Thunderstorms

There was a massive storm at 5.00 pm on Tuesday. I’ve never seen so much rain fall in such a short time since my days in Singapore. At that time, I was attending a concert when someone alerted me to a mini disaster. You’d better come: the library is flooded, they said. The roof had been unable to deal with the weight of water and the rain was pouring in. That was then. This is now. We watched the rain sweep across from the city in a thick grey curtain and the view from the balcony disappeared under the downpour. No damage done here, as far as we could see - but we couldn’t see much!

Next morning, I went for a walk by the river before breakfast and observed mop up operations. Trees were down everywhere:

Today, the wild weather continues. There were noisy thunderstorms in the early hours: no more sleep to be had. I fancied to see how rough the seas were, so took myself off to Cottesloe Beach and walked northwards to Swanbourne. The wind was blowing in my face and the beach was deserted. Big drops of rain fell but intermittently. The Shorehouse Cafe was packed inside but empty on the terrace:

The new owner of Indiana Teahouse has put some new flags on display:

Photo from BOM site

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JL enjoyed a big birthday at the weekend. His son G took him for a helicopter ride on Saturday: they flew from Crown, over the city and on to the coast at Fremantle. His kids also took him out for an elegant lunch at Matilda Bay Restaurant.

Our friends from Mandurah arrived on Sunday to stay the night. They had tickets for Queen at the Stadium and were happy to be able to leave their car in our basement and walk to the event. They brought JL a birthday cake:

Blowing out the candle.

I also received a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

Kimberley

We went down memory lane last night at a meeting of the W A Nats Club, when the guest speaker was Kevin Coate. Before retiring, he used to organise trips to the Kimberley. In fact he pioneered these, when it was a largely unknown region to tourists, and set up a company, Coates Tours. Later he sold this company and remained a respected and invited guide on many expeditions up north. JL and I went on two of these camping trips when we were a lot younger and fitter.

I was a newcomer to the Kimberley at the time, but JL had worked there as a young engineer, looking for potential dam sites which could provide a water supply for the region. He went out with a survey assistant and an aboriginal tracker. They found the ideal site for the magnificent Ord River dam which created Lake Argyle.

Back to Kevin Coate: on most trips, he was accompanied by his wife Yvonne, whom he had met at primary school. His desk was right behind hers, and he once dipped her plaits into the inkwell - so he said! He was full of such stories and made a very entertaining presentation last night.  He included a selection from his huge slide collection of flora and fauna and landscapes of the Kimberley.

My photos are of the projection screen which is why they are an odd shape.

King George Falls, with the little boat below them.

Frill necked lizard. Another lizard, with his frill retracted, climbs the tree to the left.

Fruit bats hanging from a tree.

We had a great time in the Kimberley. I remember especially Montgomery Reef, where twice a day at low tide water pours off the reef at great speed. We also camped for a week at Kingston Rest, a cattle station near to Kununurra, which was owned at the time by Kevin’s daughter and her husband. We put up our tents near a billabong covered in purple water lilies and were woken at first light by the loudest dawn chorus of birds imaginable. I just wish I had kept a blog in those days.

This book was on sale. It was a perfect birthday present for JL:

Hot?

We’ve just had the hottest January on record. OK, I came to Australia for better weather so I shouldn’t complain - but I do! In winter, in England, we used to hibernate but here it’s the opposite: we just have to stay inside in our air conditioning till it cools down. I’ve been getting on with my crafts: a wrap for TV viewing on cold nights, consisting of knitted squares crocheted together.

The squares are plain knitting with 40 sts cast on. Most are in very dark navy blue. The other colours are  4 ply crepe wool, left over from a tapestry cushion that I made in my 20’s in Florentine stitch, which fascinated me at the time:

I’m now prepared for any cold nights, if and when they arrive!

Travellers’ tales

Over the holidays, I’ve been re-reading one of my favourite travel books:

This was recommended to me years ago on my first Camino. The author spends 18 months walking across Europe from Finisterre to Istanbul, selecting the highest possible route along mountain ranges. In Santiago de Compostela, he obtains a hand-made umbrella. He constantly meets pilgrims who tell him he’s going the wrong way, before he heads off into the Picos de Europa for a more solitary hike. In the days before downloading routes on mobile phones (indeed before mobile phones existed at all), he is weighed down by stacks of paper maps. He eats a lot of tinned sardines. Some days he eats nothing.

I’m impressed by his command of the English language. I hope it will rub off on my travel blogs. A few examples follow:

“A shambolic guesthouse with cardboard walls and paralysed plumbing”.  

We've all been in places like that.

"I was not a happy hiker.  The dogs, sensing a quarry who had dropped both his guard and his trousers were closing in for the kill when they ran into an outward-rushing thermo-gaseous ring-cloud. Their gagging whining retreat was as gratifying as the first fateful lick I’d applied to the chocolate dairy ice that had just fired its warning shot in an onslaught whose duration surpassed by far the previous short-term gut rots  I’d inflicted upon myself by indiscriminate troughing".

Some of us have suffered bouts of gastro en route, but nothing like this! Though, on second thoughts, I was once walking with an American lad in Northern Thailand, who described how the local dogs were so hungry, they licked up his vomit as soon as it hit the ground. I'm not making this up! Too much information?

He happens upon the birthplace of Andy Warhol's parents before they migrated to America from small town Mikova, Slovakia.

Nicholas Crane was a student  at Wymondham College in Norfolk, where I worked for several years. How did he learn to write so well?  Later in life, he made a few TV programmes about walking around Britain. We’ve heard nothing from him recently but I can’t believe he’s hung up his hiking boots.

Note: this post was inspired by Joanne Cup on the Bus (she of the beautiful hand woven tea towels) who has just reviewed a whole stack of travel books.