Signs and Critters at Rottnest Island

It was the Queen birthday long weekend, and Dr KY invited us, another colleague and her husband and another Doctor to go to Rottnest Island on his yacht on Sunday 29th.




We met up at the Royal Perth Yacht Club in Nedlands at 9,30 with a view to departing at 10am.
Before we boarded, KY showed us Jon Sanders Perie Banou II, the yacht where the then 79 year old Perth man completed his 10th solo circumnavigation in 2018.




Navigating on the Swan River, we left the city behind, cruising past beautiful houses with river views, tiny beaches, riverside parks... 

Fancy  houses by the river. Can you spot the house with the sunflower murals? And the Rainbow containers?(links below)

About half an hour later we sail past the Western Australia Maritime Museum, the green South Mole lighthouse and the red North Mole lightouse, gatekeepers to the Fremantle harbour, and join the Indian Ocean on the way to Rottnest Island just 18km away.

WA Maritime Museum, South Mole lighthouse, and North Mole lighthouse

Forty five minutes later we dropped anchor at the designated mooring, the boys got the dinghy down, we all climbed aboard and steered towards Thomson's Bay.

At the outdoor bar of the Hotel Rottnest we sat down for a drink, with a glorious view of the bay.

View of Thomson's Bay from outdoor bar at the Rottnest Hotel

We spotted the first Quokka, and shortly after a peacock came strutting towards us.

When we left the bar area a lot more quokkas were around, some just resting in the shade, others just looking for food, and all around them dozens of people taking photos of this cute creature.

 I didn't manage a selfie, but I got a photo with a sleeping one :)

We ate lunch at Frankie's on Rotto -  pizza and Caesar Salad for the 6 of us.

After lunch we walked to Pinky's Beach Club, where the $20 million glamping 83 Eco-retreat was opened in March this year. With 83 eco-tents, this was the first accommodation to be built on the island in the last 30 years.

With the lighthouse and the Pinky Beach Bay as a stunning backdrop, there is also a grassed area with day beds, a dining area with views, and a small pool and bar for the lucky guests.

Pinky's Beach Club - the eco-tents, the restaurant, the pool

Sculpture at the entrance of Pinky's Beach Club

Pinky's Beach with the lighthouse to the right

 From Pinky's bay we walked back to Thomson's Bay, fabulous views, turquoise waters, white sand, hundreds of boats, holiday mood ... bliss!

Sign at the school gates

It was time to go back to the boat, the boys hauled the dinghy back to the water, we climbed aboard and steered towards the yacht.

Once aboard, the boys hauled the dinghy to the top of the boat, while the ladies lay out snacks and drinks, and then we all sat down on the back deck, and chatted.

I spotted this guy roaming around on his dinghy, totally relaxed 😉, what a good life.

And all good times have to come to an end, so by 4,30pm we prepared to lift anchor and return to Perth.
The sun was setting by the time we arrived in Perth.

The city in the distance...

Back at the Royal Perth Yacht Club

We will return to the island in December when my daughter, son in law and his French family visit for Christmas. Not in style, but with the ferry :)

FOR OTHER SIGNS please go over to Tom's blog.

FOR OTHER CRITTERS please go over to Eileen's blog.

Related Posts:

House with sunflower mural:
https://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com/2019/02/monday-mural-sunflowers.html
The Fremantle Rainbow:
https://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com/2017/04/driving-around-swan-river-coast.html

Monday Mural -Abstract murals in Victoria Park

A couple of weeks ago, on the way to Office Warehouse where I drop the used ink cartridges from work, I came across two murals and stopped to take photos. 
They are  both located in the suburb of Victoria Park, an inner south Eastern suburb located 10 minutes from Perth's city centre, and a neighbouring suburb of Como, where I work.

The first mural was painted in May this year by Perth artist Sioux Tempestt, her biggest mural to date, measuring 21 x 4,5mt (68,90x 14,80ft), and adorns a formerly blank wall of a car yard facing Isaia Corner Nature reserve.
It was commissioned by the Town of Victoria Park for Arts Season 2019.

The second one was painted at the Victoria Park Community Centre, also for Arts Season 2019 and was painted by Fremantle emerging artist Bruno Booth.

If you like murals or have a mural you'd like to post, this meme is for you; 
just follow the Linky steps below.  Once you start looking you find murals everywhere.  
Be sure to link back to this blog and visit your fellow posters.  Looking forward to your
mural finds posted this week.  

Monday mural meme is posted at 12,01am Monday, Western Australian time

Thanks, Sami. 

