One of those days

Today was one of those days when I wished I had a better camera, or was a good photographer, or could do the Instagram thingy, or could paint.  Or all of the above. 

Who knew lawn bowls were so beautiful? 

I couldn't really concentrate on the games as I was too busy hoping that the boy with the speckly duck egg blue bowls would have to play the boy with the blood red bowls, and the boy with the solid mustard yellow bowls would get to play the boy with the flecky dark grey marle bowls and...

I know it doesn't work like that but wouldn't it be lovely if it did.

Anyway, grand day out.  I'm pretty sure my boy (dark forest green bowls) didn't win.

I delight: Our patch of sand

One thing that punches well above its weight in terms of the pleasure it brings us is our garden.  The irony of this is that gardening at our rental house was as far from pleasurable as you could imagine, in fact it was the absolute bane of my life.

But there is gardening (daft) and there is gardening (not so daft).  We chose the latter.

We never intended to buy a house when we moved to Mandurah.  We intended to rent long-term.  But I hadn't counted on our and all other rental agreements containing something that I had great difficulty doing.  I can do many things and I love learning to do new things, but I am absolutely rubbish at having to do things that I consider wasteful, ridiculous or environmentally unsound.  So what was the thing that my rental agreement said I had to do and that convinced me to buy a house?  Water lawn.

Here is a bit more information to put that in perspective.  The Southwest corner of Western Australia has major water issues.  It is often described at one of the fastest drying if not the fastest drying region on the planet. Speedy, ongoing population growth is putting existing water supply sources under extreme pressure.  It barely rains here for about 6 months of the year so water is stored in dams, sourced from natural underground water reservoirs or produced from desalination plants.  The Water Corporation spends a lot of time, money and effort explaining the latest water shortage dramas and imploring people to use water wisely.

But it looks to me like the poor old Water Corp is pushing manure uphill. Walk down any suburban street at almost any time of the day and night here and you will see shockingly wasteful use of water.  The custom of growing and watering gardens that are completely unsuited to this climate is widespread and ingrained. People here habitually pour copious amounts of water onto even the most unkempt of gardens and the skankiest of lawns.  According to Water Corp information, 44% of residential water use here is used outdoors.  And given that 71% of water use is residential, my casual observations of what is happening in my neighbourhood tell me that the potential savings are enormous.

And the lawn here isn't even nice or usable.  I won't go into detail but push all thoughts of lush green stuff from your mind.  Push away too any thoughts of me mowing lawn with a well-maintained antique push-mower while dressed in a floral sun frock and a wide-brimmed hat.  Nothing could be further from the harsh reality of lawn (and gardening in general) in this part of the world. The unfamiliar local combo of searing heat/relentless merciless sunshine/flies/mosquitoes/soils of pure sand meant that we had to relearn how to garden.

But advice on how to garden for these conditions was easy to find.  My partner and I attended excellent free gardening seminars put on by the Great Gardens team  and I went to various council seminars on creating wildlife-friendly gardens.

So here is what we did.  Despite being mostly lawn, our large (980sq m) new property was well framed by existing shrubs and trees.  Some of these are inside the perimeter of our property and some hang over the fences from the neighbours.  Below are a few of them.

And a few more.

Ahhh.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, Australian plants and Western Australian ones in particular are gorgeous.

Not all the existing plantings are exactly to my taste but they do provide some lovely, long, uninterrupted views to far distant mature trees.  My photos don't do the view below justice but that particular one always reminds me of a gloriously blousy Karl Maughan painting.  It has pink Oleander in front, then blue Plumbago, back to a yellow wattle at the back of our property, peeps of the neighbour's orange and crimson Frangipani, right back to borrowed views of huge distant flowering Jarrah, Karri and Marri trees.

The very first thing we did was create a summer herb patch.  Here in the land of scorchio summers plants go bitter when they get heat-stroke, regardless of how much water is poured onto them.  We needed the coolest possible position so used the narrow strip down the side of the house.  A mere fortnight later that patch was producing.  We have had so much Basil for the past 6 months that I am reminded of another Fast Show character:  "This week I 'ave been mostly eating ... Basil".

But the biggest job to tackle was the enormous lawned front garden.  The process was pretty ugly - yes that is the old wool carpet used as weed matting under the paths.

But then one day three gigantic and gloriously fragrant truckloads of eucalyptus mulch arrived on our front lawn - for free.  When I expressed my surprise and delight that such wonderful stuff could be mine for free, the tree-surgeon-dude said "If it's any help to you, we drink Corona."  I was more than happy to oblige.
Here is what our front garden looks like now.

