We took off in the bat mobile out to the town of Collie whilst Darren and Gayle played a round of golf. We had heard it was a nice drive into the hinterland which proved to be correct. It consisted of green rolling hills and when you looked back you could see the Indian Ocean. We encountered some emus and more kangaroos but alas they were too quick for us to take a picture. They are now farming emu here for the meat and we assume the plumage.
An emu does look a lot like an ostrich though the emu is shorter than its ostrich cousin, reaching anywhere from 5 to 6 feet tall. Emus also weigh less; they can range in size from 40 to 132 pounds. An emu has three toes whereas an ostrich has two toes.
Only a face a mother could love. When we lived in the north of WA back in the 1980’s there use to be a pub called the Whimcreek Hotel where they had a resident emu. He would often frighten the life out of you as he would shove his head into through your car window looking for a drink. He definitely had a liking for the amber fluid and should imagine the poor fellow suffered from liver impairment.
We stopped off at the Wellington Reservoir where we checked on some kids earing up for some abseiling but not before we had to extricate Di from the car which was no easy feat.
We limited our stops on this trip so as not to have to tackle this maneuver too often.
Collie is well known as a coal mining town and Fraser visited it back in about 1980. He remembers it as a tough working mans town and it pretty much still is. We got there in time to find a pub so we could watch the running of the Melbourne Cup. Once we entered the pub there was a definite, they ain’t from around here and they drive a posh car. We quickly and stealthy snuck out of there and found a café to watch the race.
An explanation is required as to what is the Melbourne Cup. As you all know, Aussies are huge gamblers and would bet on two flies climbing up a wall. The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s most well known annual Thoroughbred horse race. It is a 3,200 metre race for three-year-olds and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria as part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival. It is the richest “two-mile” handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races. The event starts at 3pm on the first Tuesday in November and is known locally as “the race that stops a nation”.The Melbourne Cup has a long tradition, with the first race held in 1861. It is commonly billed as The race that stops a nation, but it is more accurately The race that stops two nations, as many people in New Zealand, as well as Australia, pause to watch the race. In 2000, a betting agency claimed that 80 percent of the adult Australian population placed a bet on the race that year.Nowadays, it would more likely be 95%. Yes, we had a bet and yeap, we lost our dosh but not our shirts.
On our last stop before we headed back to Australind, we found this little wren who kept flying down to the mirror to peck at it as he thought there was another bird there. He kept at it for a good five minutes. Alas, his attempts at attracting a mate were unsuccessful. We haven’t got onto the bird life in Australia yet but we have seen a large variety already. That is one thing we miss about Australia when living in Canada and that is the call of the birds. Actually, calling it “call of the birds” is down playing it significantly. It is screeching, squealing, cackling and laughing at the top of their lungs.
After a nice lunch we drove back to Perth to Gayle and Darren’s for our final night with the guys. Everyone was pretty much shattered.
In the morning we had a few jobs to do in the city and were hoping that our replacement Visa cards would have been delivered and per usual we were disappointed by yet another bank. Plan B will go into action tomorrow.
We managed very successfully to navigate our way around the bus system into the city. The city is very new looking with modern glass sky scrapers and exceptionally clean. It is not a huge CBD but the city has a population of 2.14 million which is surprising to us.
Western Australia’s total area is 2,529,875 km² which accounts for 33 percent of Australia’s total land mass. With 12,889 km of mainland coast, Western Australia has the longest coastline of all the Australian states and territories. Based on research Western Australia population will reach 2.69 million by the end of June of 2018.
We were appalled to see that the Christmas decorations were up in the Hay Street Mall in the city but as someone said, it is only six weeks until Christmas.☹️
You Canucks are going to laugh when you hear that they spray fake snow from a can on their windows to give it that romantic Christmasy feel. It’s a bugger of stuff to get off.
A shot down the fake London Mall which has been around for years.
Rowkin Rovings Blog 