Day at the beach

An unusually hot day was forecast for Perth (34 degrees), so my plan was to get up early and drive to the beach. I left at 7.20 am and arrived at South Beach, Fremantle at 8.00 am. The traffic was heavy because most people are going to work at that time of day. The beach was quiet, largely due to a sneaky land breeze from the north-east. But I was here and determined to have a dip, my first swim of the season. The water was FREEZING! Some people apparently swim throughout the winter, believing the shock to the system does them good! I rewarded myself with a luscious breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup and an interesting combination of stewed apple with ginger.

Afterwards I walked out on the groyne and took a few photos, looking north towards Fremantle. Big piles of seaweed were near the water’s edge and will need removing by the Council with a tractor.

After a hot day, Aussies like to throw a prawn on the BBQ. A hot frying pan is just as good:

Family Outing

We had dinner at our favourite seafood restaurant, Kailis Leederville. It's a long weekend so it was quite busy but we were early. We ordered a small serve of oysters to start:

For mains, I had Chilli Mussels (a BIG portion) and C had the same. E was unadventurous with Fish and Chips. Two desserts arrived next, with an extra spoon for me:

E has just left school and "celebrated" earlier with 3 additional ear piercings:

The top one looks painful. Hope there are no more to come!!

Kings Park

Sundays’s bushwalk was an easy one: a circular route around Kings Park and Botanic Garden. It was a beautiful sunny day, just perfect for the start of Spring. The only problem was that every man and his dog (and his entire family) were there as well. All the car parks were full. That’s because the Kings Park Festival was on. At this time of year the park is at its best, showcasing Australian natives and wildflowers in bloom.

Free lunch

There IS such thing as a free lunch! I was invited to a Brazilian ladies lunch in the next block to mine. It was on the 9th floor, with a very similar view to mine. However, this apartment was the height of luxury! About a dozen Brazilian ladies meet once a month on a Monday and everyone brings a plate. There was a generous spread, with more food than we could all eat. I admired the reclining settee with various electronic controls (and these were linked to the apartment's aircon as well as a plug to re-charge your phone). Amazing! The group is known for its interest in all kinds of crafts. One lady demonstrated her knitting machine, like a giant French knitter which we used to make from a cotton reel. Everyone who brought food had used a quilted casserole cover, which I must have a go at making.

Disappearing Photos

I'm still trying to figure out why my photos have been disappearing. Gayle (a fellow blogger) has alerted me to the fact that the photos are not visible after 30 days. This must be a new policy of BlogTouch, the app I've been using for years to load my posts. This began in April, unbeknown to me, but it means that the photos have been lost from two major trips of mine, to the Camino in Spain and the roadtrip to the Kimberley in W.A. So, I'm going to post directly to Blogger from now on - even though it's not so convenient. What a pest!

Forest Discovery Centre

In the afternoon we had a booking at the Forest Discovery Centre, about a 10 minute walk away from the Caravan Park. There was an interesting video about the 1961 fire which completely wiped out the Holyoake township as well as Dwellingup itself. When the fire started, every man in Dwellingup had to go and fight the flames (with hose pipes and little else), leaving their wives and children behind, not knowing what was happening. 

Communication was poor, but the flames and smoke could be seen from a long way off as it moved nearer and nearer to town. There were numerous breakout fires, as the wind changed direction and lightening strikes caused more trees to burn down in 14 places. After 4 days, 133 houses and 78 vehicles had been destroyed, but by some miracle there were no fatalities. The residents had been evacuated to Pinjarra. Only the Dwellingup Hotel survived. 

Holyoake School in its heyday.

Dwellingup Hotel in 1911.

The Forest Discovery Centre was full of interesting exhibits. After viewing the video, I had a quick look around:

These Zamia seeds were used by indigenous people to make flour, but they had to be soaked thoroughly beforehand.

This workshop was originally used to train apprentice woodworkers, until funding ran out.

Now there are all sorts of courses being offered.


It’s set in the middle of the forest where all the yellow acacia bushes are out at the moment.

In the evening the group was supposed to meet for dinner at the Dwellingup Hotel, but we received a message that they had almost run out of food after the big influx yesterday. So plans changed and everyone met at S and H’s chalet in the Caravan Park and V ordered takeaway pizza. It was a very convivial ending to our wildflower weekend.

Saturday evening’s dinner when we helped to eat up most of the menu items!  There were two other groups crammed into this small dining room.

Dwellingup north walk

We met at the Visitors Centre and walked northwards on the Bibbulmun:

The trail was parallel to the Hotham Valley Railway track and on our way back before lunch we were fortunate to see one of the little steam trains making the journey:

See my Instagram for a video of this!

We walked as far as the old Holyoake townsite, which had once been a thriving community with its own sawmill, church, school, post office and a station master’s house. Unfortunately the whole lot burned down.

Morning tea stop on a log in the site of Holyoake

Dwellingup Wildflower Weekend

The caravan park is enormous, set amongst mature trees, with plenty of room for caravans and tents as well as lots of chalets. It is very full at the moment. Most of my group have booked into chalets and I met up with many of them at the Visitors Centre in town, where I had gone to get a better signal for posting my blog yesterday afternoon.

Now the bad news: a big group of Indians arrived after dark in several 4WDs and noisily set up camp just across from my room. They sat round their camp fire talking loudly (in Hindi, I think) for hours. At 10.15 I’d had enough and went out to ask them to be quiet. All the other people in the row of 5 Walkers Rooms next to me were actually doing the Bibbulmun Track and must have been in need of a good night’s sleep, but none of them had dared to make a move. Anyway, this morning it started to get light just after 6.00 am and all the kids on the site started playing and running around, so they got their revenge on the Indians who were still inside their tiny tents. There were also flocks of magpies chortling well before dawn. What a night!

Noisy crowd just opposite me - early this morning when nobody was stirring.

The Bibbulmun Track is celebrating 25 years

We started walking southwards on the Bibbulmun at 9.30 am.  The plan was to do about 12 kms, but those of us who wanted to do less could easily turn back when they had gone far enough. The huge trees were impressive: so many of them and so close together:

Some have been struck by lightning and simply toppled over:

Lots of wildflowers on all sides:

Bracket fungus


Emu nuts