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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

Fishing on West Beach

Sorry to interrupt the tales of our WA adventure, but yesterday I went fishing with our neighbours and I thought I would tell you about it.

Our neighbours Bec and Lee really like fishing and are familiar with the area, so I was super excited to go with them.  We went to West Beach which is just a few kilometers south of where I live, and where a river meets the ocean.  They had never tried there before, but had heard it was a good spot. 

The concept of fishing off of a beach is really foreign to me.  My understanding of fishing is that you need semi-deep water, a flashy lour, and maybe a vessel or dock to get you to a good place.  This experience broke through all of those barriers and now I feel like I could fish anywhere!  It was quite simple really; we had a sinker that we covered with some fish attracting sand-like substance, then two hooks further up the line with pieces of squid on them.  We cast straight out into the ocean, then waited for bites!  Amazingly, this was a successful formula.  Lee caught a puffer fish almost immediately.

Note simplicity of fishing contraption.

Unfortunately they are poisonous and we had to throw it back, but it at least showed that the new location wasn't a dud.  About an hour later Lee caught a second puffer fish, further increasing our optimism.  It was fairly low tide and good fishing is supposed to be as the tide is coming in, so we expected our luck to improve.  In reality it just got colder, windier, and we caught tons of seaweed as the tide washed it in.

I had lots of bites, but no takers.

Just as we were packing it in, Lee caught a third puffer fish!  Overall  it was a fun first fishing experience in Australia, even if it wasn't exactly successful.  We ended off the evening showing off our beer can chicken skills to yet another curious pair, so it was an excellent end to the day.  (Cooking tip: Dr. Pepper tastes exactly the same as Guinness when shoved up the rear of a chicken!)

In other news, I've been sick for the past day and tomorrow is Ryan's last day home.  Don't get your hopes up for another post tomorrow, but I'll be back promptly on Wednesday!

SWAA: Busselton Jetty and Margaret River

If you recall from yesterday's post, Ryan and I arrived late for our Busselton Jetty tour and had to run/speed walk up the jetty to catch up to the group.  Amazingly, we made it only 5 minutes late!!!!  We were of course sweaty and out of breath, but we did it! 

The tour was really cool.  We descended to different viewing platforms, ending up 8m below the surface of the water.  There had been a great white shark sighting that morning just down the beach, so we were told that if we saw a large school of fish to watch out for the shark as well.  I'm not sure if it was unlucky or lucky, but either way we didn't see one.  It was kind of stormy so the water was pretty murky, but we could still see some neat things.

After the tour was over a small train picked us up so we didn't have to walk back on the jetty, which was actually a relief after the stressful day we had.  At this point we were very much looking forward to checking into our hotel and calling it a day, so we were pleasantly surprised with how awesome the place was.  It was called "Heritage Trail Lodge" and the property was absolutely beautiful.  Set on a small hill on the main road leading into Margaret River we were surrounded by forest, flowers and birds, and it had by far the most comfortable bed of the trip.  This was the only hotel we booked in advance, and I'm so glad we did.  The owners were very friendly, there were free movie rentals, and the continental breakfast was delicious and made from all fresh local supplies.  Needless to say, that's when the trip started to look up.  We stayed two nights and tried to stay a third but unfortunately they were all booked.

That night for dinner we decided to check out the closest restaurant that had a flyer advertising "French Vietnamese Fusion" food.  We had absolutely no idea what form that would take, but it had a picture of a delicious spring roll so we thought we'd give it a go.  Turns out it was Italian Night (go figure) and it was the chef's first day!  Despite that the atmosphere was cozy and the food was delicious so well worth the trip.  The salad dressing (a balsamic vinaigrette) was a special concoction which we loved and even bought a bottle to take home.  Before eating we bought a bottle of wine since the restaurant was strictly BYO, which we promptly polished off and made for a fun walk home in the dark. 

The next morning after a great night sleep we took a short walk to the actual river behind our lodge called "Margaret River."  Along the way we ran into a really fun playground.  Ryan and I (mostly Ryan) usually make a point of playing on them, which led to this great picture (but truth be told I took a turn too!)

Click picture to enlarge and see Ryan's "serious working face"

Now for some actual pictures of the walk.

  

During that afternoon we went on a wine/gourmet food tour of Margaret River.  The area is very famous for wine (specifically a blend of Semillion Sauvignon Blanc - yum!) but also for how much food they produce locally.  Most people on the tour had already been to two wineries by the time we joined the group, but we still managed to hit a brewery, cheese factory, Fermoy Estates winery, an olive store, chocolate factory, Evans & Tate winery, and a venison farm.  It was a pretty full afternoon!  Our goal was to pick up enough stuff for dinner (and we had already bought a baguette from the local bakery), so it gave us an excuse to actually buy things.  We out-bought everyone else by far!  The group was great to tour with; they loved that we were Canadian and asked endless questions and made lots of jokes all in good fun.  We got our digs in "a-boot" the Australian way of life too though, so it wasn't all one sided!  Anyways, when we got back to the hotel we set up dinner on the patio set outside our room. 

Unfortunately I broke that delicious jar of tomato jam right after this, but the pesto and cheese did us for another few lunches like this!

And now Ryan's making his "serious eating face"

I told you the place was awesome!