A rare bird

Today I couldn't do what I had planned to do.  I went to work but soon after I got there my lovely workmates sent me home.  Go for a walk on the beach, they said. Smash something, they said.  Is there anything we can do, they said.

I went home and quietly made a casserole and put it in the oven at the lowest possible temperature.  I listened to a radio show and jotted down some book recommendations.  Then I went out into our garden and murdered a hedge:  the useless Oleander and Plumbago one I wrote about a while ago.  As I hacked and smashed at it I disturbed insects, spiders, and other tiny creatures and soon had unintentionally created a feeding frenzy amongst the regular avian visitors to my garden.  Ravens and Currawongs, Magpies and Peewees swooped and scratched and pecked and feasted.  Other regular visitors came and went and carried on their usual daily business around me. Wattlebirds and Honeyeaters. Galahs and Twentyeights.  Red-capped Parrots, Regent Parrots and  Elegant Parrots.  Wagtails and Silvereyes.  Butcherbirds. Our common, ordinary, everyday birds.

But today I wasn't thinking much about these birds.  Today all I could think about was a group of rare birds and how much I miss them and long for any of them to saunter into my garden.  My rare birds: my best women.  My sisters and sisters-in-law.  My mother and aunts and cousins.  My friends. Wise, clever and funny women.  Brave, hard-working and amazing women.  Good fun and bad influence women. Creative, talented and stylish women. Kind, thoughtful and caring women. Inspiring women. I thought about how incredibly lucky I am to know them and how much I'll enjoy seeing them all when we visit New Zealand at the end of the year.

But as I dug and lopped and barrowed and sawed, I thought most about one particular friend.  I thought about the day she and I met nearly two decades ago, way back in the simple days before houses, mortgages and children came into our lives, back to before our boyfriends became more.  I was alone at a fancypants function while my partner had swanned off to be important.  As I stood uncomfortably in a crowded room full of strangers wondering what to do next, a gorgeous elf of a woman with an enormous smile collected me up and swept me over to her group of friends, and promptly made me one of them. Today I thought about her wedding night.  I thought about sitting peacefully in a cabin in the bush in the early hours of the morning as I took my turn supervising  her guests' sleeping babies, then hearing peals of my friend's raucous laughter slice through the stillness as her new husband tried to serenade her. I thought about how on the last time my family visited her family, her cheeky husband pointed appreciatively at her backside as she stood at the kitchen bench making coffee, causing her to spin around and demand to know what was going on when we all burst out laughing.

I will never see this friend's enormous smile or hear her raucous laugh again. As I thought about her motherless children and her wifeless husband and all the other people who now have a Helena-shaped hole in their lives, I wiped tears from my cheeks with my filthy gardening gloves.  I thought about how life isn't fair, but I already knew that - few people are lucky enough to get to my age without learning that lesson.  Rest in peace wonderful, beautiful Helena. You were a rare bird indeed and I feel so privileged to have had you in my life.

The pictures in this post are of Carnaby's Cockatoos.  These big black birds are stunning and captivating but sadly also endangered.  Sometimes a big flock of them visits our garden creating excitement and mayhem and a mad dramatic cacophony in whatever tree they land in, but not today.

Big day in

This weekend followed a familiar pattern.  Often our weekends consist of one big day out then one big day in.  The big day in is usually spent gardening, catching up on household chores, reading and relaxing.  Big days out, well, more on them later.

This weekend's big day in was an especially satisfying one as it meant that all the books that have languished in our shed for the nine months since we moved in here could finally come into the house.  I have been hunting for some shelves for months and was about to admit defeat, head to Ikea and join the other 60 million Billy bookcase owners.  For various reasons, I find shopping in Mandurah often tricky and usually unsuccessful.

Anyway, what Mandurah lacks in other ways, it makes up for in op shops.  There are loads of them and they aren't the over-curated, over-priced and picked-over disappointments you find in the big cities.  These are your basic hit-and-miss, sometimes crusty, sometimes fabulous old-school op shops.  And the joy of living in a place where few people seem to share my taste is that when something I love turns up in an op shop it just ... sits there.