My August and September Wrap-Up

A bit behind on my August wrap up, but here it goes :)

AUGUST
We started the month of August by demolishing the shelves in our pantry, painting the small space and then buying narrow kitchen units from Ikea to gain more shelf space.
Two weeks later I met up with Grace at Ikea for a meal and an uplifting chat, and I took the opportunity to buy the drawer fronts for the drawers where I now keep the tins. The top drawer needs a larger front, so I'll have to return to Ikea some time. I've bought small handles, but these are still awaiting to be screwed in.
Everything has a place now and I now have a small counter separating the top and bottom shelving where I could keep big appliances so they don't clutter the kitchen bench.

Next door to us, the small old house that was sold a couple of months ago was demolished, and the block was cleared. A short while later the cement foundation was laid and was left to dry for a week or so. 

Jose started fixing up the walkway next to our driveway. The heavy cement pavers had been laid too far apart, were also on a slant and there were some weird pointy stones separating the driveway from the walkway.

We got some bricks similar to our driveway bricks from our suburb "Buy nothing group", the stones were removed, a lot of sand had to be removed, and the bricks and the cement pavers were laid level with the driveway. This back-breaking job took about 3 weeks, but the walkway is now ready and safe to use.

My job will now be to paint the cement pavers in dark grey. Jose's next job is to put new tiles on the small front porch, as the brown original tiles are slippery when wet.

(The photo on the left shows the big truck that brought the excavator that demolished the house next door).

Met up with my ex-colleague Jan for a coffee and to pick more Fusion Mineral paint at The Upcycled Barn in Port Kennedy, about 50km south of where I live.
I've been busy getting through the furniture stash in my garage, and at the moment have a few projects on the go.

The heavy side table that I bought for $10 is being painted in Ash (dark grey) and the areas like the drawers and top were sanded down to bare wood and will probably get an Ash wash.
The free magazine stand was painted in Seaside with stenciled flowers on the sides.

The $20 small chest of drawers has been sanded, handles removed and is ready for the paint job.

The old roll-top desk that I bought ages ago at one of the Op-shops for $50 was badly damaged on the bottom and it wood a bit of internet digging to discover I could use Builder's bog, instead of wood filler to cover all the damaged areas.
I started working on it in August and eventually finished it about two weeks ago.

After covered up all the damage with the bog, came the sanding, cleaning and paint. Jose had wanted this desk for himself and I painted it in Midnight Blue and left the roll top in wood just giving it a lick of Hemp oil to revive the wood. It's probably a bit too dark, and I would have preferred to put some colour paper covering the back, but Jose doesn't like all those frills.

In mid August I Started a 6 week French course - I had enrolled in Level 2, but due to not enough enrollments the course was to be postponed to the end of September, or there were other options of classes in the city. 
I called the college to see if they had parking available if I took the course in the city and was told yes. But then the lady convinced me to enroll in Level 3 in Manning, (where I was originally enrolled, just a 15 min drive from my house), which was starting the following week.
It's been a bit tough, a lot of Grammar, weekly homework too... I have no problem with the exercises and some of it feels quite intuitive if I think in Portuguese instead of thinking in English, but we do a lot of grammar and not enough conversation which was what I wanted to refresh my high school French.

The French lessons are held at the George Burnett Leisure Centre and when I arrived for one of the lessons I noticed they had a small "library" where you can drop and take books and I noticed a book called "Equador" an historical romance by the Miguel Sousa Tavares, a Portuguese writer, journalist and lawyer, the son of the much esteemed Portuguese writer and poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen who died in 2004.

I flipped through the book expecting to find the book in English but it was in Portuguese. Anyway I brought the book home to read it as soon as I finish reading "Madly, Truly, Guilty" by Lianne Moriarty.


SEPTEMBER
The first of September was the start of Kings Park wildflower festival, but because it was a wet weekend we stayed home. On Sunday 8th, with a glorious 26C  day I convinced Jose to accompany me to Kings Park.

I went back to Kings Park on Friday 20th, at the invitation of my ex-colleagues Jan and Gill and we enjoyed a few hours walking around admiring the wildflowers and we even found a place in Kings Park that none of us had seen before - Naturescape, which I will show in a future post.

This Thursday 26th, I started Level 4 French for another 6 weeks and because the group dropped from 7 students to 4 we are having classes at the teacher's house, which is also in the suburb of Manning. 
The teacher said she would try and include about 15 min conversation in each class, so hopefully I'll improve conversation.

