April Wrap-up and Signs

Monday 1st - a public holiday (Easter Monday) and Jose and I decided it was time to fix up our garage.

We had bought new shelving and lots of plastic boxes to keep stuff inside... We threw lots of stuff out, others are in boxes to be donated... but still lots to do!

No photo - it looked too messy to start with and not yet finished 😉. Instead, you get a photo of the sunset taken from our front garden across the park on the other side of the road.

Can you see a couple of magpies across the park?

Friday 5th - Codfish night at the Portuguese club. Took my neighbour Maria, who really enjoyed the dinner and atmosphere. 

Saturday 6th - Joined 2 other couples to go to the French Movie Festival to watch "The President's Wife" with Catherine Deneuve. 

At the age of 80 she's still a classy lady who in this film plays the wife of French President Jacques Chirac - "Bernadette"- a supportive wife who finds herself brushed off by the French as being cold, and old-fashioned. With the help of her chief of staff, they embark on a campaign to restore her reputation and assertiveness as the country's first lady.

It was a great movie, a comedy based on real facts, and I found yourself laughing a lot and empathising with Bernadette, while she transforms herself from a lonely figure to one who most French admired and respected.

Friday 12th - after 33 dry days, the spell was broken with unexpected showers and thunderstorms, and some of Perth's northern suburbs copped 100mm of rain in one-hour, inundating roads, and a shopping centre even lost part of its roof! 

Luckily, we didn't that much rain or chaos in the southern suburbs, in fact in my suburb we had about 10 min of light showers.

                                

Friday 19th - When Jose arrived from work, he suggested we go out to dinner in Victoria Park, a hip suburb with a main street full of restaurants and pubs. We chose an Indian restaurant that had good reviews - Colaba Social.

The food was indeed very good, service also very good. When we left, we decided on an ice-cream for dessert. Just next to the restaurant was a frozen yogurt shop that had a queue of dozens!  How good could it be? No queues for me!!

Closer to where we parked we came across "Donut Worry" where they sold ice-creams and it only had 3 or 4 waiting.

An empty plate of Chicken Korma, the huge queue for frozen yogurt, "Donut worry".

Monday 22nd - I attended a "Decluttering workshop" at Morley library, in the northern suburbs. It was quite interesting and inspiring, and I learned where to recycle or donate a lot of things we don't really want to throw out. 

Some of the books on display at the workshop

Thursday 25th - Anzac Day. I don't usually work Friday, but Jose took a day's leave, and we joined 2 other couples and went camping before the rainy weather starts.

We drove about 3 hours south of Perth, to "Big Valley Campsite" in Rosa Glen, less than 15 minutes drive from the lovely town of Margaret River.

Sunset when we arrived, full moon behind fluffy clouds, our 3 campers in a row (ours is the blue one)

The campsite is a working sheep farm and just before 4Pm every day the owner would come to one of the paddocks and about 25 hand reared sheep would come to the fence and be fed by the camping guests.

Those sheep had been hand-reared because either the ewes had rejected them, or they were born with a defect (one had only 1 ear, another had skew legs).

The sheep coming to their 4pm feed - Jose feeding a few of them   

They had about 600 sheep in another paddock, but they didn't associate 4pm with food, so they didn't come close to the fence.

There were chickens and guinea fowl roaming around and 2 roosters that would wake us up at 5am! In an enclosed yard they had lots of guinea pigs and lots of wild birds would visit too, specially close to the kitchen area - magpies, ring-necked parrots, crows, magpie-larks...

Guinea pigs, guinea fowl, chicken, rooster, black chicken with 6 chicks, Australian ring-neck parrots

The site had 2 fully equipped kitchen/eating areas, toilets and showers.

There were bins to collect left over food, veggies and fruit for the chickens, but I'm sure they got well fed just roaming around the caravans. 

Sign for what chickens can eat - the toilets/showers and kitchen block

Saturday 27th - the camping site had a food van, wine tasting and sale and music for the campers from 5Pm. We sat around for a while, and it was quite a nice evening. The only thing missing was a campfire, but fires were still banned at that time of the year due to fire risk.

Food and music in the camping site

During the day we visited Margaret River - lots of new murals, the nearby beaches of Gnarabup, where we rented an Airbnb a few years ago when my daughter's in-laws came to visit.

Gnarabup beach, The White Elephant Cafe in front of the beach

This beautiful old car (an MG) was parked in the Gnarabup beach car park. Jose was excited as it was one of his dream cars in his youth.

We also visited nearby Cowaramup, named by the Wardandi people and meaning 'Place of the Cowara', a purple crowned lorikeet that once inhabited the area. 

Also known as "Cow town" as many people think the name has to do with the 42 life-sized fibreglass cows and calves, scattered around the once sleepy town, which were installed in 2014.

Nowadays the cows have made the town famous for those visiting "down south", and it is abuzz with people strolling the streets and posing for photos with the cows, visiting the wineries, gourmet food merchant, chocolate shop, ice-creamery, gift shop... We visited Millers Ice-creamery  :)

A few of the cows at Cowaramup

Sunday 28th - We returned home in the morning and stopped in the small town of Bunbury where I wanted to visit an outstanding statue that was installed in the foreshore at Koombana Bay in February 2019.

The metal statue -"Wardandi Boodja"- of an Aboriginal man stands five metres high and 6 metres wide and is the work of Western Australian regional artists Nicole and Alex Mickle.

Dolphin Discovery centre and Bunbury Beach 

We then drove home stopping in the suburb of Baldivis to have a late lunch at Nandos Chicken.

Monday 29th - I've been going for Occupational Therapy at Hand Works for the Tenosynovitis (inflammation of the fluid-filled synovium within the tendon sheath) on the middle finger of my right hand, and I'm now wearing a splint and doing gentle bending exercises. This has been going on for about 2 months, and with the splint I don't seem to feel as much pain.

I received a box of goodies from a good friend in Portugal. Every Easter she sends sugar covered almonds and chocolate almonds, plus pens and coin purses.

Personalized Car Number plates seen in April - some better than others!

Joining Tom with the Signs meme. Please check his post for other signs from around the world.