North to New Norcia

Ok, enough bribery..... I need something to do after all.

After a couple of slower weekends, we ramped up again this past weekend and were quite busy. Friday evening Mike got together with school mates to watch the footie playoffs again. Now both Freo Dockers (Mike's team) and the West Coast Eagles (last year grand champions) are gone. Looks like it won't stay in the west this year.

I helped raise funds for the school chaplaincy again by heading to a Bingo night with Phillipa, Richard and some others from the school. Wow, you actually have to concentrate - I have a new found respect for all those Bingo fanatics! Our table - including me - did quite well in the winnings. It was a fun evening and another Aussie experience since the bingo here is quite a different variation from ours.

Saturday we rose semi-early and headed north to check out wildflowers and New Norcia. The countryside in this area is beautiful with rolling hills and meandering rivers. We started in New Norcia just after noon. New Norcia (click to check it out) is the only monastic town in Australia. The entire town and the surrounds is owned by the monks. They are of the Benedictine order.

When we first arrived, we popped into the museum barn where the tools and farming implements were exhibited. This magpie followed me in and proceeded to tour the building along side us. He found many bugs and crumbs on his journey, so was rewarded for his bravery at being in such a confined space with us.

After a nice lunch at the hotel (fruit flies in the vinegar aside), we took the guided tour of the town which is the only way to gain access to the buildings. The first missionaries arrived from Spain in 1846. They started with 30 acres of land and at their peak had 200,000 acres and control of close to a million acres. Today they own 20,000 acres and despite the Catholic church's pressure to turn it over to the church, it is in fact owned by the 20 or so full fledged monks of the monastery.

The first missionaries here fully integrated with the aboriginals. The diaries of Bishop Salvado are extensive and he recorded them in many languages. Today they are being translated and are likely the most comprehensive notes on aboriginal life.

For the first 50 years of the monastery, Salvado concentrated on creating an agricultural village. After his death the next 50 years saw it become a more European type monastery. Craftsmen were brought over to produce the paintings, carvings and buildings in the European tradition. As you can see from the photos, they spared no cost in hiring skilled artists and craftsmen. During its history, the monastery also included a boarding schools for boys and girls - aboriginal and white. Today it still has an education centre where schools can come for a few days, but the boarding schools are closed.

Recently many of the paintings were stolen. They were quickly recovered, but not after substantial damage. One painting was totally destroyed. The others have been restored and are again on display in the buildings and art gallery. Today the monastery is still renowned for its bread - and we were lucky to manage to buy a loaf even late in the afternoon.

Then we were off to Toodyay. Toodyay turned out to be a great little town with lots of character - and we found a wonderful dinner spot. We had booked a room in town, but our destination was to check out a bi-annual tradition. One of Mike's school friends invited us to their "Mother of all bonfires..... BONFIRE by Blackwell". Her parents live out in the country near Toodyay, and her parents host this unique event.

This is the wet time of year, so having gathered all the debris from his property for the past couple of years, it is time to burn it off. We arrived in time to see the unlit mountain of wood which was several metres high. To give you a sense of scale, the large top log in the photo on the left is about 20 feet high.

So a crowd of 40 or so sat around and drank beer, ate and watched the fire burn. Again another Aussie experience thanks to friends at Pinjarra HS. Then back to our beds in Toodyay to head out flower hunting on Sunday.

He's Loving His Footie!!!

First off, Happy belated Canada Day! We celebrated down under with an Aussie hosted BBQ for the exchange teachers and families on Sunday. Unfortunately, Mike has gone off to 'Country Week' (described below) and in the rush he failed to transfer the photos for the blog over to me. So stay tuned for future postings of the event.

I sit here posting this blog in a severe thunderstorm. We have had record amounts of rain over the past week or so. In addition, the tides are at their extremes around now - the sun and moon are all set up for the maximum tides (I'm learning lots of stuff down here!!!) So the volume of rain, high winds and high tides are making for some wet roads, downed trees, power outages and rivers breaking their banks. But the locals are pleased to have the rain to fill the reservoirs. And as we mentioned previously, almost every rain is accompanied by a rainbow since the clouds blow over so quickly. Another one showed up on Friday - this is the view from out our front door.

As mentioned, Mike is off to Perth for the week with the girls basketball team (and all the other school teams) for Country Week. This is a week where all the 'country' schools come together in Perth to compete. Since they are so physically dispersed, setting up games with other schools is difficult. This week allows them all to get together for some competition which would otherwise not be possible. Teams come from the country schools all over Western Australia (which is more than twice the square kilometres than Ontario). Again, stay posted for photos on his return.

As for Saturday this past weekend, Mike AGAIN was off to the footie (with Patrick this time). He is becoming an avid fan and very much a good luck charm for the Dockers. They won again - this time by a huge score (their 2nd largest spread ever) over Carlton. Mike has used his birthday monies to purchase not only the much needed 'sunnies', but also a Fremantle Dockers footie shirt as seen here!

Again for those who like the action shots, here is a selection of shots from the game. I'm starting to think that Aussie Football should be sponsored by an underarm deodorant company - check out the number of armpits in the shots :-) !

Walk-a-Bout Weekend

Some Aussie Trivia for you: Western Australia celebrated June 4 as Foundation day - that was our long weekend just past. Meanwhile, the rest of Australia celebrated the Queens Birthday on June 11 - while WA will celebrate that on October 1. Even Labour Day is recognized on different dates around the country. I keep having to lookup what the public holidays are of course as they differ from ours - this is one of the links I use.

So for us in WA, it was a normal weekend. Mike & I joined the Exchange group for a walk 'around the bridges' in Perth. It was a lovely 10km loop around the Swan River. I walked with a teacher who has been on 2 previous exchanges to Britain, and is going to New Brunswick in January. So we had lots to chat about and the walk went by very quickly.

