Fremantle

I (we) feel very blessed to have had a wonderful day with Mick’s mate, Ian, who he worked with for many years in Signal Trouble at Central. Ian moved over here with his family five years ago – Ingrid (who grew up here in Perth), and their kids Isaac, Kirby and Rachel, after Signal Trouble became unbearable. Sad that.

Ian picked us up at about 9am, me sharing the back with an empty gas bottle – hilarious. We did a fair bit of driving and we talked, talked, talked and laughed, laughed, laughed. Often funny topics and reminiscing, and sometimes serious things.

What we did:
- Drove to Mandurah beach where they have a colourful ‘beach shack’ – and that’s it, a beach shack on a plot of about 20 other cute and colourful beach shacks a block from the beautiful beach
- Drove to Mandura inlet to see the beautiful river
- Then had lunch at a local pub on another river.

We drove back to Perth and did a quick look around the top of Kings Park. Only a few flowers were out but they were stunning. Ian is crazy passionate about endemic plant life and has spent a lot of time on his property replacing non-endemic plants with those that only belong to his part of Western Australia. The view over Perth city and the Swan River was beautiful on a hot, clear, sunny day.

Then, the drive up into the Perth Hills where Ian and his family live. While it’s only 32 kilometres from Perth CBD you could in the middle of nowhere. They have 5 acres of West Australian bush, ramshackle pathways and a beautiful home right in the middle of it. We’ve only met Ingrid once but she greeted and chatted with us like she had known us forever. Their dog, Spike, a huge labrador-mastiff cross also greeted us like he’d know us forever, sniffing and jumping all over us. Ian is so proud of his land which he is cultivating strictly towards local plants. He adores his birds and we went bird spotting, his excitement growing at a flock of red-tailed black cockatoos in their trees. He sat us down with a beer in his favourite seats to watch the little birds arriving at his strategically planted bird baths. Dinner was steak on the barbie, salad and chips – perfect, simple, humble and gracious. We then walked around the block (big) to the ‘kangaroo paddock’ to watch the sunset; saw a golden sunset but not too many kangaroos. And before we left Ian gave Mick one of the most beautiful gifts ever, two perfect red-tail black cockatoo feathers that his daughter had proudly found and given to her Dad. Now isn't that just the most wonderful token of friendship?

After hitting a dead kangaroo (man did that make a noise – like hitting a rock), Ian dropped us off at one of the closer stations to Perth and we caught the train all the way through to Fremantle. The train was pretty quick!!! A shame it was dark because I would have liked to have seen the journey.Читать далее