Rockingham

Last Wednesday, DH and I caught the train to Rockingham. We weren't planning a sightseeing day; the trip was to meet a cousin of mine for the first time. I 'found' Terese a few years ago via Ancestry.com.au. 

Yes, I had been thrilled to find that someone else had my great grandparents on their family tree and we both exchanged old family photos that we each had. 

So you can imagine that I was quite excited at the prospect of meeting my cousin in person. Terese met our train and took us to Dome for a hot drink...as it was a cold, windy day! 

And just after we had ordered, Terese's husband arrived. He had come from Mandurah where he'd had some business to attend to...

We probably bored the menfolk but Terese and I talked about our family tree. Terese had grown up in Victoria so had met some of our parents' generation that I had never met. I told her about the 'dead end' I'd encountered finding info about our great grandfather's second wife. Terese wanted to know more about my mum's family...and so the conversation went on. 

Eventually it was decided that we would go for a drive around the town...it's a lovely town. It has lots of lovely old buildings but there has been a lot of new homes built in recent years.

We spent some time at the fairly new war memorial...

It was very windy and cold down on the waterfront...brrr 😉

Phillip also took us out to where he used to work...the large naval base. We drove alongside the base and could see the bridge and causeway. Apparently, sometimes the sea is so rough that waves wash over the causeway and it is closed to traffic to and from the base. In his time working at the base, Phillip sometimes couldn't get home until the road reopened. 

Soon it was time for lunch...Terese took us to one of her favourite restaurants down near the waterfront. 

Three of us each had that gigantic burger...and we ate every bit on our plates! Lol. 

Lingering over our lunch until after 3...yes 3!, it became obvious that the Ostro staff were closing until they reopened for dinner. Time to get back to the station.

After lots of hugging at the station, DH and I boarded the train and headed back to Perth. 

Remember that family tree 'dead end' I mentioned? Well later in the day I got an email from Terese; with this photo attached...

Details of my step great grandmother Bridget...what a find!! 

Wool on Sunday...

Linking up with Janine at Rainbow Hare once again for Wool on Sunday. https://rainbowhare.com/2016/09/11/wool-on-sundays-123-a-helping-hand/

My story starts a few weeks ago when a friend sent me a link via Facebook. Alison knew I was travelling in Western Australia and she wondered whether the item in the link might be close to where I was travelling.

It was a soft sculpture of some giant knitting which had won a prize (Emerging Artist) in a competition in a Sculpture By the Bay Project. It was an entry by the Steiner School in a beach town of Yallinup. A Google check showed that Yallinup was on the way to Margaret River which was one of our stops. 

The day dawned finally when we could detour to Yallingup...which turned out to be a tiny town. Very few shops were open ( most close for the cold months) but we did find a surf shop open. The lady there had no knowledge of the sculpture, but had a vague idea of where the Steiner School was...but we couldn't find it.

Then we went into a nearby winery ( The Naturaliste Winery), and asked there. The owner of the winery also had no knowledge of the sculpture but offered to ring the school...which she did. Long story short, we were invited to the school ( which was only about 600m down the road from the winery) to see the sculpture which was in the school hall. How lovely were these people? 

Kerry, a staff member from the school kept apologising that the knitting was not arranged how it had been for the competition ( which had been in March) but I still thought it was wonderful!!!

It was made by the students of the Year 3/4 class and was knitted on 2.5 metre 'needles'/plastic pipe. It took 3 students at a time to knit and the 'yarn' is hand dyed strips of muslin which were prepared by the students. After the piece was knitted it was placed on longer needles. I just loved it!!!

I had brought my knitting too...

Kerry asked me to cross my needles just like the sculpture...

Another photo with the giant project but this time sitting down!!

Before we left, DH commented how wonderful the paintings/drawings on the wall were. Kerry told us that these were actually done by the staff. Each Tuesday morning, the staff meet for some art; guided by the Konrad the Principal who is an Art Educator. Again I was impressed! In the latter years of my teaching career, our staff meetings were about 'dissecting' NAPLAN results! 😒😒😒😒😒

Aren't they wonderful??

Kerry told us that the photo of the giant knitting went all over the world via Facebook, but locals really had no idea it existed. 

I hope this works. I found a link of the children working on the knitting on the Yallingup Steiner School Alumni Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/469667386501081/videos/812818648852618/

Many thanks to Kerry and the Yallingup Steiner School.

Rottnest Island...

While we were still in Perth, DH and I took a day trip to Rottnest Island. This island was named by the Dutch Captain Willem de Vlamingh. The captain thought the island was overrun by 'giant rats' and so named the island Rottnest which means 'rats' nest'...but more about those 'rats' shortly!

We took the train to Fremantle and then caught one of the ferries which goes to the island.

On the dock at the island, you can't help noticing all the hire bikes waiting...and that's the way that many visitors get around the island. We walked towards the buildings near the dock to find the information centre. ( My brother had recommended that we hop on and off the buses that loop the island but DH had read of a particular attraction on the island and that would be where we would spend our time) 

After buying our tickets for a particular tour, we headed to the food court area and that is when we saw the 'rats'!

That Dutch captain got it a bit wrong...what he actually saw wasn't rats. They were little native animals called quokkas. They are marsupials like the majority of Aussie native fauna. Of course I bought a toy quokka for Anthea...and it had to be a mother quokka with the baby in her pouch! 