The waterfront has been very nicely preserved and enhanced with bird wetlands and pathways. Michael finally managed to get some shots of the black swans which the area is well known for.

Once again, the weather was fantastic (or as they say on the weather reports 'Fine'). We are still waiting for the really cool weather to hit - the day time highs are normally into the 20's at this point even though the nights and mornings are cool.

We had Richard and Philipa for dinner on Saturday evening to finally sample Michaels well loved BBQ ribs. We found a wonderful butcher who custom cut some rather meaty ribs. The food and company were, just like the weather, 'fine' (which you should realize means exceptional).

Sunday once again saw Freemantle Dockers at home, and Lisa again very kindly passed her tickets to Michael. He seems to be their good luck charm as they won the match despite going down early. Perhaps that is why she is letting Mike attend - she is quite a fan and naturally wants them to win!

While Michael attended the footie with Richard, Kyle was off to the movies with a friend. Patrick and I checked out Shrek 3 also. And so passed another relaxing weekend.

After a couple of painful drives into Perth on Monday mornings to drop Patrick at the university, we now have the bus route to Perth sorted out. Michael can drop Pat at the Mandurah station on Monday morning and he catches the express (faster than driving) bus into Perth, and then one bus over to the university. So Patrick was back off to Perth on Monday morning to head to Gingin for the week. It is working out quite nicely seeing him on weekends, and he has something very interesting to do during the week.

Weekend at Footie and Hanging Around

We started this past weekend back up in Subiaco / Perth at the footie match between Fremantle and St. Kilda on Friday evening. This time we were with the exchange teacher group. That's a bunch of us at left here along the row we are seated in. One of the locals (Darelle) had arranged fantastic tickets for us in the second row - even closer than the 9th row tickets Mike had experienced. We had to be careful, especially during warm-ups of the stray footballs which kept coming our way.

We met there separately - Patrick was dropped off from Gingin, I took the bus up, and Mike came straight from school with the girl who has so kindly provided us with her season tickets when not using them. Kyle is not a big Freo fan and so decided to stay back and socialize/study - he has mid-terms coming up next week. Some of the best fun is watching the goal line judges. They take their job very seriously - even doing warm ups and stretches along the side line before the intense job of watching for balls coming through the posts and waving the appropriate flags as scores are made. This poor fellow actually blocked a goal by Freo in the second quarter, and then did not score it, but rather ruled it as a tipped ball, so only worth 1 point not 6 (the replay was not clear, but from our angle it just looked like he blocked it). He spent the rest of the game listening to the rather tispy fellow next to us yelling at him. Which was entertaining for all of us in the vicinity as the drunk had a very elaborate set of insults regarding the colour yellow (the line judge uniform). Luckily Fremantle won convincingly, so the controversial call was irrelevant.

Saturday we spent just lazing around and doing chores - Kyle studying, Mike school work, getting Pat's laundry done - while partly being entertained by the cat next door who has taken a liking to us. She/he will get quite a surprise when Trees comes back. Her dog has been living with her brother and I'm sure the cat will not be too thrilled. But in the meantime, we are becoming good friends with 'Mooch' as we have named her/him.

Sunday started with rain, and it pretty much kept up all day. We all wanted to see Pirates of the Caribbean part III, so headed to the local cinema to catch that. The show we were hoping for was sold out over an hour ahead of time, so we bought tickets for a later show and had a nice lunch, caught the next showing then had a tasty treat at the ice cream shop.

While waiting for our show to start, we wandered around the waterfront area. There was a trio of players outside the Arts Centre playing Brazilian music - and they just happened to be playing the only song Michael remembers his mother singing to him as a child. So he went up and joined in the song with them - they were quite surprised to hear a local singing a Brazilian childrens song!!! From a google search, we think it is 'Atirei o pau no gato'. (let us know if that is correct please Marucia)

All in all a good early winter day and a relaxing weekend.

Happy Mothers Day!!! (from the Footie Game)

What a superb Mothers Day present - our whole happy family rejoined here in WA. Despite concerns, Patrick managed to catch all 3 of his connecting flights to make it to Perth for Saturday morning (for those familiar with Pat's simultaneous genius and absent mindedness you will understand our concern). It felt awfully good to give him a big hug at the airport. And I've given him a few more since (I think he's had enough now though, so I better wean off of them). Even Kyle is happy to have Pat to socialize with.

Despite our family reunion here, we do miss our own Mothers and the ability to give them a big hug for Mother's Day. So across the miles, love to you both. And also to our friends and family who are Mums too - hope you have a great day with your families.

Unfortunately, our family pet was not here for Patricks arrival. Our spider, which met everyone (George and Marucia included) at the front door since our arrival here, disappeared a week or so ago. You may remember our spider (golden orb - one of the safe kind) from one of the early postings. We're hoping she went off to have her babies (or else a bird found her too big and juicy to resist - but we're assuming she's relocated :-) Here is a recent portrait of her just prior to her 'relocation'.

We started Mother's Day with a lovely family breakfast out. Michael was lucky enough to again receive footie tickets from one of the teachers. We will be joining the teacher exchange group as a whole family in a couple of weeks, so I was quite happy to let Pat join Mike for the day since he's recovering quite well from jetlag. I think that university practise of late hours has helped.

Freemantle played Hawthorne Hawks today at Subiaco in Perth. It was an exciting game with Freemantle going down early, battling back by the half, back and forth in the 3rd quarter. Mike took his 'good' camera this time and captured some great action shots. Even you don't know the rules, hopefully you can sense the excitement!


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And in the end, Freemantle won, so the hometown fans were very happy!