Creepy Crawlies

In honour of Halloween this week, I thought I would do a post on the bugs and spiders we've seen so far.  Beware of creepy pictures!

You know that we've already seen the Redback Spider and Ryan has seen the Golden Orb Spider, and we also saw a Tiger Snake.  Ryan thinks he saw a Mouse Spider at work, but there are no pictures to prove it so we're watching out for another one.

I'm going to do my best to identify the following pictures based on what I find on the internet!

Black House Spider

This spider is poisonous but not deadly.  Good thing, since one was in my shower while I was in there.  This particular one we found outside on a spider-finding mission.

Huntsman Spider

This one was on our back gate at night, maybe a bit bigger than a Toonie.  They're non-aggressive spiders and are actually good at keeping other bug populations down, but you should still avoid getting bitten since it is painful.

Daddy Long Legs

We have tons of these, but I actually don't have any pictures.  They look like they do in Canada and I think they're responsible for most of the webs in the house.  They vary in size from about a centimetre (including legs) to about three centimetres.

Unidentified Spider

For those of you who read my blog as a procrastination technique, maybe you can help me out with this one.  I've spent a good while trying to figure out what this one is but can't find anything similar online.  We found it on our wall near the ceiling and it was about 2cm long.  The colour is accurate, but I'm sorry the picture is blurry.

Black Portuguese Millipede

Spiders are pretty creepy, but this was the most disgusting bug in our house.  It was on our bathroom floor and scared the crap out of me when I first saw it.

Hairy Mary Caterpillar

Or at least that's the closest thing I can find.  It doesn't seem like anyone on the internet actually knows its name.  We saw this guy in Kings Park, Perth.

Shingleback Lizard

I don't have a picture of this either, since when I saw one I thought it was a snake and got really freaked out.  They have stubby legs, so it was really hard to tell at first.  It was scurrying around in the shrubs near our beach, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bunch of babies while I was climbing Mt. Lofty.  This website has a good picture though.
**Update** Turns out I actually did take a picture!

That's all for now!  I'll try and be more diligent about taking pictures, but to be honest my main priority is to get them out of the house or as far away from them as possible.

These days there isn't much to blog about, so I'll try to gather another list of new birds we've seen.  It just takes a really long time to ID them all (this post took over 2 hours, and it was short!) so don't expect it tomorrow.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Adelaide CheeseFest

Last Saturday, for lack of anything else to do, I decided to venture over to CheeseFest in downtown Adelaide.  It wasn't particularly exciting, but still worth a mention as part of my adventures here. 

The main attractions for me were the cooking demonstrations happening all afternoon.  I know this makes me sound like I'm some chef now, but actually it seems like Australia is really obsessed with cooking shows so chefs are a main part of the country's celebrities.  I watched 3 demonstrations while I was there.  The first was Adam Swanson who is regularly on the TV show "Ready, Steady, Cook" but who is also the spokesperson for a pasta company here called San Remo.  I'm sure he is a good cook, but his crew was super annoying and they had a camera man standing RIGHT in front of him the entire time so you couldn't really see what he was doing.

Adam Swanson

Next was Simon Bryant who also does tons of TV appearances.  He had a motorcycle vibe to him and he was absolutely hilarious.  His demonstration was partly about cheese-making, so it was pretty interesting.  That demonstration had a huge turnout unlike the other ones.  Also none of the other chefs had huge obnoxious crews which made the whole thing much better.

Simon Bryant

And finally I saw Callum Hann, who was the runner up on the second season of MasterChef (last year's season, but I'm working my way through watching it now).  His demonstration was the best because he actually made food I would eat, and he was also pretty funny.  I got to try his no-bake "cheesecake" that he made and it was delicious.  They said they would post the recipes online so I didn't write it down, but I haven't been able to find them yet unfortunately.

Callum Hann

After the cooking demonstrations I just walked around and sampled a bunch of free cheese and wine, so it was a nice end to the whole affair.  They gave me a commemorative wine tasting glass which reminded me a lot of WineFest in Germany.  I guess I'm starting a collection!  Overall, it was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

SWAA: Hyden and Perth

And now finally, the last instalment from our South Western Australia Adventure.  Brace yourselves, it's a big one!