While we ate lunch, the bag containing the toy was at my feet...

And an inquisitive quokka just had to check that bag out! Lol. We had been warned by the lady in the bakery that the seagulls had been stealing food from tourists as they ate at the tables. But the gulls let me eat my potato topped pie in peace. 😀

Door entries to shops in this area all have Perspex swing doors because it looks like the sweet quokkas like to check out the shops too! 

After our lunch we had a short walk around that area looking at old buildings. 

Even though the island was named by the Dutch, they didn't colonise WA; that was left to the British. Over the years Rottnest Is was used in various ways...for example, penal colony, internment camp, military installation. It was this last use that DH had read about. 

During WW2 Rottnest played a major part in the defence of the port of Fremantle. It was a major base for the allies in the Indian Ocean. There is a huge gun emplacement on Oliver Hill on the island and this Battery is the only intact gun emplacement left in Australia. It was all decommissioned after the war but in the 1990s restoration started and now it is a tourist attraction.

All those years ago in WW2, a light rail network was built to transport materials and munitions to the guns, and that's what we were going to do...ride this little train.

Great views from the train...including the little airfield.

We did the tour up on Oliver Hill, which included walking through tunnels built under the hill. The Operations' rooms were underground of course too. During the war, there were a lot of military personnel on the island, including WRANs ( women's navy personnel). Our guide joked that the women did all the calculations for working the guns and the men fired them. But it would have been very hot, dirty work for those gunners! 

We saw in one tunnel corridor some clothes hanging up. They were made of cotton and the men who were entering the cordite store had to change into cotton clothing to prevent any risk of static electricity setting off the cordite. 

The big machines that generated electricity for the Battery have long gone but there are large photo murals showing what the room had looked like. 

Our guide told us that those generators were sent in the 1960s to a little town and used to provide electricity for that town until it was connected to the main grid. 

Neither of us took photos of the lower part of the gun...too entranced by the guide's commentary! 

But we did take some photos of the great views from up on Oliver Hill.

After the tour finished, the little train was waiting for us. We headed down to the settlement and then just had enough time to walk down to the dock area to catch the ferry back to Fremantle. We would have liked some more time but some return trips had been fully booked when we had bought our tickets in the morning. So we had had to take 2 spots on the 3.55 ferry. 

So our day on Rottnest was completely different to my brother's day there, as he went right around the island...we possibly didn't see as much, but what we saw and did was fascinating!! 

The bus tour; Part 2

So far, I have described our visit to New Norcia. The next part of this trip was a stop to admire and photograph wild flowers growing by the side of the road...in other words, the real habitat of the wildflowers.

Such beauty beside the road! 

Then it was time to move on to our lunch stop which was actually a wildflower farm! 

Rhonda, the owner, gave us a little talk about the family business. 

Several thousand bunches of wildflowers are sent each month to Melbourne alone and other farmers in the district provide flowers as well to complete all these orders. There were flowers hanging in racks right throughout the big buildings...

Some flowers are obviously sold as fresh flowers but there were also dried flower arrangements, bunches and posies as well.

I loved the little posies arranged in the little cane pram. ( on the lower left in the above collage) 

Lunch was a boxed lunch and DH and I shared a table with a couple from Caboolture ( a town just north of Brisbane) who were in WA to join a cruise in a day or so.

After lunch I had a little look in the gift shop. I bought a 2017 calendar featuring wildflower photos for my neighbour and a bag of potpourri for me! I did however, stop and admire some dolls...

But I resisted temptation and left them in the shop! 

Then it was time to get back on the bus to head off to the next destination...the Pinnacles.

On the way we passed a wind farm...

And eventually we arrived for our next stop. The Pinnacles lie within the Nambung National Park, near the town of Cervantes. 

Sorry about the photo overload, but this place was so huge! 

We had about 50 minutes here to wander among these limestone formations.

One more stop before we headed back to Perth was Hangover  Bay. 

Lovely! 

Despite sitting on a bus most of the long day, we were very tired when we were dropped off near our hotel...but we'd certainly seen a lot. 

New Norcia

DH and I took a bus tour to New Norcia while we were staying in Perth. 

Friends had recommended visiting this town which is the only 'monastery town' in Australia, having been set up by some Benedictine monks in the 1800s. The monks were to set up 4 schools; one girls' school for white girls, one for aboriginal girls, one for white boys and one for aboriginal boys. There are no schools any more in the town. But most of the school buildings remain.

It is really a town full of magnificent old buildings.

The hotel in the town was originally built by the monks as a guest house for parents of the school children who boarded in New Norcia. It eventually became a hotel which included a bar. 

The first thing our guide showed us was the Monastery. There are 4 monks remaining, who live here. We could only look through the gate into the courtyard as it is their home after all...

The first building we went into was the Abbey.

The tomb of one of the founders of this mission, Dom Rosendo Salvador is in this church...

Next we went to the former girls' school, St Gertrude's to view the chapel. 

While DH visited the museum, I preferred to walk across the road to get some photos of the building that the museum and gift shop are in...another of those 4 former schools. It was magnificent! 

And I also enjoyed the open paddocks across the road...

All lovely and peaceful.