W A Day

It’s all going on right in front of me as preparations hot up:

I can see many, many toilets for a start. They are the red cubicles all lined up on the bottom left of the first picture. Do they really need that many? Nobody will find themselves caught short or need to find a bush on W A Day!

The other thing that strikes me is how hot the weather forecast is for the weekend. Last year, the event was scheduled for the middle of winter, when it had to be postponed because the ground was waterlogged.

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Saturday.

In addition to all this, there is a big event at the stadium: the first Ashes Test between England and Australia. I’m not a cricket fan, but I feel sorry for the English team having to play in the hot sun. Apparently it was an exciting day yesterday, according to this report in the British newspaper The Observer 

Awaking from an anxious sleep at 5am this morning, I turned on the television. TNT were showing the clattering fall of the first seven England wickets. Crawley, 0, Root, 0, and so on. I groaned and looked at the BBC cricket website. Go back to bed, the commentator instructed me. So I did just that. When I awoke an hour or so later, Australia were batting. England had been bowled out for a paltry 172. All our hopes and expectations of this hotly anticipated Ashes series seemed to have been overblown.

Then began one of the most thrilling passages of cricket of recent times. Four fast bowlers unleashed an unrelenting barrage of hostility, the likes of which I had never seen from England. The Aussies, jubilant only hours earlier, staggered, losing four wickets. In came England’s talisman, Ben Stokes, and five more came and went, leaving Australia on 123-9. This already marvellous Test match could be over by Sunday, possibly even by the close tomorrow.

Fish on Friday

On Fridays, I always go over to Como to cook dinner for C and E.  This saves them thinking about food after a busy working week.  Straight away, E asks what's for dinner. I usually tell her, but this week I said it's a surprise and it's something we've never had before. She took Rocky out for a walk, whilst I got busy in the kitchen. This was the menu:

Baked Fish Heads

Spaghetti Marinara

Fruit Salad.

The Fish Heads were not well received!  E felt intimidated by the fish eye staring up at her from the plate, even though I had tried to cover it up with onion slices! I told her that the "meat" inside the head was supposed to be very tasty and extremely nutritious (albeit in short supply and not easy to dig out).

Fish eye top right;
Fish teeth bottom left.

Because they are not very popular in the shop, Kailis sells them much more cheaply than other cuts of fish. These were 2 big pink snapper heads. 

C ate hers politely, but E couldn't deal with hers at all. In the end, I took her portion home to enjoy next day with some rice:

This barramundi is more like the normal dinner I produce on a Friday:

Skin-on barramundi with black rice and salad.

Well, it was an interesting experiment.

Have a Go Day

Today was the day for seniors to “have a go” at all kinds of activities in Burswood Park. I had arranged to meet Val at the MG enthusiasts stand, where she goes every year in her little blue car. I set off early as I had a 15 minute walk along the riverbank and it was already hot. The temperature was 9 degrees above average for this time of year.

When I arrived, there was a row of MGs but no blue one. I was told that Val’s car had broken down on the way and she was on the side of the road, waiting for a tow truck. I later discovered that she had to wait 3 hours to be rescued!

What to do? I went for a ride in a trishaw with Cycling Without Age. This seemed like the coolest thing to do on a hot day - and it was very pleasant with a slight breeze coming off the river. My driver (pedaller?) wanted to point out all the landmarks, till I told him that I lived nearby and did this walk almost every day. But I really enjoyed this new experience of speeding along. Perhaps I should have tried the canoeing, but I wasn't dressed for it.

The lady organising the rides wore a yellow spotted dress which had a clever design, rather like those tie-back aprons which can be adjusted for different sizes by pulling on the straps. I asked her about the pattern, but she said it was an amalgamation of several.

MG on display

Trishaw rides

Yellow dress

How to make it?

Bayswater Bushwalk

With Haydee leading the walk, I knew that the pace would be more to my liking, with plenty of time to stop and admire the flora and birdlife. The Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary is an artificial wetland, created to prevent contaminants from entering the Swan River. 

Water quality monitoring undertaken by the City of Bayswater shows notable improvement outcomes for the Brook and adjacent Swan River and the project is expected to prevent 1.35 tonnes of nitrogen, 200kg of phosphorous, and around 40 tonnes of sediment and other rubbish from entering the Swan River each year. This is approximately half of the catchment’s target nutrient reduction. 

I drove across the Garratt Road Bridge to the meeting place near the Oarhouse Cafe. As usual on a Sunday morning, it was virtually impossible to find a parking spot. When our small group was all assembled, we set off into the wetlands.