After our long drive from Denmark, we arrived in Hyden around 3:30pm and went straight to the main attraction of the area and the purpose of our massive detour: Wave Rock.  I was a bit sceptical that the rock would be impressive enough to merit the extra hundreds of kilometers, but in the end it was pretty cool.

Someone had to do the surfing stance!

Next we headed just a few seconds down the road to the far less impressive "Hippos Yawn".  I'm not really sure what made this so special other than the name, but it led us to take some silly pictures.

The obvious - us yawning

Ryan getting eaten by the hippo

For some reason because I was wearing a red shirt Ryan really wanted me to be a uvula.  Didn't really work, but it was funny to try!

And that was it!  All of the attractions in Hyden in less than an hour.  That night we stayed in the hilariously out-dated Hyden Hotel/Motel.  For dinner the hotel offered the "exotic" option of selecting your meat for dinner and then grilling and seasoning it yourself on a massive grill in the dining room.  For some reason this made me really grumpy, which was compounded by the buffet "salad bar" they had (comprised of pasta salad, potato salad, and coleslaw) along with some weird cooked sides.  Even though dinner wasn't great, they had a really nice lounge room with a massive fireplace.  It was really cold that day so instead of hanging out in our room we brought our board game and a bottle of wine and enjoyed a few hours by the fire.  It was a great way to end a disappointing evening.  To be fair to the restaurant, I think if you go to many country towns in Canada you would end up with the same country style cooking, but I think I was just spoiled by our fine dining in wine country.

The next day, September 28th, we got an early start for our drive to Perth.  The drive wasn't very exciting, but we did pass some random tourist attractions (most notably the dog cemetery) and some really beautiful orchards in bloom.  The day before we had called many hotels in Perth to try and find a room, but we were very unlucky.  We ended up with one above our budget, so we were expecting it to be really nice.  It was called the Somerset, located right downtown Perth, and it was a huge letdown. 

Since this was to be our last day of the trip, and our only time in Perth, we got right out on the town to do some exploring.  For me, Kings Park was the only thing in Perth that I had any interest in seeing.  It is one of the largest inner city parks in the world, and it had fantastic views of the city.  It's also where their botanic gardens are located, so we got to see a great show of the wildflowers in bloom.

During our walk through the park we also found this "tree top walk" which was nice.  It wasn't nearly as high as the real one we did in Walpole though!

The downtown was more modern than Adelaide, but about the same size.  Surprisingly it had a lot of designer stores, which Adelaide doesn't have.  That evening we did a short walk around downtown Perth and decided to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant.  That was the best decision all day, since the food was awesome!  We started with delicious cocktails (the winner was Ryan's "Japanese Slipper" made with equal parts Midori melon liqueur, Cointreau, and lemon juice), entrée of scallops, and our mains were an Asian shrimp salad and a pizza (brie, bacon, chicken, cranberry sauce, mozzarella, and spinach - great combo!).

The next day, September 29th, our flight didn't leave until 5:30 pm so we spent the morning shopping at some outlet stores and lounging/napping in King's Park.  We THOUGHT it was the perfect end to our trip, but then things went horribly wrong.

When we tried to do the auto check-in at the airport, the machine abruptly said "please see attendant", which has never happened to me before.  When the guy at the counter looked confused, I jokingly said "haha we probably missed our flight or something stupid" and he unfortunately said yes.  Turns out we missed it by an entire day! 

I know, I know, this doesn't seem like something I would do.  To be honest, there were so many signs pointing us to our real flight but somehow we brushed them all off.  First, and most obvious, was when Virgin emailed me a flight confirmation on the 27th.  I looked at it and said "huh, that's weird, they usually send it 24 hours ahead, I wonder why I got it 2 days ahead"!  Next, when we picked up our car rental the woman tried to confirm our return on the 28th.  I immediately corrected her and extended it to the 29th.  And finally, the trip just felt like we had loads of extra time on our hands.  Now, Ryan isn't completely blameless.  He emailed his boss saying we would be back on the 29th, but of course he meant he could start work again on the 29th.  For some reason I guess that date was stuck in my head, and he never corrected me and neither one of us looked it up.