Despite planting our garden at the wrong time of the year, everything is doing brilliantly.  We haven't used our reticulated watering system once; we carefully hand watered our plants and our water bills are tiny and below half the average for our area.  Given that our plants will be well established by next summer, our use will be even lower then.  And our garden certainly wasn't expensive.  All up we spent less than $300 on landscaping supplies and plants. 

The paths and funny little birdbaths were cobbled together from bits and pieces strewn around the property.  One of my favourite places to sit with a cup of coffee is on our bed as it overlooks the birdbaths.  In the time it takes me to down my long black, up to eight different species of native birds will swing by. (I have tried and tried to photograph them but photographing birds is definitely on my "Stuff I'm rubbish at" list.) 

Now it is autumn (woohoo) and a great time for tackling the enormous back garden, which we simply weed-matted with all the stinky curtains then topped with mulch.  We won't plant anything permanent there as we plan to eventually build over that area.  Tempted as I am to put in some high maintenance topiary dolphins, (obviously not my photo.  It arrived in my inbox with a bunch of other nutso topiary creations) the heat/sun/flies/mosquitoes combo means I'll take a different approach.  And it won't be plastic lawn despite that being a very popular option here - don't get me started...

Does anyone remember growing "everlastings" or "straw flowers" as a child? I sure do. I thought they were fabulous and used to torture my mother by giving her ghastly arrangements of them poked into plasticine which she graciously displayed. Well many everlastings are native to Western Australia and I have been given thousands of their seeds. There above in the very useful room we call "the hut" (technically it is probably a conservatory but that it too grand a word for such a huckery room) is my latest batch of seedlings, including lots of kangaroo paws grown from seed and thousands of everlastings.

No time for gazing out the window while drinking long blacks now as I have work to do; I have a Western Australian wildflower meadow to plant.

I delight: New fun

If two years ago someone had suggested that I would choose to treat myself after a particularly stressful week by heading off alone at the crack of dawn to kayak for several kilometres, I would have said "Er, I think you have mistaken me for another Deidre."  (And if someone had told me I would one day own a pair of jandals, I would have guffawed...)

And yet that is exactly what I did this weekend.  Monday was a public holiday.  I awoke at 6am to a bright blue and perfectly still day: yet another that promised to become a scorcher.  My daughter was finally on the mend after two weeks of illness including 4 days in hospital, my partner was finally back home after a week away, and I was shattered after minding another off-colour child and keeping up with work from home throughout it all.  I needed a treat. 

Had I still been living in London, Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, then the form of my treat would have been quite different.  It probably would have involved gallery-hopping and vintage shopping, but to do those things here I have to travel for hours - and that always feels somewhat desperate. So here, in a place that is surrounded by water and where it is hot for much of the year, I now treat myself to other sorts of fun.

So I loaded up a car and drove literally 2 minutes down the road to Novara Beach on the Peel Inlet.  Within minutes I had parked in the deserted car park, had unloaded my gear and was gliding northwards across glassy water with not another person in sight.

I saw the usual line-up of wildlife.  As I rounded a point I saw kangaroos watching me from the edge of a reserve. A group of pelicans flew over me, which I love; when I see pelicans fly I always think how the seemingly impossible can sometimes turn out to be not so difficult after all.  I saw crabs and blowies,

and magnificent darters, one of which elegantly chased fish directly under my boat.  I saw dozens of cormorants.

After a while I turned back and rather than hugging the coastline I cut straight across the bay, taking a route that is further from shore but only marginally deeper.  In the distance I saw dolphins, but for once resisted the urge to take dreadful photos and just watched them.  I saw several groups of early morning crabbers far from shore but barely thigh-deep in water.

By the time I reached Novara again, the car park was already half-full of vehicles and trailers.  The wonderful early-morning stillness was gone, replaced by the sounds of motors, the excited chatter of people setting off for the day and the shove of boats' wakes.

By the time I came ashore the sun's rays were already harsh and by the time I got home they were fast approaching vicious.  I unpacked, rinsed down my boat and retreated to the cool sanctuary inside our house - to find the rest of my household still sleeping.  As I put the coffee on I wondered whether I should try to convince someone to come on a vintage shopping expedition with me.

I delight: Our house

To offset the previous rant I feel I should now cover a few positives.  It is a lovely quiet still night and I can hear waves crashing, which I love.  Coming up over the next few posts are a few more things I delight in.

