenery or quietly enjoyed the moment.







From there, we went to the Power Wind Farm. This Wind Farm was my main reason to decide that I wanted to go to this trip. It has been my dream to visit Wind Farm and today it came true.

As we approached the wind farm, the sky was a bit gloomy. From the bus, we could see the gargantuan wind mill that stood gloriously at 80 meter about the Southern Ocean. It is 1800kW Wind Turbines connected to the Albany town electrical system and control network. We could hear the mighty sound of the turbine’s blade and I must admit, it’s far much more bigger than I thought it would be. No wonder, each turbine has 65m tower and and three 35m long blades, one of the biggest in the world at that time. The strongest wind can rotate the blade at top speed of 22 RPM (one revolution every 3 seconds!).
They never stopped moving while we were there, no wonder three quarter of Albany resident or 15000 homes can rely on them for the energy and no wonder why Albany is such an environmental friendly town. We climbled out to the highest lookout to get the magnificent views. It was my favorite place of all.





We spent time enjoying the scenery, I went down for a toilet break. After that, I was thinking of going up again to meet Hubby. On the step of going up, less than two meter in front of me, few people from our group was walking towards my direction when one of the girls was screaming like crazy. There was a big snake passed by on one of the step. If anything more dangerous when somebody saw a snake, it’s the hysterical scream as crazy as that. Because the snake just happened to glide by and didn’t bother about us. One of the guys was stupid enough and stupidly thinking of showing off by trying to step of the tail. I tried to ask him to stop; luckily an Aussie elderly man behind me was shouting the same thing. Otherwise the snake might attack and the worse, to eat stupid people it would upset their stomach, don’t you think?
It’s an easily identified snake, the body was totally black, it was Black Tiger Snake (Notechis ater), one of the most venomous snakes in Australia.

See…There is a very fine line between stupidity and bravery.

Next, we proceeded to Albany Town Center. I must admit that it was a very activities packed day. We visited the replica of Brig Amity.
Brig Amity is a historical vessel that carried the very first settlers from Sydney to Albany in 1826, in 1845, she was wrecked in Bass Strait on and uncharted sandbank. The full sized replica, the one we visited was built in 1975. It’s a beautiful traditional sail boat, my favorite kind of boat. The ship was not big at all, it’s hard to imagine 50 men with sheep and pigs shared the vessel for six weeks rough journey, battling the summer heat and heavy weather.
We played Jack Sparrow’s pose and wandered around the boat for pictures.





For dinner, we had Chinese food dinner in Chinese restaurant. It was not fantastic but it was not so bad either.

After that, we check in to Comfort inn, it’s nice inn just like Gloucester, with similar layout and beds with heather. We had party that night, with mahjong games etc. I skipped the party that night because I didn’t like the smoke smell I got the previous night and the warm bed was asking me to stay, really! I swear!



22nd December 2007

Woke up and again, Western Breakfast. Bacon and more bacon. Milk and more milk. Today we didn’t have much things to do as we would travel back to Perth. So early in the morning we visited Sandalwood Factory at Mount Romance. Not my preference, it’s more suitable for those who like cosmetic and fragrance and variety of endless toiletries that so called can make you pretty etc. So, many of us were just parked on the sofa and taking pictures around or went to the café to buy Blueberry muffin for the four hours journey to Perth.



Paul shared a lot of stories on the way, but I had gone to the wondrous dreams with the help of my friend, travel sickness pill. If I can make a wish about what to change physically on me, I would like to get rid of my motion sickness about everything; ship ride, car ride, tea-cup although I always perfectly fine on plane ride.

We had lunch at Clansman Restaurant, a Scottish restaurant. They served pumpkin soup, and chocolate cream as desert. We celebrate two people birthday with cake too, but we couldn’t fill more food into our stomach. The meal was not fantastic but it was okay.

Next, we went to Macadamia Nut Farm and Factory where we toured around the Macadamia Tree, this nuts grow on the tree! And closing it with shopping for Macadamia products. We hung around the Nutcracker machine and had fun cracking the fresh nuts. Fresh macadamia nuts coming out from the shell tasted very good, too bad it’s too bulky to bring some home.


Macademia, nut that grows on a tree


We checked in to Aarons Hotel in Perth.