Anyways, having seen enough episodes of The Amazing Race I knew that there were ways of getting flights at the airport.  First we decided to wait and see if the 5:30 flight back to Adelaide on Virgin (our airline) was full.  There were still 6 people who hadn't checked in at 4:55pm, but unfortunately by the 5:00pm deadline 5 had showed up.  After checking other airlines we found it was impossible to get any flights out since Qantas baggage handlers were on strike already causing flight cancellations, and the Grand Final in footy was the next day in Melbourne and people I think were being diverted through Adelaide.  Luckily the guy at Virgin got us on the morning flight out, and took pity on us so he didn't charge us a cent! 

Without going through all of the details, suffice it to say we decided not to sleep in the airport and instead got the closest, cheapest hotel we could find.  Ironically, that night was far better than the first one we had in Perth for half the price!  We stayed at the All Seasons Hotel and ended up in an "upgraded" room due to limited availability.  We asked what the difference was for the $20 more, and they told us that our room would have a window.  I kid you not, this is what it looked like:

In case you can't see, the window has glass, but then that's a wall with a picture of SYDNEY Harbour!  Seriously, that made our day.  There was actually a tiny skylight in the window so it made a difference in the morning to have some natural light, but hilarious beyond belief.

Yet again, we had a delightful night of board games, wine, and room service potato wedges, and that really was the perfect way to end a fantastic vacation.

2000 Pageviews!

Thank you to everyone who has been visiting my blog and following our adventures over the past 5 months!  Time is going by so fast I can't believe it.  I'm really feeling the love today, and I'm sending it right back to you.

Have a wonderful day!

Love Steph

SWAA: Denmark, Albany, and the Road to Hyden

After a great night in our A-Frame cottage at The Cove, we woke up bright and early to pouring rain.  We had originally organized a ride to the start of a nice hike with the cottage owners, but decided to cancel due to the rain.  That meant we suddenly had the whole morning free!  By this point in our trip we were pretty exhausted, so we decided to relax all morning.  I went through pictures and tried to identify the birds we had seen so far, we played board games, and had a nice warm fire. 

Denmark also has a lot of little gourmet food and wine shops, so we decided to have a nice vineyard platter for lunch.  Vineyards take our traditional cheese/meat/bread picnic lunches and kick it up a notch to make it extra delicious.  It was so delicious that we ended up getting a case of wine shipped home from the Singlefile Winery!  It just arrived here a few days ago so I'm looking forward to opening some when Ryan gets home.  After that we sampled more cheese, fudge, and toffee, and managed to get some pasta sauce and cheese for our dinner. 

The main attraction in Denmark, though, is its unique coastline.  We went to a place called Greens Poole for a short walk down the beach, and despite the patchy weather it was really beautiful.

 Just a little bit down the beach was the other main coastal attraction, Elephant Rock.  The way the path led us, we had to wait for the waves to go out and then time it just right and run through these narrow rocks before the waves came back in again.  Not sure why the path led that way, but it was pretty fun!  There was a different path leading out though, so we only had to do it once.

Typical Ryan

That night we just packed it in early in anticipation for a long next day.  We left as early as we could on the 27th and did the short drive east to Albany for a quick look around and some brief whale watching.  If we hadn't had so much fun in Denmark we probably would have booked a whale watching tour, but unfortunately we only had enough time for some quick stops at popular lookouts where whale sightings are common.  We didn't see any whales, but we saw a pretty cool black cockatoo (watch for it in my next bird blog).  I'm sure Albany would have been nice, but it was a bigger town and I don't regret spending the time in Denmark instead.

Our final destination for the day was Hyden, but we had a lot of road to cover before we got there.  If you look back at the original map you can see how far it was (basically a quarter of all of our driving).  Luckily it was through some beautiful and new scenery, so we had lots to look at.  First we passed through the majestic but brief Stirling Ranges National Park.  I say brief because what you see in the pictures was basically all of the mountains.  Having seen the endless Rocky Mountains in western Canada it was kind of surprising.  There were also tons of fields of yellow flowers, which made it particularly special.