First up is our house.  Apparently the summer that finished yesterday was the second hottest on record for this part of the world, and the hottest summer for 34 years.  But the thing is, compared to our first summer here - which was a complete nightmare and drove me quite mad - this one didn't feel so bad.  That is probably partly due to us taking the advice of locals and "lowering our expectations" of what is achieveable here in summer;  I have given up all hope of doing normal things like gardening or trying to use walking or cycling as forms of transportation during the height of summer.

But a larger part of it has to do with the fact that the house we bought and now live in is a squillion times more comfortable than the design-crime we were renting last summer.  Plus our utility bills at this house are tiny.  The irony is that this house is much older than the one we were renting and cost us significantly less to buy than that would have cost us.

This is no fluke. After the heat of last summer drove me mad I decided to take action.  We chose this particular house after doing a lot of research and reading.  Our house choice and renovations have achieved what we'd hoped thanks to the amazing resource that is The Sustainable Mandurah Home, the excellent sustainable housing collection held by Mandurah Libraries and the inspiring and informative content of Green magazine and Sanctuary magazine.  While reading for pleasure is undoubtedly a wonderful thing, reading to learn is still my all-time favourite.

We still have plenty more improvements planned for our house (the kitchen still needs a major overhaul and the outside is no oil painting - and for me, buying an ugly house was a very hard decision to make), but I am happy to report that despite another stinking hot summer, this year none of us went mad.

And while the angles are different, here is an idea of what the place looked like when we bought it.

I can't quite believe I bought that! No wonder my daughter thought I really had gone mad.

I despair: Telstra

WARNING: Rant follows

Some years ago I lived in another country and there I had a home telephone line.  I never thought much about it.  I just paid the bill every month and whenever I wanted to phone someone I just got on the blower and phoned them.  Simple.  I had my home internet service with the same provider.  The only time I ever heard from them was one snowy day when my children had been stuck indoors for an entire school holidays and had used up our internet allocation for the month.  Then someone from my internet service provider phoned me to suggest we move to a different plan as that would be better value.  Nice.

Then I moved to Australia and somehow fell through a telecommunications crack in time that now sees me with the sort of home phone service that my mother wouldn't have stood for back when I was a girl.  These days I spend a considerable amount of my time and energy just trying to keep phone and internet services connected to our house.  Those of you who have done away with a home phone line may think that just going mobile might be a better option.  But alas, I live in Falcon WA, which despite being in one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, has extremely poor mobile coverage.  Neither my home mobile (Telstra) or my work mobile (Telstra) work at my house. 

So yet again today I did not have the day I had planned to have because of Telstra.  Today for the third time this year, I went to use the phone only to find it completely dead.  On the past two occasions (this year, this rant would be far too long if I catalogued all the various problems we have had with Telstra since moving to Australia) it took several days to get the problem fixed.  The last time was only two weeks ago.  For two days our phone was dead.  Then Telstra cheerfully phoned me at work to say that the problem was fixed.  Next thing we discover that all our calls were being transferred through to the home phone of a woman who lives in Mittagong, NSW.  I chatted to her several times while we were trying to get Telstra to fix the problem.  In the end she told me that I was probably being too nice and needed to get grumpier with Telstra.  So I faked another case of early onset grumpy old woman syndrome and suddenly it got fixed.

Today I spent the day at home with a seriously ill child, no home phone and no mobile reception.  When I finally ran down the road to report the fault Telstra's response was that hopefully someone would get back to me within 3 working days.  I said "Er, not good enough" before my mobile lost reception and cut out.  Later when I rang to follow-up I was told "They needed to get a part in" as if I was calling from Antarctica!  So to all of you desperately trying to phone through with birthday wishes for my son or with exciting party invitations for me (mwah ha ha), I have absolutely no idea when we will next be able to chat. Sigh.

The thing is, Telstra and their gob-smackingly poor service have worn me down.  I despair that because of the numerous times I have had to deal with them over the past 18 months, with problem after problem after problem, that now I really do have early onset grumpy old woman syndrome. (I think it has even altered my looks.  That's me above, what do you think? ) Their inability to deliver such a seemingly simple service as a home telephone line beggars belief and has left me desperately seeking an alternative.  The problem is that everyone I've mentioned this to reckons that the alternatives are just as hopeless.  Double sigh.

A big project in Australia at the moment is the National Broadband Network.  Politicians bang on about it constantly as if somehow building a fatter pipe is going to change the world.  Well good luck to them, but given my experience of Australian telecommunications, that seems like attempting to make a souffle when you haven't even mastered boiling eggs.

