Home Again

I made it back to Edmonds after over 24 hours of traveling. I think I slept one hour on the flight from Melbourne to LA.

I spent the last few days in Perth hanging out with friends and visiting Fremantle, the Subiaco farmers market, and the Western Australian Museum for the last time.  I will miss Australia, all the people I met there and the strange plants and animals. Now it's back to PNW summer, cheap bananas, and moss.

Thanks for reading my blog! I might post  more photos later of the last few days.

Finals and Farmers Markets and other Fun Things!

Yay! Today I had my last final of the semester! I have been studying for the past two weeks for the four final exams I had. I did find time to do some fun activities though.


Here are a few:
1. I saw a movie at the Luna Cinema in Leederville. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was called Mad Bastards and was about an Aboriginal man and his family. It had great music by the Pigram Brothers and Alex Lloyd and featured some areas around Perth that I have been too. Here is the trailer:

I would recommend this film. It didn't have a very strong plot, but it provided good insight into the lives of the characters and had some beautiful scenery of Australia and the Kimberly landscape.

2. Two Farmers Markets in the Same Day.

Last Saturday I went to Perth City Farm as well as the Subiaco Farmers Market. Perth City Farm is located in East Perth and is both a farmers market and an urban garden. They had chickens which was really exciting! I took a lot of photos of them. I also bought a biodynamically grown organic carrot from Tasmania. It was delicious and didn't have that metallic taste that carrots sometimes have.

I ate half of it before I could take the photo....

  

Australian chickens or "chooks" as they are called here. 

 

The farm also included a restaurant, a plant sale, lots of graffiti, and a hydroponic garden with fish.

Compost "recipe"

After wandering around we went to the Subiaco market which I have been to several times. It has a very different vibe compared to the City Farm. I got chai at this market and listened to the live music.

3. Finals are done! I leave Perth on Sunday and I will return to the States on Monday. Happy summer solstice (in the northern hemisphere) and winter solstice where I am!

Birds of Western Australia

Here are a few birds that I have seen in the Perth area:

1. Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen)

Source

3. Magpie Lark (Grallina cyanoleuca)

4. Little Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax melanoleucos)

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5. Australian Darter (Anhinga melanogaster)

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6. Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)

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7. Galah (Eolophus roseicapillus)

8. Rainbow Lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus)

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10. Silver Gull (Larus novaehollandiae)


11. Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae)

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12. Red Wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata)

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13. Willie Wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys)


14. Australian Raven (Corvus coronoides)

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15. Short-billed Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus latirostris)

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16. Australian Wood Duck (Chenonetta jubata)

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17.Black Swan (Cygnus atratus)
18. Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae)

19. Terns (I'm not sure what kind)

Quokka land

Here is another map of the island.

I recently took a mid-week trip to Rottnest Island, located directly west of Perth, about a 30 min ferry ride. I went with my friend Miela who is from New Mexico. We left Perth in the morning and took the train to Fremantle to catch the ferry. We arrived on the island around ten and went to the visitors centre to check in. We rented bikes for the two days we were there and had a ride around the island. Our first stop was Little Armstrong Bay on the north side of the island. The water was really clear but I didn't go swimming because it was cold. I also checked out the limestone.

Biking!

From there, we spent the rest of the afternoon biking to the far end of Rotto and back (about 20 km in total). It was warm, but breezy. The view was beautiful at the most westerly part of the island- endless ocean in three directions! There were way more hills than I expected and by the end we were a bit tired.Shells and an urchin from Mabel Cove

Miela and I at the west end of the island

We made it back to the campsite finally and ready to cook dinner. We ate lentils and baked beans from cans heated on outdoor burners. We also made toast and ate an avocado. While we were eating quokkas started surrounding us. Quokkas are about the size of a small cat and are marsupials that live on Rottnest. They are very used to people and one even touched my leg! They come out at night and congregate around the lit areas. It was really creepy. After dinner we played a few card games and went to sleep. I awoke in the night and saw a quokka shadow scurry by outside the tent and also heard a few of them hissing at each other. Creepy.

Tent

Quokka helping me cook lentils.

After a cold night of hardly sleeping we woke up at seven. I got some chai tea at the Rottnest Bakery which improved my morning immensely. Biking was kind of painful from the day before (uncomfortable seats) and it was super windy, so we decided to do inside/walking activities. We ducked into the "salt store" which was an old building that was previously used when salt was harvested from the saline inland lakes and transported to the mainland. Rottnest has an interesting history- it used to be connected to the mainland when the sea levels were lower, there used to be an Aboriginal prison, it was used in both world wars, and now it is a nature reserve.

We went on a tram ride to the middle of the island to see Oliver Hill, a lookout and location of two 9.2 inch guns. We took a tour of one of the giant guns and inside a few tunnels under the sand dunes. Apparently the gun was used in WW2 to shoot enemy ships across the horizon to protect the western coast of Australia and the Port of Fremantle, an important place for submarines. The gun was unable to shoot upwards, so it was vulnerable to attacks from airplanes. It was the job of Australian women working for the military to watch the skies and shoot with machine guns if necessary.

Range of the guns on the island, from Fremantle, and Garden Island during WW2

Tunnel inside the sand dune down to the ammunition room

Inside the tunnel, there was a whole exhibit on the women in service. There were funny quotes about quokkas that were mistaken for intruders.

After the tour we took the tram, operated by a man name Bob, back to the Settlement. We stopped by the Rottnest museum, chapel, and then made our way back to the ferry dock.