This was definitely the most remote road we had been on yet, passing only a few cars an hour, so it was kind of random when we came across this tourist attraction:

The final interesting thing we passed on our long drive was a pink lake.  It wasn't "the" Pink Lake (about 400km south east of where we were), but I've heard of a few pink lakes in Australia.  The lake turns pink at certain times of the year due to a change in the algae in the water, so it was a great surprise to pass one of these on our trip.  Unfortunately it was also very hard to photograph the colour, but here's Ryan's best shot without editing.

Only one more instalment of our South Western Australia Adventure to go.  Stay tuned!

The Port Festival and a Ryan Update

Again veering away from the spellbinding tale of our trip to Perth, I thought I'd recount what I actually did today!  For once I did something fun while Ryan is away and I'm excited to share.  Spoiler alert: I met a real Australian celebrity!

As you may remember, a few months ago I went to Port Adelaide (think dolphin cruise), which incidentally was the location for the Port Festival.  From what I can gather, it's a weekend long festival celebrating marine heritage and local artists.  Being the multitasker that I am (in case perspective employers are reading this) I also wanted to hit up the market there for some used books.  Unfortunately I forgot that that was the Sunday market and today was Saturday, but the festival more than made up for it. 

I prepared in advance by looking up the events happening today and found out that Mark Olive was giving cooking demonstrations!  (I know you're all like, huh, who the heck is that?!)  Mark Olive, a.k.a. The Black Olive, is an Australian chef specializing in modern cuisine using traditional aboriginal ingredients.  He uses, for example, kangaroo, emu, crocodile, and seafood, and seasons them with unusual herbs found in the wilderness.  Again, I'm sure you still don't care.  BUT he was on MasterChef last season as a guest chef!!!!  He ALSO has his own TV show!  (Yes, I'm still obsessed with MasterChef.  I recently discovered a Junior MasterChef version which is much more my level.)  Anyways, he did a cooking demonstration and passed around a lot of delicious smelling spices which was pretty cool.  I was sitting right at the front, so he usually passed the spices to me first!  After the demo I went up and thanked him (this was a really small and casual venue) and told him I moved from Canada so I really enjoyed learning more about Australian produce, and he told me he was recently cooking in Vancouver with some native Canadian chefs.  See?!  I met a celebrity!

I told you it was informal...well there was a band setting up and even tuning their instruments in the background the whole time.

The rest of the festival was really nice because it was all booths by local artists.  I bought a really pretty copper necklace, so now I have something to wear with the copper based earrings I have from Aunt Jeanne/Uncle Ben and Ryan's parent!  Also I think it's the first jewellery I've bought in Australia so it will have nice memories.

In other news, as some of you may know Ryan started a new job this week.  He had about 3 weeks off in between jobs for much needed relaxation, and now he's back to 12 hour days.  This time he has been contracted out to one of Australia's main mining companies, Oz Minerals.  He's working on the Carrapateena Project, which is kind of a big deal.  There's even a website: http://www.ozminerals.com/Operations/Carrapateena.html  If you have any questions at all, look at the website.  There's also a map there.  I already know more than when I spoke to Ryan!  Currently he's staying in a town (he said it was Penetty Station, but I can't find it on Google) that he described as a "ghost town".  There are apparently four houses, all of which are vacant except for the one they're staying in.  The project is brand new, so right now they're literally just setting up the camp.  For now it will be a small operation, but they are expecting 50+ people to be working there by Christmas.  Consequently the camp they're building is going to be pretty pimp (eventually there will be a bar and pool tables, etc.) so it's a good project for him to be on.  Also it's good experience for him to see the start of a project.  Unfortunately they don't really have phone/cell reception/internet, so he's a bit out of touch except for the odd call from their work satellite phone.

On the subject, you also may know that I've been trying to get hired as a fieldy with Euro as well.  There's been a bit of waffling on the subject, but currently Euro is waiting for Ryan to prove himself competent on this current job and then they will test the waters to see if Oz Minerals wants to send me to their other major project, Prominent Hill.  The plan is that if I can prove myself there, then there's a chance that they might be able to place us both at the same camp.  It seems far fetched, but I'm bored sitting at home so it's worth a shot.