To all those people who write to me about whether they should move here (and who I always have great difficulty replying to), you have been warned.

Summer holiday at our beach house

This summer we didn't go away for a summer holiday.  This was partly to do with the fact that I had just started a new job and had to work part-time right through the school holidays, and partly to do with the fact that we already live at a summer holiday destination.

Truckloads of people come here for their summer holidays; many mornings we would wake to find a seemingly abandoned beach house in our street suddenly populated with boats, vehicles and holidaymakers. Shade sails went up, patio furniture went out, shutters were opened, barbeques were cranked up.

As my household relaxed into holiday mode suddenly our house felt like a beach house too.  Days were spent waking late and hiding indoors from the heat.  Sustenance came from homemade cold tea punch, iceblocks from the freezer and GYO meals. Our soundtrack featured the pounding of the sea, tinny cricket commentary from a neighbour's radio, the faint whir of the ceiling fan and favourite music. Occasionally an adult would brave the outdoors to water our new garden, being wary of the initial stream of scalding hot hose water.  Then we'd retreat back indoors to cool air and lukewarm water from the cold tap. Hours slipped by as we read, played board games and read some more.  My housemates developed and cured various computer-game addictions.  I had no hope of getting near the computer to write.

By late afternoon, when the sun had lost its harshness, we would venture out for slow walks and sunset swims.

If you head west from our house, you will soon find this in the path.   (Don't be fooled.  There is no naked lesbian pool party. That arrow actually points into a snake-filled reserve which ends with sharp crumbling limestone cliffs which drop away into the ocean.)

Stick to the path, walk on a few more minutes and you will come to this sign.  (Sadly the only snakes we have seen here were squashed on the road.)

Then you will arrive at this gorgeous stretch of coast. 

We don't know if this patch has an official name but a well-named friend who lives a street over from us has named it Harvey's Bay. It is perfect for exploring rock pools when the tide is out and swimming when the tide is in.

Head slightly north of our house past this letterbox, which always makes me think of all the wonderful people I know in Christchurch,

and you get to this craggy coastline.  Perfect for fishing, walking and sightseeing.

Head east from our house past this sign

and you quickly reach the Peel Inlet.

Perfect for walking, kayaking, crabbing and boating.

Head south from our house past this sign, which always makes me smile,

and you soon arrive at our favourite part of Mandurah's beautiful 52km coastline: fabulous Falcon Bay.  It is always popular with the locals but in peak holiday season it gets packed.

It is perfect for boogie boarding or surfing when the surf is up or swimming out to the pontoon when it is calm.  It is perfect for shaking off workday crapola at any time, but even so I'd still arrive home from work too written-out to fancy writing more.

Some days we would venture slightly further afield to one of Mandurah's other beaches: Madora Bay, San Remo, Silver Sands, Town Beach, Doddies, Blue Bay, Calypso or Avalon.  Then we would all agree that while those beaches are lovely too, we still love Falcon Bay the most. 

In the evenings we prepared simple fridge-to-plate dinners and sipped icy-cold cider.  We'd throw the windows open and let the welcome sea-breeze in. Sweep the sandy lino and hang out the wet togs. Rinse off under a cold shower despite having plentiful scorching hot solar-heated water. Put the sofabed down, the spare mattress out and welcome a sleepover guest. I'd end the day too tuckered-out to write properly.

So head to bed to read to a soundtrack of the faint drone of a distant road, revs of courting motorbike frogs, laughter from a neighbourhood party and the flapping of gauzy linen curtains.  Finish one book. Pick up the next one from the pile. Read until the wee small hours.

Do the same again the next day and the next day and the next. No packing and unpacking.  No marathon drives.  No beach house rental costs. Just a perfect summer holiday at our very own beach house.

Come ride with me

Today for the first time in eight weeks, I am at home alone.  I've been compiling an update to stick on here.  However I love this little taste of what one member of our household has been up to so much that it needs its own outing.

Click below and go for a ride around Perth's Cultural Precinct in some mighty fine company.  The children and I just happened to up in Perth as well that day.  We enjoyed watching the smiling faces of various participants then suddenly there was someone we knew taking part.

MOBILE MOMENTS sets out across the Perth Cultural Centre for a new series of Film Portraitures for the PROXIMITY Festival, presented by The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights as a part of Fringe World 29 Jan - 19 Feb 2012  www.proximityfestival.com

Most of the time I really like Perth, but sometimes I just love it.