So it was with the great big mid-century design classic Ladderax shelving system I snapped up from a local op shop this week.  Way back here I wrote about how I dreamt of finding one of those, never really believing that I would.  But as "our Rach" would say, "It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen".

After setting them up and rearranging the library/study/Lego Pit/living room, we now have a different assortment of things in the big shed that we no longer have room for in the house: mid-century vases, Betsy my beloved cowhide orange slice chair, a Fler lounge suite, various small bookcases, quite a few books and perhaps even seven Tretchikoff prints - most of which I originally picked up at op shops. 

Looks like I may need to spend my next big day in having a garage sale.

Fungi foray

Eventually the rain did stop and the sun came out.  We escaped from the great indoors and went for a walk in the great outdoors.  Here is what we saw.

Yes, it it fungi-time, or more accurately, fungi-fruiting-bodies-time.  Some were familiar and many were not.

A few showed evidence of having been nibbled on by the creatures we call "fancy rats", that is the weird and wonderful small mammals of Southwestern WA.

Everywhere we looked there were more.  I quite enjoy sorting my stinkhorns from my earthstars, or baskets from boletes, but this day I was well out of my depth so just enjoyed looking. 

My favourite one of the day wasn't on the ground but far above our heads.  That Pored Fungi was the size of a large dinner plate and the loveliest creamy yellow.

The greatest excitement of all though was in our own backyard.  I guess you can't expect to dump three truckloads of wood chips on the lawn without getting some serious fungal activity, but every day there seems to be some new thing erupting from the mulch.  Many of the fruiting bodies in our garden also show signs of being eaten which I hope means that our quenda is still in residence, even though I haven't seen it for a while.  I do see its odd little diggings in the soil often though.

Yesterday morning I went out into the backyard to do a spot of digging myself and spotted something repulsively fascinating.  It looked like someone had spent a tough night on the turps, then indulged in a dodgy curry, then left us a present.

This time I did go rushing for my fungi books and to various websites.  What we have is a slime mould.  They aren't actually fungi anymore; they got kicked out of the fungi kingdom!  My description wasn't too far off the mark as there is even a slime mould called a dog vomit slime mould.  Nice.  The wonders of the natural world never cease to amaze and amuse me.

If you enjoy a spot of fungi spotting then I can highly recommend Mandurah's Marlee Reserve.  Or come for a cup of tea at my house.

Many shades of grey

We are only a few weeks into winter.  This year ours has been relentlessly, unusually and depressingly grey.  The sun has barely emerged from grey-blanketed skies for weeks.  

Mandurah's thousands of grey nomads have pulled down their roller shutters, packed up their mobile homes and trundled off to warmer climes. On a cloudy Sunday, with the shops all shut, Mandurah's city centre feels like a ghost town.

One grim day I looked in my wardrobe for something bright to wear and realised that three quarters of my wardrobe now matches my hair: many, many shades of grey.  My new merino tops arrived in the post (black and grey); they are so lovely and warm that I haven't wanted to take them off since.  Accessories and lipstick for colour I say.

We have been enjoying soups and casseroles and pies; I gathered up the free-range grey pumpkins from the back garden and transformed them into a cauldron of spicy and colourful soup.

It is weather for snuggling up by the fire weather and reading.  Everyone I know seems to be sniggering and guffawing through Fifty shades of grey, but not me.  I am too busy reading to plan our next trip away.  We were eyeing up the coldest place in the state, Bridgetown, after falling for it on our way back from Albany.  But instead, like wannabe grey nomads, we are planning our first roadtrip north of Perth.

I can't remember our previous two winters being this dull, dreary, bleak, miserable and cold.   

I never thought I'd say this here, but I wish the sun would jollywell come out.

Wet, wild but not very woolly

I hope I haven't given people the impression that the warm sunny weather this part of the world is known for continues right around the year, because that would be a big fat fib.  While day after day of clear blue skies and warm temperatures are definitely a feature of our @#$%^! summers and glorious autumns, there comes a time every year when that weather pattern comes to a soggy and often spectacular end.  We are usually desperate for rain by that stage so when the rainy season finally arrives we are ready with coats and quilts, casserole pots and new soup recipes.

