Weekend with Nature Down Under Style

Another great event kindly organized by the exchange group here - special thanks to Ted & Lindsay. We were able to experience a very intimate weekend with Australia.

Picked up Kyle and Mike from school on Friday and headed up to a camp near Gingin - 3 hour drive or so north. There was a group of about 13 of us all together - less this year than in the past, but still enough for a good time.

We stayed at Eshcol Springs which is run by a nice couple Barry and Alison (with help from the adoring grandchildren) - mostly used by school camp retreats and the like. Had a relaxed evening with the group having dinner, some wine & beer and some guitar playing (thanks to Lindsay and Wendy and Alison who teaches music lessons). Met Brian and Vicky - a couple from Freemantle who were on exchange to Vancouver last year. Nice to see folks returning the exchange experience from this end also - it's nice to compare notes on experiences and get tips and tricks.

The camp is in a large area of natural bushland adjoining the lands of the Gravity Centre. Lots of interesting sites around the property. Michael had a hayday taking artistic shots around the place, especially during the twilight and early morning hours with the ideal lighting conditions.
The family had raised a female kangaroo who now lives partly as family pet, but also runs wild. She returns regularly with her joey for food. Having been raised around humans she is quite comfortable letting you scratch and pat her. Her offspring so far have all been males, which is problematic since they get aggressive (and big). She currently has a one year old male (in photo) and another joey in her pouch, hopefully this one will be a female. The older joey has recently stopped entering her pouch and rarely suckles now - hence the growth of the new one.

We were in walking distance to the Gravity Discovery Centre which was our destination on Saturday.

The walk to the GDC followed a scale representation of our solar system. We started at Pluto (although not truly a planet any longer), and worked our way back to the sun, which landed us at the centre. The GDC is not only a visitor centre, but also a working research centre where they are researching gravity waves. A group of scientists and students live here and do studies (need to investigate if this could be a summer (or down under winter) job for Pat....right up his alley!!). This includes an observatory and a component of an International Gravitational Study - this being the only presence in the southern hemisphere, so key in the three dimensional input to the study. You can check out their research at http://www.gdc.asn.au/grav_research.php, or just check out the centre at http://www.gdc.asn.au/index.php. The inscription on the photo at right explains this equation of Einstein - "Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move".

Unfortunately, during the tour they announced that the evening visit to the observatory was cancelled due to the expected cloud cover. The clouds also changed our afternoon plans from beach visit to wine touring - not a bad fall back!!

We went into Gingin for very pleasant lunch at Eliza's then headed out to Riseborough winery late in the afternoon. Picked up a couple more bottles of wine (managing to share a discount with the group purchase), and then headed back for more kangaroo visits and a quiet evening of dinner and cards. Learned a great new game called spoons and retaught Wendy hearts, and we swamped Lindsay (a non-card player) with more card rules than anyone should have to suffer - sorry Lindsay :-).

Finally on Sunday morning we headed for home, but with some fun stops on the way - checked out a local apiary - West Coast Honey and sampled an impressive variety of honey. Picked up a healthy bucket of Jarrah honey along with a most tasty bucket of Whitegum honey(Kyle of course insisted on the yummy one!).

And one last stop before we headed home for the guys to do their homework and lesson plans (school still is the main reason for being here after all !). Visited the Maze - with several varieties of mazes and challenges - lots of fun getting lost. Kyle was able to set record times running around the wooden maze visiting each of the 'poles'. Also had a round of 'disk golf' (aka frisbee golf) which was quite entertaining for anyone watching I'm sure! Not sure why we don't have more courses like this in Canada - quite fun.

Given the missed Cosmos Centre visit, missed olive grove and beach at Dunsborough and lots of other local sites, another place we'll hopefully return to before we leave....the list gets longer as our time moves on!!