Compared to previous accommodation, or any accommodation on its range, it’s quite horrible. The room was very small with unpleasant smell where when you sit on the bedroom edge, your knees could touch the cupboard or the wall next to it. It was really cramped. I strongly suspect that it was an ‘hourly hotel’. Many of us, including our room, got porn channel. Our rooms even had two porn channels that provided 24/7 programs with clear pictures while other channel, cartoon, news etc were in terrible shape or black and white. The service of the hotel was the crappiest we had ever met. I didn’t know how they arranged it, but cereal was not included in our breakfast and the staffs die die kept an eye on every unsuspected ‘offenders’. Hubby was ‘sue’ aka sial three times. Although we laughed about it, it left really unpleasant impression. When he took cereal on the first day, the staff quickly forbid him and he had to pour the cereal back to the place. With other colleague who had eaten it, they were forced to pay. At the very least business sense, that was the crappiest action a service industry can do. If cereal was not in the menu, they can simply don’t put it in the table together with the rest. For people who has mistaken, so what..What is the price of cereal compared to guest’s bad experiences? The second day they refused to serve juice, while it’s actually INCLUDED in our package although we had to choose between coffee/tea OR juice. Third, they asked us to finish the drink so they could collect the cup, that is a very bad thing, worse than Singapore’s hawker center’s cleaning auntie in the food court.

And the worst of all, on our last day, we checked out early but we only had our flight around midnight. So we hung around in the hotel with our luggage, as agreed. Wasn’t happy, the hotel manager locked down the guest toilet and refused to unlock it. We had to go to neighbor hotel who were happy to help us. A pee, just a pee. Tell me how crappy is this hotel who claims to have 5 stars service. I failed to see a slight comparison with our crappy dive lodge that surpass much higher in service area. So, warning, for everybody, for the crappy hotel. It’s just a pity that they rub wrong people because usually, the bosses are really particular in their choice of hotel, it has to be very good hotel although sometimes outsiders like me and Dor complained about the higher price because of that, but this time, the tour agency got it wrong. But the very least, if the service is good, any kind of hotel will provide a pleasant stay, not a crappy calculative cereal, juice and toilet freaks. Prrrrrt.

We had dinner in a restaurant nearby the ferry terminal, called Lucky Shag Restaurant. It sounds very cheesy, but shag is actually a type of birds that are common in that area together with seagulls. We had gigantic seafood platter and fish and chips. After that we went for a walk and passed by Supreme Court park, where there were concert rehearsal for tomorrow Christmas Celebration. We sat down on the grass and enjoyed the nice music for a while. It is a nice lifestyle of Aussie that I like where we can find live shows or music concert and we can just lie down on the grass and enjoy it.

We walked back to the hotel and called the night.



23rd December 2007

Gathered for crappy breakfast, as told, we were on our own, free and easy for two full days in Perth. We decided to take train to Fremantle market. The train was free that day, we thought it’s because of Christmas, apparently it’s for the celebration of new subway line opening. The station was big and clean so did the train. There were so many of us that we dominated the last car of the train. Half an hour ride, alighted at Fremantle station, we started to experience the fierce infamous summer of Perth. Fremantle Market was just like Paddy’s Market in Sydney. They sell everything from hats to fish. We roamed around for a while, tasted a very delicious butter-salted steam corn and iced chocolate. There was a nice street performer with their own built music instrument. The sun was very strong and bit us to the skin, at least it was dry and not humid so we were not sweaty, but we got worse sunburn than diving trips.

We had great mini lunch at Joe’s, with the fantastic grill chicken and oyster before we proceeded to the Round House. It was a tiring walk up because o f the heat, and we missed the canon fire by two minutes. The Canon was erected in 1900 to help the ships setting their main clock. The canon would fire shot over the harbor at 1 pm. In 1937, their job was taken over by radio signal, but in 1998 it was put into commission for old time sakes and it has been firing at the same time every day since then.









We walked along the nice harbor to enjoy the beach and the scenery of the ships but we had to duck into the shelter at times because the sun was really digging into our skin and we were dehydrated. We went to our original destination to have our extended lunch at Kailis, it’s a huge restaurant with market layout, where we ordered lobster to share among six of us, our loyal companions since morning, Alan and Dor, Ai Wa and Ivonne the Giant. We ordered the famous fish and chips again although it was a disappointment. I prefer the lunch at Joe’s, but in Kailis, I found a very nice Lemon Sorbet that really suited to the weather.

