Little Trip to the Wild West

My husband and I went to Perth for the first time in our lives last weekend.  I know Australia is a big country, but Perth is on the other side of the country - about 4000 kms away by road.  Mind you we did fly!  But now the kids are older we have decided to travel to all the capital cities in Australia.  We have been to Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide and now Perth.  Husband has never been to Melbourne (not quite sure how that happened but there you are!!) and neither of us has been to Darwin.  So Melbourne next - when it gets a bit warmer and then maybe Darwin on the train - the Ghan - which travels from Adelaide in South Australia basically north through the middle of the country to Darwin.

 Husband is not a traveller really.....I don't know why I persist.  He is now in his 60's and I suspect he is an undiagnosed ADD sufferer. He was born before ADD had been invented, but he cannot sit still and cannot watch a movie on the TV all the way through and he HATES having to sit on a plane.......so are you all getting the picture.  Once we got there it was better....I kept him walking and doing stuff the whole time, and when he had done all those things I bought him bottles of wine (Margaret River wines are excellent) - so he was happy.  But, I have decided,  there are two sorts of people - Tourists and Travellers.  The Tourist wants to go and see places and do things but does not really want anything to be any different from home, whereas the Traveller wants to experience a different part of the world as the locals experience it.  The Traveller wants to step out of their own lives and into someone else's.  The Tourist wants to drag almost all aspects of their own lives with them, they want predictable and neat and tidy, and everyone speaking their language.  Sad to say I have married a Tourist....I love him, but he does not have the explorer spirit, no yearning to extend the edge of his comfort zone....took some persuading to get him to ride a pushbike on Rottnest Island!  

I give you Exhibit 'A'

 But the City is lovely and lots of money has been spent on it....Western Australia is very big in mining - Very Big!! so they have piles of money, but it still has the relaxed feel of a big country town.  And they seem to have borrowed a lot of stuff, and there is quite a underlying Edwardian feel about it.  There is one of the five replicas of the Peter Pan statue from Kensington Garden in the Queens Park.  Here is a picture (sorry Peter chopped the top of your head off) but you can see one of the light towers for the WACA in the background.  For the non cricketers - the WACA is the Western Australian Cricket Association Ground where top grade cricket matches are played.

Detail from the Statue

Australians love to shorten names so we have cricket grounds the Gabba and the WACA and the SCG and the MCG - Brisbane, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne respectively.

The famous WACA - with the shadow from the light tower, which must drive players crazy in the late afternoon.  In the background is the WA Police HQ.....nice and convenient when they want to go to a Test!!!

I am rather partial to signs and here are a couple that took my fancy....how advanced a city is Perth.....Ladies have their own Darts Club!!!!

Did not test out this little bit of advertising hype.....but it is a wonderful name.....I wonder how many ornathologists go there for a beer?

Here is a lovely statue near the Old Law Court Building.....the pen nibs are about 10 feet tall and engraved....just stunning

This is the Swan Bell Tower, right on the Swan River. 

For some reason the City of Perth was given 12 bells from London....here I have shamelessly cut and paste from Wiki......

Twelve of the set are historic bells from St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square in London; six others, cast in recent times by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, round off the set. The St Martin-in-the-Fields bells were donated to the State of Western Australia as part of the 1988 Australian bicentenary celebrations; the additional bells were cast with a subsequent donation of metals mined in Western Australia. The six newer bells include five which were presented to theUniversity of Western Australia, the City of Perth and to the people of Western Australia from the City of London, the City of Westminster and a consortium of British and Australian mining companies, and one bell commissioned by the Western Australian Government.

Can anyone tell me why St Martin-in-the-Fields gave away their bells.....no fields anymore and no bells.

But it is a beautiful city with lots of new architecture and thankfully they have preserved a lot of the old.  It is set along the edge of the beautiful Swan River - named after the famous black swans of Western Australia

This last picture is inside the Burswood Casino.  We wanted to see this place....one of those tourist things, like the Eiffel Tower and the Hoover Dam I guess.  Not being a gambler I found it rather sad  - a great expensive palace, full of rather desperate glazed-eyed people forking out quite a lot of money to the roulette wheels and blackjack tables and Keno and Poker Machines.  I am sure there were some there who never saw the sun from one day to the next...because it is open 24 hours....lots of flashing lights and alcohol.....of dear.  Maybe I am more of a tourist than I like to think.  It was not a part of Western Australian life that I felt able to immerse myself in.  Too much Scottish blood to put too much of my hardearned into a machine with very small chance of it being returned!!


Happy stitching to all my followers and visitors!!

Got to Share

Found these pictures a while ago and they made me laugh.....the cupcakes are a bit spooky actually, but wonderful.


We have had a few pugs over the years and Smooge used to sleep just like this........can almost hear his horrendous snuffly snoring.


Happy stitching!

May Wipocalypse - another Finish - Miracle!!!!!!!!

I have been a bit reclusive for a while now - no particular reason - just pulled my head down below the lip of the foxhole of life I suppose.  I have been sewing and reading and that is about it.  I find if I start looking at the web, nothing gets done....but having said that I have discovered Goodreads which is rather like blogs and Ravelry and the web generally - once you start you can't stop.

My middle son - who up till now has been the quiet achiever - is in his last year of school and seems to be a bit lost in the wilderness of the adult world.  He seems to have no idea where he is going to go, or what he is going to do.  He has the brains to do pretty much anything he likes, but his degree of application seems to be negligible at the moment -  in the last year of school, when he needs to apply himself the most. He keeps telling me "It will be alright Mum!".  He is a bit of a last minute type of kid, who seems to need that adrenalin rush of knowing that the assignment is due to two days to get moving on the writing of it.  The complete opposite of me, who needs to worry and research for ages to get anything done.....Oh Well, fingers crossed!!

But in the midst of all that I have finished something - again another relatively small thing.....BUT......and done some more on Golden Wood.  See...............................

You can actually see a suggestion of the other ladies who are lurking in Golden Wood there among the trees.  The only problem is that when all the black is done there is nothing but yellow confetti stitches.  That will keep me busy and my mind occupied!!