The reason for the French lessons which every year I think I should do, is because my daughter's parents in law and brother in law are coming over from Marseille to spend Christmas with us.
They probably speak as much English as I speak French, but I thought it would be nice to be able to communicate a bit better with them instead of relying on Karina or Thomas to do the translation.

Having started at the end of July, I still have one cushion to finish sewing for the patio furniture - I used piping around the turquoise cushions as I thought it would look more professional, but being my first time doing this it has taken a lot of time, and I eventually decided I would only do it on one side!

I have made 3 jars of lemon butter/curd with our lemons, made 3 jars of mulberry jam with mulberries collected from one of the "Buy Nothing group" participants, and finished the limoncello liqueur that had been marinating for about 1 month.

Jose planted a mulberry tree in our front garden, which was given to us by our green thumbed friend Tony. Not sure I will want all the mess they make ...
He also planted some veggies in our veggie boxes and we put up a net on the side as a sun screen so they don't get burned during this year's Summer.
And in our back garden the Spring flowers are blooming and the nasturtiums are taking over.



Next door construction has started. 
The exterior walls are up, windows and doors have been set and walls are now up to ceiling height. 
Jose and I walked around inside the other day and it's a massive with 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a study and open plan lounge/dining/kitchen and a double garage.










On Friday night, the 27th, we were invited to an outdoor picnic on the  South Perth foreshore right by the Swan river.
The other couple took pizza and we ordered "Nando's" grilled chicken. We got there close to 7pm and the temperature had dropped a bit (17C / 63F), so it was quite chilly to be out by the river, but we still had a great night. 
After dinner we drove to their nearby apartment for coffee.

Monday is a public holiday - Queen's birthday, and along with a couple other people that work at the Clinic, we've been invited to go to Rottnest island on Sunday on the boat of one of the Doctors. I hope to have a chance to see some quokkas.
You'll have to wait for the next post 😉😉to see what they look like.
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

Signs - Climate change

Organized by 16 year old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, the "Global Strike 4 Climate Change" took place on Friday 20th, with millions of people around the world taking to the streets to protest for stronger climate change action by their Governments.

In Australia more than 200 thousand people made their voices heard across 110 towns and cities, demanding a target of net zero carbon emissions and a transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030.

I thought this sign I spotted on the bumper of a car in Sydney sometime last year was just the right sign for today - "The climate is right for a change".

You can also read an article on Tom's blog -  "Time for John Pavlovitz" about Great and her climate action movement.

I certainly do my bit for recycling, I avoid plastics, recycle paper, metals, glass, give what I no longer need to my "Buy Nothing group" or if no one wants to then donate to one of the Charity stores, and I'm the only one who has undertaken to take the printer cartridges used at work to be recycled at Office Works, all my colleagues would just throw them in the bin!

I also bring the coffee pods that we use at work, open them, use the coffee in the garden and put the tin bit in the recycling, but I don't think I would participate in a protest, just not my thing, I worry too much about protests getting violent...  

And just like Iris mentions on her comments on Tom's blog (Time for John Pavlovitz), I too don't agree on kids not attending school on Friday - for Fridays for Future, also started by Greta Thunberg, for school children to join the regular climate change protests. Why not do them on Saturday or Sunday?

When I lived in Germany 30 years ago, it was already a very progressive country when it came to recycling with various bins for paper, tin or glass. Nowadays in Australia there is still a lack of recycling plants and due to that a lot of recycling material goes to landfill since China and other under-developed countries are no longer wanting to accept our rubbish.

I do think the Governments need to be reminded we are not happy with this, maybe protests are the way to do it, who knows?

Would you join climate change protests? 

Or do you think there are better ways to go about it, maybe voting for a party who is more geared towards doing something for the environment would be the way?

For other signs please go over to Tom's blog.

Monday Mural - Pirate Life

I heard about this mural from Dr JS,  a doctor at the clinic where I work, as it was painted by her daughter's fiancé - the very talented Perth artist Jerome Davenport - aka Ketones6000,  in May this year at the Como Crafty Cellars bottlemart for Pirate Life Brewing a craft beer company from Adelaide, South Australia.

It's just 2 blocks from where I work, but because I never go that way I had no idea it was there.

If you like murals or have a mural you'd like to post, this meme is for you; 
just follow the Linky steps below.  Once you start looking you find murals everywhere.  
Be sure to link back to this blog and visit your fellow posters.  Looking forward to your 
mural finds posted this week.  

Monday mural meme is posted at 12,01am Monday, Western Australian time

Thanks, Sami.