Perth Caravan and Camping Show

The show was on this week. I am not planning to do either, but I knew there would be lots of  stalls with interesting ancillary goods. I spent some time looking at Weber BBQs and sampled their breakfast frittata, but I had come on the train so it would be tricky to get it home. The Showgrounds were enormous, with so many caravans on display and - the latest craze - rooftop tents that are mounted on top of your vehicle. I started off with the courtesy golf buggy ride, going all the way round to check out what was what.

Rooftop tent.

Ecopots.

Pull-out kitchen for a 4WD.

I bought a checked bush shirt for the cooler weather, but the temperature in the Showgrounds reached 31 degrees: too hot to walk around, so I looked at the programme for a sitting down opportunity. This was a cooking demonstration all about Dutch Ovens. Just about everyone who has camped in the Australian bush has one of these heavy cast iron pots that sit in the hot coals of the camp fire. Then they languish in the shed for the rest of the year getting rusty. This is mine:

Leaves stencilled in the rust.

Well, I learned a lot from the presentation: how to clean off the rust and how to “cure” it with oil in a hot oven and importantly how to keep using in in a domestic kitchen year round. 

The presenter, Jo Clews, was full of info.

How to clean off the rust

Soak it in warm water in the sink and give it a good scrub with steel wool. It will probably need more than one treatment and a lot of elbow grease. Wipe it and put it in the oven at 200 degrees.

How to "cure" the cast iron

Rub some oil all over it, especially on the inside. Put it back in the oven for 2 hours. This stabilises the protective barrier permanently. Do this more than once; it will not go rusty again.

Cooking tips

You can make a juicy roast chicken in a normal domestic oven. It's not necessary to put a trivet inside the pot, but one idea is to sit the chicken on sliced potatoes, which will soak up the juices and prevent the bottom from burning.

Everyone has suffered from burnt bottom damper when camping. The trick is to remove hot coals from the main camp fire and make a private cooking spot, with most of the hot coals on top of the lid, with not so much heat underneath. A small rack can be put on top of the coals, in order to preserve an airflow and keep them alight for longer. A BBQ temperature gauge can be used to know the inside temperature, which should be about 180 degrees for 35 minutes. 

Damper recipe

Traditionally, it was simply plain flour, baking powder and water, plus a little oil or butter. When I was in the bush, we tried adding beer or lemonade to get it to rise. Jo suggested putting in a tin of pumpkin soup as the liquid, plus some feta and chorizo. She also made scrolls with a little basil pesto and set them on baking paper, 5 to the pot.

Melangata Station

Jo lives on a historic station north-east of Geraldton. She does station stays during the winter season from April to October: sounds good!

Canning River bushwalk

At 7.30 am, the Bushwalkers assembled at the car park of the Lo Quay River Cafe for a walk in the Canning Regional Park: a popular spot on a Sunday morning. Paddy was in charge, limping a bit with his gammy foot. This was a new walk on our repertoire and I was wearing summer walking sandals: a poor choice because of all the sand and twigs underfoot. It was an interesting walk, some of it right beside the Canning River with its wetlands full of bullrushes.

At the halfway point, we came across the Sikh Cemetery. This was the spot where Sikh funeral pyres used to be held, in defiance of the law forbidding cremations in the first decades of the Swan River Colony. The most commonly used wood for the pyres was sheok, which burned the hottest of all the local trees. You need a lot of wood to burn a corpse.

There are numerous information boards in the vicinity:

Returning to base, we enjoyed our late breakfast under a tree. We sat there for a long time, discussing everything from the latest scams and how to avoid them, to holidays in Russia and China. Lutz liked to keep phone scammers talking, in order to waste their time and annoy them, he said. We also mentioned the recent TV programme about the Cambodian compounds, where kidnapped Chinese were being forced to set up sophisticated scams, following a set script which could be instantly translated into the language of any rich country. Beware, everybody!

Having a ball

It’s the season for school balls. They hold them early in the year so that everyone can concentrate on studying for important exams from now on. First, you need to think about the dress and get it booked at the hire company. A couple of days beforehand, it’s time to get your nails done:

Next, the hair-do.  E had no appointment for the big day, but by chance I had one at 9.00 am so I kindly gave it to her. She perused various internet sites for inspiration and came up with this one:

We didn’t realise how much work went into creating these hair-up styles: much longer than my usual cut and blow dry. Lisa worked incredibly hard to produce a copy of this style (and her next lady had to wait an extra 15 minutes at least). A big thanks to Lee Preston Hairdressers for arranging this!

