de Labillardiere and his peregrinations

In 1792 French botanist de Labillardiere sailed to Western Australia on the ship Recherche. An unusual exhibition about his journey has opened at Wanneroo Library: Peregrinations of a Citizen Botanist.

Local textile artist Susie Vickery became fascinated with Labillardiere and tells his story in the form of a one-third size puppet and his wardrobe. All his clothes are decorated with beautiful and intricate embroidery, with designs based on the flora he encountered.

The buttons are objects gathered in the West Australian bush. The clothes are all coloured with natural dyes.


There are some moving images on my Instagram account and these give a better idea of the exhibition. This pianola with its perforated paper rolls depicts the ship moving across the ocean. It is operated by foot pedals: a truly interactive experience:

Here the botanist lies in his hammock sick with scurvy and clutching salt bush as a cure:

There is a cabinet of curiosities, with drawers full of surprises:







He has plenty of hats!

Visit Suzie Vickery's website for more information. It's fascinating:

click here

Much more about de Labillardiere in this scholarly article:

click here

Spanish Evening

What a good idea, I thought: a long table dinner of tapas and paella right here in Perth at a cooking school. One of Val’s friends was organising it. There would also be some Spanish entertainment.

I got dressed up and even took a selfie:

It was a chilly evening and I couldn’t risk being cold, as I had no idea about the venue. Google Maps took me there. This was it:

This was the menu:

This is Val, waiting for some food:

(I was trying to photograph goings on in the kitchen).

Shooters of warm leek and potato soup arrived. It was clearly not a night for gazpacho!



We were served LOTS:

After the paella, I felt as if I couldn’t eat another morsel of anything. Fortunately there was a break for entertainment in the form of a solitary flamenco dancer. At first, she took the male part and then got changed to do the female part:

The chef was busy in the kitchen making the churros:

I did manage to eat two or three:



Go to the website for more pics and delicious recipes:

Cooking School

The Way Home

As usual, I had a stopover in Geraldton. I had tried to book a room at the Ocean Centre Hotel, but was told it was fully booked. Instead I settled for a private room at the Geraldton Backpackers, just next door. This place was interesting: built in 1910 as a guest house. In those days there was no such thing as an en suite. Everyone went along the corridor to the shared bathroom and this is still the case today. I spoke to the manager as I left, because I had seen no actual backpackers. She said there had been none since COVID.

My room had a sea view and I spent a lot of time watching large container ships being turned round by tugs:

I enjoyed the warmth from the setting sun in the late afternoon. It was still cold and breezy outside.

View from my room next morning.

View from the communal bathroom.
My Prius is parked near the fence.

When I arrived back in Perth I was glad not to have anything more to do, since C cooked dinner. It was Shakshuka:

Skywalk

Friday was the day for a drive to the National Park to see the incredible gorges and the Skywalk. On the way we were distracted by all the wildflowers. We had to restrain ourselves from stopping every five minutes or we would never reach our destination:

The views were spectacular:

Time for a group photo!


There were models of all the local animals beside the paths:

The last one was a scary extinct creature:

These pics are from Nature’s Window:

A solitary Fringe Lily, rare in these parts but prolific in the Perth Hills.

We were quite tired when we got home. Fortunately we had booked a table at Finlay’s Restaurant for dinner. It has a reputation for the best seafood in town. The two Sue’s ordered a whole crayfish each, but I stuck to an old favourite of locally caught fish and chips:

The venue was outdoors. I am always cold, so I helped myself to one of the shawls provided by the management. I was so attached to it that I completely forgot I was wearing it, so it’s now a souvenir of a memorable evening at Finlay’s!

Kalbarri 2

Last year Kalbarri was hit by a cyclone and the widespread damage is still evident. Roofs were blown off and many holiday units rendered uninhabitable. A lot of repair work is going on all around town, but there is a shortage of both men and matériels.

The days have been quite cold and windy, but there are many walk trails to keep us busy:

I like to walk south, where I saw this unusual flower;

I met a Chinese couple from Sydney who were complaining about the high cost of accommodation in town because it was so scarce. We are very fortunate in our Stayz house. It has everything we need and was booked 6 weeks ago.

There is an interesting shop which sells baskets and doormats, handmade from rope salvaged from the sea:

I couldn’t decide what colour!

Kalbarri

Last Friday I was sitting in our local coffee shop at Burswood feeling very sad. I had woken up to the news that the Queen had died. She was 96, the same as JL. The nearby shopping centre was displaying lovely portraits of the Queen and the West Australian was full of stories about her life and achievements. Anyway, as I was sitting there, my neighbour Sue came up to me and said: we’re going to Kalbarri next week to a Stayz house and there is a spare bedroom. Do you want to come? I was very touched by this invitation, so here I am.

I left home on Monday and drove up to my usual stop at Geraldton. The day was sunny but black clouds rolled in at about 5.00 pm. The weather forecast was for dangerous winds. All night long, winds and heavy rain lashed my window and the outside door rattled as if someone was trying to break in. Eventually I wedged a heavy chair against it. Next morning there was a very angry sea and on the radio was news of a yacht running aground on the reef just off Kalbarri.

It was about a 2-hour drive from Geraldton. The roads were fairly quiet and the “dangerous winds” were still in evidence. I wouldn’t want to be towing a caravan in those conditions. I had to pull off the road twice when a short sharp downpour stopped all visibility. When I got to Kalbarri at midday, Sue and Gavin were walking on the foreshore with their friend, another Sue, plus their two little dogs. All eyes were out to sea at the yacht stuck on the reef:

There have been several shipwrecks off the West Australian coast, 3 of them belonging to the Dutch East India company. At the top of the hill near our house is a memorial to the Zuytdorp and from there I had a better view:

We enjoyed a lovely dinner of lasagne and salad;