But rain here is rarely a gentle thing.  It usually arrives as part of explosive electrical storms and wild cyclone remnants.  We get lashed by ferocious winds and soaked by torrential downpours on a regular basis over the rainy winter season.  Astonishing amounts of rain fall then disappear into our sandy soil almost immediately and send my partner off to check his new favourite website. It is a dramatic and exciting season but sadly also dangerous and damaging.

The latest big storm swept through on Sunday, putting paid to our planned family daytrip.  Instead we all hunkered down inside, feeling thankful that we'd just had our chimney swept and had spent the previous day excavating an old water tank from the back of the garden and installing it to use as a woodshed then collecting up all the firewood from around the garden. 

At 2pm my partner was busy reading his book while listening to Lou Reed, my daughter had just taken a cake out of the oven and was online shopping (buying a Slytherin cape - but that is another story), my son had just finished rereading a book and was playing an electronic game, and I too was online shopping.  I had created a cosy online basketload of something I have had little success finding in the shops here: merino tops.

Then there was a very loud bang and the power went out.  The scene outside our living room window was one of complete mayhem.  Huge tumbleweeds of our street's once tidily stacked organic waste collection materials barrelled down the street.  Wheelie bins took flight then slammed into houses.  Fences fell and trees bent in two.  Our street is nestled behind a hill and is quite sheltered from onshore winds so we knew that the houses just a few streets away near the beach must be receiving a terrifying battering.

We settled down to eat cake (lemon, delicious), play our new board game (Carcassonne the City,  fun) and watch the storm.  Finally after a couple of hours the rain stopped, the winds dropped and the sun came out.  Like those idiots you always hear about on the TV news, we went out for a walk around our neighbourhood to survey the damage.  Below is the full extent of the damage on our property.

Further down the road it was a less pretty sight.  Two of the things I love most about our suburb are its somewhat ramshackle style and its huge trees.  Now it is considerably more ramshackle, but not in a good way, and sadly has considerably fewer huge trees.  Every  pigugly Super Six corrugated asbestos fence in the neighbourhood lay flattened and will probably soon be replaced with the equally pigugly modern equivalent: Hardifence. (We have both types and sadly it is all still standing.)  Some houses in our neighbourhood had major damage and it was obvious to us that we might be without power for quite a while this time (our power is forever going off) so we went home to prepare.

We had a lovely Sunday evening eating takeaways by candlelight near the roaring fire while watching a Harry Potter movie together on my iPad. (We tried the "Lumos!" spell with no success.)

The next day at work I charged all our various devices and batteries, rang a firewood dude to arrange a delivery, then on the way home I bought a Mazda2load of tinned food and a wee gas camping stove.  Two hours later our power came back on.  We were without power for 26 hours and fared far better than the thousands of people who are still without power and aren't expected to get it reconnected for days.

Sunday's storm was described as a "once in a decade event" and was the most damaging event ever for the electricity network.  Now there is a severe weather warning for another storm due this afternoon; the warning I've just read says it will have even stronger winds than Sunday's storm.  So I spent this morning creating a nice cosy place for snakes to shelter filling our woodshed,

putting away the patio chairs and cooking strange meals with all the partially defrosted food from the freezer.  And given that this is only the beginning of the wet, wild, stormy season, I think next I'll have another go at buying myself some woolly clothes to wear.

Beautiful Balga

There is one striking plant around these plants that I never tire of looking at and was keen to plant in our garden.  The distinctive Xanthorrhoea preissii or Australian Grass Trees are called Balga in the local indigenous Nyungar language (sometimes also spelt Noongar,  Nyoongar, Nyoongah, Nyungah, or Noonga) and are common in bushland here as well as in gardens and public plantings. 

The one above is in a front garden in Dawesville, the ones flowering below are in bushland near Dunsborough,

and here are some spotted alonside the Bibbulmun Track near Dwellingup.

I've seen Balga trees set alight as part of Nyungar "Welcome to Country" ceremonies and I know of gardeners who either trim or set their tall Balga trees alight every few years to keep the accumulation of thatch down. They can survive all but the fiercest of bushfires like this trouper near the town of Harvey.