Garratt Road Bridge

Start of the walk into the wetlands

A brood of teenage ducklings relaxing,
safe from humans

A lone spoonbill

A tangle of wild sweet peas

Tiny white fungi

Orange fungus

An elusive Blue billed duck
(Photo contributed by Denice)

After the slow walk, we sat down for a rest near the cafe and had a long chat with a man who had a strange hair style. MM knew him from coaching at the rowing club and said he was an expert at giving instructions to beginners on the river. I was interested in what he had to say about preparing dog treats in a de-humidifier:

Clever t-shirt!

Lunch

Normally I'm not a lady who lunches, but Val had returned from a trip to Melbourne and beyond. She wanted to tell me all about it. She booked a table for two at Zamia Cafe in Kings Park for 12.00 pm.  This place has grown in popularity since we last visited and we arrived at the same time as queues of other people - mostly groups of women with a small sprinkling of men. The smart people book for 1.00 pm we realised. (You can't just walk in: you would never get a table).

The menu is long and varied, and the glass cabinets display everything as you wait to place your order. The desserts are unbelievably tempting. It's hard to find anything SMALL and inexpensive. They know they are onto a good thing, so why not?

Zamia Cafe

A very busy cafe

View from one of the windows

One of the delights of Zamia is their own little garden of native West Australian wildflowers:

The paper daisies fill in all the gaps

Beautiful verticordia

I've gathered seeds from these bird flowers
in the past and tried to grow them at home!

Riverton Bridge Bushwalk

The day didn't start well because of some confusion as to the exact meeting place. Everywhere was buzzing with people, as the Lo Quay Cafe is a really popular place for Sunday breakfast, as well as being the favourite spot for launching your kayak. I walked around till I found the others and we set off. Then - horror of horrors - I couldnt find my phone! I had to re-trace my steps till I realised I must have left it in the public toilets where I had parked my car. Amazingly it was still there. I'm getting forgetful in my old age. I knew I would never catch up with the group, so I settled for a shorter walk on my own as far as Wadjup Point.

Grasses planted by volunteers,
to prevent fertilisers draining into the river

Group relaxing after the walk

Sign of the times:
a wireless charging point.

Wellington Dam

We woke to a VERY cold morning: maybe less than 4 degrees. I was up at 6.30 am in order to pack up and be away in time for a visit to Wellington Dam, where we were to meet up with our local guide, Alison. The great attraction are the murals all along the dam wall: 

Works going on to construct a new bridge.
Previously, cars could drive across the top of the dam wall.
but it became too dangerous.

Group photo at the lookout

I realised that JL must have been involved in the design and construction of this dam, so when I got home from the trip I searched in his memoirs. There was not a lot, as he had written much more about his first big project at Mundaring.  He wrote:

  During the years 1948 to 1951, I worked on many small town water supplies, bringing water to some 30 towns, which had never had a water supply before. In some cases the level of hygiene would not have been acceptable now and there was no environmental process to be followed.... Although we had a few scares with algae blooms and goldfish dying, we had no epidemics and people just needed to be careful. 

Wellington, Harris Dams 

In those years, a lot of time was taken on the raising of Wellington Dam. The hydraulics had to be established as well as design of the wall, which closely followed the example at Mundaring. As well as water supply to the south-eastern wheat belt, Wellington was to be used to extend the irrigation system to the coast. There was a known problem with increasing salinity on the catchment so we tried to limit that by restricting clearing on the catchment. This was politically very unpopular but some success was achieved. The problem of supply of good water to the south-eastern wheatbelt was solved by putting a smaller dam on the Harris River, a virgin tributary from the highest rainfall part of the catchment north of the town of Collie.

When he talked of hygiene, I believe he was referring to the water supply.  Nowadays, our water has chlorine and other chemicals added. In fact, my water at Burswood contains so much chlorine that I always set a jug of water by the sink to allow the chlorine to disperse before I use it for drinking and cooking.

This plaque remembers the artist responsible for the murals on the dam wall:

Near to the dam lookout, in what appears to be just waste ground, there were lots of wildflowers coming into bloom:

More of the Wedding Bush creeper

There were also many interpretive boards, full of information - too much to take in! This snippet relates to the early days of the timber industry in these parts:

The group agenda at this point was onto the 3.5 km Sikh Trail, but I was feeling worn out after yesterday's walk. I decided to sit in the sun for a while before driving home at a leisurely pace.

Jack contributed this panorama shot