Ready to go:

Transport was by Rolls Royce! 

One of her friends’ father has a vintage Rolls, which has an exemption from fitting seat belts: who knew?

Some clever photography here:

Return to the wreck

The Nats Club scheduled another visit to the Omeo Wreck for Sunday morning at 8.00 am. On a long weekend, I knew it was going to be busy. Jolanda and Alan were in charge. They had brought along plenty of gear as they do a lot of diving and underwater photography. They offered to lend me some, but I have enough to do just looking after myself, let alone a camera. My wetsuit and snorkel were enough.

The water felt quite warm after our long hot summer, but there was a sneaky little breeze from the south which stirred up the water. It was low tide, so you could almost wade out to the wreck, but there were too many other people getting in the way. I watched a shoal of little fish feasting on the carcass of a bigger one lying dead on the bottom: that’s Nature.

Underwater shot of me snorkelling

... and another!

Three hounds and a budgie

On Sunday we had a greyhound meetup. C and her friend Erica both brought their dogs, Rocky and Minnie, to join Val and Kardygirl at Mullaloo Beach so that we could do a coastal footpath walk. At one point we were going past a row of houses and a man yelled out “Get that f***ing dog off my garden!” How unbelievably rude! 

Afterwards we went out for breakfast. The three greyhounds attracted a fair amount of attention and took up a lot of space on the terrace at the cafe. The waitress even brought out dog biscuits for them. Val and I enjoyed some buttermilk pancakes, while C had granola with strawberries. Erica enjoyed a chocolate croissant.

This was the view from the car park: it was a beautiful morning.

Now for the budgie story:

Val used to play golf with her friend Barbara. One day they found an injured budgie and Val decided to take it home with her, since she kept lots of birds in an aviary in her garden. On the way she was pulled over by the police for speeding. She explained about the “emergency” and the policeman asked to see the budgie. Val said “It’s in my cap and inside my handbag, but I can’t open it or it will fly away.” He looked at her for a moment and then asked to see her driving license.  She replied “That’s in my handbag too and I really don’t want the budgie to escape.” The policeman had had enough by this time and just waived her on.

Walking the dog early this morning.

A friend in need…

My friend Val had an eye operation this week. When she came out of day surgery, she had been warned she would have very limited vision and certainly be unable to drive. Her daughter lives in Darwin and her son in Albany: at opposite ends of the country. I offered to come and stay with her for a few days, to cook her meals and be her chauffeur. 

Val lives in a retirement village in a two bedroom bungalow with a very pretty garden. There is an indoor swimming pool in the complex and a park across the road. It really is a nice place to stay and it’s like a little holiday for me. I might become one of those house guests that cannot be persuaded to leave!

I am not allowed to post pictures of Val’s eyes. They are not a pretty sight and we can’t imagine why some people go through this purely for cosmetic reasons.

Val and her greyhound in the sheltered courtyard.

We swim every day and the water is a lot warmer than mine at Burswood.

30 degrees!


The very prolific lemon tree.

The very perfumed frangipani.

One of Val’s many pictures. This is a beautiful photograph taken near Esperance, showing the white sand dunes which look exactly like a snow scene.

This is not a bad place to escape the February heat in my apartment!

Scam!

A cautionary tale: how not to get scammed.

A few days ago,  I was just finishing my breakfast when I received a text purporting to come from my daughter. She had smashed her phone and needed me to contact her on another number via WhatsApp. I don’t use this app so it took me a while to set up. Then another message asked me to pay a bill for her. This bill was due that day, the end of the month, and she would pay me back tomorrow. This sense of urgency, and a desire to help your kids, stops you thinking rationally. Of course, I made the bank transfer. Fortunately for me, the payment for $3000+ was queried by Westpac and they held the funds. Wow, that was a close shave! In hindsight the scam depends on no voice communication between the parties.

This morning I’m at South Beach, out for breakfast and reading the paper. I came across this:

The newspaper article gave details about the huge number of recent scams, of various types, and reported that over 65’s were the most vulnerable. All this quite spoiled my breakfast, but the beach was nice:

This is something I’ve never seen before: a giant kite surfer holding two people, being towed by a boat. What next?

Even The Guardian is reporting the scams here