We sat for a while, lazing around, not ready to battle into the hot sun again. When we finally continued, we went around shops and market, and ended up in a supermarket shopping for our dinner, Cup Noodles. Expensive meals had thinned out our pocket and we wanted to have low profile meal for a change. Anyway, we ate so much that we didn’t have much space left for dinner. I found a nice recycled Simpsons bag for our excess baggage. We decided to take train back against our original plan to take ferry, because @14 dollar ferry ride sounded very expensive compared to free train ride! And it took 2 and a half times longer to travel ferry. Six of us, we could go for two more lobsters with the money we saved. Little did we knew, whether it’s true or not, somebody told us ferry was free that day too. I don’t think it’s true, because what is ferry got to do with new subway line celebration..?












We reached city around 5.30pm, the shops were closing, so we didn’t have much chance to shop, and anyway, we were beat. We went back to the hotel, shower and gathered at the room to cook our dinner. It was delicious by the way. After that, we took off to the Supreme Court again to watch the real concert, although we only planned to sneak peek.
The rehearsal day before, the park was empty, but today, it was full from end to end. Thousands of people waving candles filled the park. Hot dog stall, hot chocolate stall, although cold drinks was more suitable at that time, candy cotton and popcorn stalls crowded the edge of the park. No wonder there were no one in the street. Turned out that they had been celebrating Christmas with concert in that Park for over 60 years. We found a spot and sat down just when the concert reached the point of the performance we saw in the rehearsal. There was a very nice Bell performance but it sounded better when the park was empty. We were there for almost an hour when the show finally came to the end. I was wondering while nobody moved to go home, but I guessed it might because of their culture to do everything slowly and relaxed. So six of us started to walk back home when we heard a count down.

Five..four..three..two…

I thought, it’s ten o’clock, why the countdown?

Suddenly the sky broke and there were sounds of crackling guns and when we looked up, the lights and fire was raining down on us. I thought it was an emergency situation, it’s only a while when I realized that it was fireworks. And we happened to stand there, on the best point, where the sky was clear and the firework went down to us in perfect view. I hesitated to pull the camera, because I thought it would stop anytime since it had been gone for a while and my camera might not qualified for it, then Dor gave me an idea to record it as movie. Lucky as we were, the fireworks went on for another few minutes, we were all holding the camera with shaky hands and enjoy the magnificent view. I had never seen a live fireworks show before, now I got the front seat, for five long minutes. It was such a nice Christmas present and surprise.
We walked back feeling excited and couldn’t stop talking about it. The moon was perfectly round for that night and the night we left.












VIDEO!!!


24th and 25th of December 2007

Another free and easyday. Today, We decided to go for some shopping in Harbor Town. We boarded the free CAT Bus, Yellow CAT, Red CAT and Blue CAT. CAT stands for Central Area Transits. We went around Harbor Town for shopping and lunch. There were some factory outlets and nice toy shop where I found my others music boxes.
The hot weather wore us down fast, Today, it recorded as 36 degree and it burned the top of our head. Didn’t know where to go, we dropped in Chinatown and roamed around the area. Mostly we stopped at convenient store to buy drinks time and again, or stopped for meals. We had Chinese food for another lunch and Indonesian food for dinner. We went to Hay Street and London Court if I’m not wrong but we didn’t really shop. We just walked and dropped at every bench to cool down. Hubby and me tried the Scratch and Win lottery, each bought a dollar and we won 2 and 3 dollars each. Not bad at all! Mhehehe..







Around 7 o’clock, where all the shops had closed down since 5, we got nowhere to go except the hotel, and had to endure the crappy post-service from them who treated us like refugees .
Paul picked us up close to eleven, and we had never been happier boarding his bus. He was glad to see us and even gave us a card as he said he had memorable time with us. At the airport, we lined up to wish him a very Merry Christmas and Thanks for his kindness to bring us out of the ittenary and his stories along the way before we parted with him.
We had four hours to kill in the airport before our flight at 2.55 am. When we finally got in, we slept like nobody business, no time for meals and entertainment as we were very tired.

Reached Singapore at 7 am. The holiday has ended, everyone was going their own ways. We took bus to Woodland and slept all the ways before were reached home by MRT one stop away. Cleaned up, unpacked, and we slept the whole Christmas Day.

For those who love flowers, they can be found everywhere in Oz. In the city, on the pot, in gutters, seaside, fences, walls...






















































Merry Christmas Everyone.
Hope you had a good one too.