Wow, that blog seems a lot more "dear diary" than I'm used to.  I'll get back to my travel-blogging self tomorrow.  Until then, everyone enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend.  I'm sad I'm missing out, but that's what I signed up for being all the way out here.  It doesn't make me any less thankful for everything I have though.  Much love to everyone!

SWAA: Mini-Putt, Lots of Trees, and The Cove

After an allergy-filled sleep at the Karri Valley Resort we had a buffet breakfast in a nice dining room overlooking the lake.  It was your typical breakfast but Ryan discovered these  delicious croissants that were so warm and squishy that we stole one for lunch (which of course would again be a picnic on the side of the road, so we also stole butter, an apple, and peanut butter).  I spotted a banana from across the room and made a beeline for it because they're so expensive here (down from $18/kg to $12/kg!), but turns out it was plastic.  Yet another disappointment at that hotel. 

Sorry, enough about the food.  Before we left we decided to play a quick round of mini-putt at the resort.  As a side note, no one calls it mini-putt here and they're thoroughly confused when I call it that.  I can't remember what they do call it though…  ANYWAYS without going into to too many details, Ryan kicked my butt but we were both very over par.  There was one hole that was a par 3 and I got it in two shots (picture victory dance) but then Ryan got a hole in one! (picture him not gloating and me pouting...and maybe hitting my club on things and stomping around like a child) 

When we were picking up our clubs from the "fun shack" or whatever it was called, there was randomly a tiny black lamb wandering around and being all cute following people.  As if that wasn't funny enough, when we went to return our clubs there was an 18 month old Western Grey kangaroo in a harness (without the leash) hopping around the shop!  Only in Australia can you have a kangaroo for a pet, but I still can't explain the lamb.

After our morning of fun we decided to head to Beedelup Falls, which supposedly had a suspension bridge over top of it.  We knew it was close to the resort, but when we showed up we could actually see the hotel from the lookout.  Turns out the falls were feeding into the lake we were staying on...oops.  Serves us right for being too lazy to do the short walk to the falls that the resort advertised!  Actually, it was kind of lame in the end.  The falls were really small but the suspension bridge was sort of fun.  They have random radio stations that you can tune into for a narration of the park you're in, and we should have listened when the guy said "some people from other countries can't believe we find these falls so exciting because they're used to much bigger falls…"  Seriously, it was like 3m high.

  

Now on to more exciting things, like the Giant Tingle Tree!  We went on a nice quiet walk through a tingle tree forest in Walpole-Nornalup National Park (which randomly had lots of info boards about dinosaurs) and saw these absolutely massive trees.  They're interesting because all of their important growing mechanisms are located in the outer layer of the tree, so when there's a forest fire they burn through the middle first and end up hollow but can still keep on living.

Moving right along, our last stop for the day was the Tree Top Walk.  Basically this was equivalent to climbing a giant tree, but it was wheelchair accessible.   This walk was very well done and absolutely beautiful, so Ryan and I took our time and decided to bird watch.  It was really cool because the walk took you up a slow incline, allowing you to see the trees and birds at all of the different levels.  At the top there was a long pathway 40m above the ground which was also really neat, and arguably much better than the 75m tree I climbed.  It was certainly more relaxing!

Throughout the day we had patchy cell reception, so we were a bit frustrated trying to find a place to stay that night.  We ended up calling this place in Denmark called The Cove that sounded nice in the tourist pamphlet we had.  They had one cabin left, which the owner explained on the phone was usually reserved for groups.  He suggested that we look at it before we committed but was willing to give us the single room rate.  Thinking he just meant it was for families, we were not phased at all and decided to stay there.  Upon arrival, however, we were warned again that maybe we should look at it.  The drive in was so beautiful and it was located in a very secluded forest, so stubbornly we again declined to look at it first.  Then the owner brought us to this:

Yes, that was the "A-Frame" we were staying in.  All by ourselves.  And the inside looked like this:

(pause for effect)

Yes, the table seated 25 and if you look carefully you can see some cots lined up on the right of the picture.  There were 19 beds in the cabin.  What  you can't see are the amazing sky lights all above the table, and how massive that fireplace is.  It was absolutely beautiful (and built by the owner and his family), so needless to say we stayed two nights instead of one!  We pulled two couches up to the fire, grabbed some blankets, and drank wine and played Ghost Stories (my favourite board game) all night.  And by all night I mean until like 9:30 when I passed out.  From being tired.  Not from the wine.

