What I did on my holiday

G'day all!

Lynne and Nathan had waited a long time to go away. Nathan had booked the plane

(Jetstar, Australia's cheapy Qantas airline that isn't a Qantas airline. You buy your food and drink on the plane, if you don't bring your lunch/dinner/drinks with you. Comfortable seats, new planes, adequate service)

so we drove to Avalon Airport, once only a military airport, and inconveniently 60-something km from the city. We got our baggage on the plane by the barest margin and got us through the security stuff, there to wait until we boarded the plane.

We arrived at Perth and our chauffeur picked us up and drove us to Merredin, three hours away. He also just so happened to be the liaison for the council that Nathan had been talking to for hmm four months.

Nathan had to work, but Lynne got to play and play she did. After walking about 12km on the first day, cars came out of the woodwork (so to speak). She got to know some of the wildflower locales quite well :-) She also nearly got blown away, literally. She thinks only two days in seven were not getting up to gale force winds. She had to buy more hair ties cos she left them all at home. And a brush cos the comb she had was not up to the job!

The social calendar was quite full - dinner with our host's friends, dinner with friends we met two years ago, dinner at the local ancient (and freezing) theatre followed by the Guitar Heaven show, a trip on a friend's bus..... (next time I'll try to remember to link to the guitarists' websites cos they played some great music.) Nathan had dinner with the councillors one night.

Here's the major crafty output for the week. Who would think that yarn that looked like this in the ball:



would look like this in the sock?

For some reason Lynne ignored the obvious evidence and decided that these socks would be stripy, not pooled. Thanks, Peeve, for the yarn :-)

(I knitted one of the socks in just over 48 hours. Any chance I got, I knitted. Y'see our host took a liking to the first sock, declaring it was a very fine sock and most excellent (though she would not wear a jumper made of the same yarn). So suddenly I was a Lynne with a mission. Our host was very pleased with her gift :-))

Let's do some pictures. Here's two views around the local (ie just across the road and up the street) parkland:





and some around Merredin:







(heh. A cold front blew in and things got a bit wet and even more blustery)

Merredin is a wheat town, but they have to diversify and start to love their bushland more. They have some terrific road reserves but some of the wheat cockies (farmers) think the bush is just useless scrub. It brings tourists though. People like me. Of course people like me are useless to the cockies.


Speaking of cockies, here are three of the local red tailed black cockatoos - funny birds with their crests raised as they look at me suspiciously. I saw about 20 of them feeding on or destroying this Melia.


This is the only part way decent shot I got of their tails showing the red flashing. (not clickable)

I'm still putting together a web page or two of pics, more pics than anyone wants to see except for plant nuffies like me and Nathan. I haven't gone through all the pics yet. So many pictures. Argh! Too much to do (like find some temping work and clean the house and get the garden planted out, if it ever rains....).

anon!