SWAA: Jewel Cave, Bicentennial Tree, and Pemberton

Our last day in Margaret River started really well, with a delicious breakfast at the hotel and a trip to the local Saturday market.  As I said before Margaret River is well know for its local produce, so it was great to see the local market and pick up more food for our picnic lunch.

Our first destination for the day was Jewel Cave, but along the way we drove through what I'm going to call the "fairy forest" (actually called State Forest No. 45).  I knew one of the main attractions of South Western Australia was the beautiful karri tree forests, but this was the first time we had truly driven through one.  Someone had accurately captured the mood of the forest by "editing" this road sign, and it didn't seem like anyone was keen to fix it.

Our other main reason for going to this area of Australia was because it is wildflower season, and the forest floor was just starting to become blanketed in flowers.

The Margaret River region is home to about a dozen limestone caves, and Jewel Cave was supposedly the best show cave in the area.  If you have any questions about the cave, as usual, ask Ryan.  It was difficult to get good pictures, but it was definitely a beautiful cave system.  Unfortunately because it's a "show" cave they had some weird lighting effects and laser lines to point out certain features, which kind of cheapened the beauty of the cave. 

If you look closely, it kind of looks like a karri tree forest.

After the cave we headed to what was my personal highlight of the trip: the Bicentennial Tree in Warren National Park.  Now this isn't just any tree; it is the tallest climbing tree in the area.  Soaring to 75m high, the Bicentennial Tree is equipped with a re-bar spiral "ladder" and multiple platforms, originally used for spotting forest fires.  Those of you who know me know that I am a wuss - I don't take dangerous risks and I really don't do anything I don't want to do.  For whatever reason, ever since hearing about this tree, I just knew it was something I had to climb.  I never even climbed apple trees as a kid, so I have no idea what possessed me to do this!  To put this in perspective there were no guides, no ropes, no harnesses, and no safety net.  Really, this kind of thing would never pass safety standards in Canada and I can't believe it's allowed to exist here.

Now to set the scene.  Ryan and I rock up, all confident and ready to climb this thing.  There are a few weary people at the bottom watching their friends/family climb, but the place is relatively deserted.  Without much hesitation, we both start the climb to the first platform, about a third of the way up the tree.  Once at the platform we look at each other and go "yup, that's all I'm doing!" and "boy that was insane"!  Really, it was pretty damn scary.  At that point we're both shaking in our shoes working up the courage to go back down, but as I become more confident I realize I'd be mad at myself if I didn't just suck it up and finish what I started.  After a few more minutes, I was ready!  As Ryan headed back down, I worked my way to the top.  Surprisingly the first bit was the hardest, and once I got into a rhythm I was completely fine.  Ready for a picture?

The bottom arrow is the first platform, and the top arrow is the top platform.

 If you look really closely you might be able to see me in a red shirt on the top platform.  Now for some pictures from the top!

You can see Ryan at the bottom.

View over all of the trees from the top.  It's bleached out, but I could see massive sand dunes in the distance.

This was my descent from the lowest platform.  I was feeling brave enough to take a picture!

As you can see the view from the top was kind of underwhelming, but that's not why I climbed the tree.  And although I probably wouldn't do it again, I'm glad I did it!

With my feet firmly back on the ground we headed for our hotel that evening: the Kerri Valley Resort in Pemberton.  Because it was Saturday night we had to splurge since lots of places were fully booked for the night.  We ended up in a large 2 bedroom cottage in the middle of a  beautiful forest on a lake.  I know to Canadians lakefront property isn't that exciting, but in Australia it's a novelty if it's freshwater.  We didn't know what to expect so we were kind of shocked when we showed up to this:

Quite a bit more lavish than we were expecting!  Overall though the place was way overpriced and I was allergic to it so it must have been mouldy.  They had also fully booked their restaurant, so we had to have take-out for dinner instead.  That aside, we got to enjoy another lovely evening of wine, board games, and chocolate, this time with a lake and a fire place.

Ryans "classy" face