We know a local artist who collects the resin from the trunks of burnt trees, crushes it then mixes it with solvent to create an amber lacquer (complete with impurities) which she then pours and paints onto canvases.

Balga trees are very slow-growing and very long-lived (up to 600 years) so when land is cleared for housing developments they are often salvaged and sold.  The success rate for transplanted trees is apparently quite low unless a huge chunk of soil is taken with them, which of course makes the whole process very expensive.  Even the ones that do eventually thrive can go through a startling Ugly Duckling phase while settling in.

I had already decided that much as I wanted one of these trees in our garden, I couldn't be bothered with the expense and hassle of a transplanted one.  Then I was given some Balga seeds.  I sowed them recently and now I no longer need to covet the beautiful Balga in other people's gardens as I am the proud owner of 36 trees of my own.  

After reading one of our plant books I did some calculations.  I discovered that a) when I am 85 I'll have to make a decision about trimming, burning or just leaving the build-up of thatch, and b) when I am 135 those trees and I will be about the same height.

Albany: more than just "cold".

As I am sure you have gathered by now, one of my favourite things to do is explore new places.  But lately lining up opportunities to go exploring for more than a day-trip has been impossible; four people's various work, school and other commitments meant we didn't even have a clear weekend for months.  Finally these last school holidays we all managed to get away together for five days.

We made our first visit to Albany which is a city of approx 33,000 people down on the south coast of WA.  Whenever I asked people about Albany the first thing they would do was correct my pronunciation of the city's name (I was saying All-bany and the only way I could make the local pronunciation stick in my brain was to think of Albi the racist dragon).  The second thing they would say was "Oh it is cold there.  Pack your warm clothes."

Well, I have lived in Christchurch, Wellington and London and I'm not scared of cold weather.  But I began to get an inkling that there was far more to Albany than just cold temperatures as friends here are forever "popping down to Albany for a few days".  We needed to see for ourselves so we booked four nights in an inner city apartment, packed our (mothballed) warm clothes, and got on the road.

Not much to say about the trip there.  Takes about 5 hours by the most direct route which is deadly-dull.  But the second we clapped eyes on Albany I could see the attraction.  It reminded me of a cross between Lyttelton, Wellington and Dunedin, which are all places I love.  The mix of hills, history and harbour were wonderfully familiar and welcoming. It made me realise just how alien the architecture, landscape and general style of Mandurah still feels to me.

We couldn't wait to get out exploring so quickly unpacked, put on walking shoes and raincoats and walked out the door.  I was so busy enjoying the place that I didn't bother taking many photos, but imagine dozens of secondhand shops (and I am severely deprived of these living in Mandurah), a wonderfully walkable downtown area framed by craggy peaks on either size, packed with dishy designer boutiques and surrounded by quaint historic homes with front verandahs almost on the footpath.  We jammed a huge amount into our visit and even decided to save our planned excursions to neighbouring towns for another time so we could spend more time in Albany.

Albany's newish (Dec 2010) entertainment centre is pretty stunning.  My partner spent time there meeting the management then we all went to a show there one evening.  It is statement architecture and quite controversial but we loved it.  It is right on the waterfornt and is part of an extensive planned waterfront redevelopment. It is a tricky building to photograph as you can see from my best effort below.  For better photos of the centre head here.

Markets.  Ahhhhhh.  On the Saturday we walked 3 minutes down the road to the weekly Albany Farmers Market which was celebrating its 10th birthday. What a fantastic market.  Within minutes by purse was empty and our shopping bags were full so we walked three minutes back through the rain to our apartment for a feast.  My favourite purchase were the yabby pies.  Yum! 

Then on the Sunday we walked along the waterfront to the Albany Boatshed market. Some of the same stall-holders were there - and some of us found the yabby pies irresistible again - and some different ones.  With live music, wine tastings, artisan craft stalls and cooking demonstrations, this market has quite a different atmosphere from the farmers market - just don't ask my to choose a favourite.  If I lived in Albany I'd be a regular at both markets.  Purchase of the day were masses of luscious, affordable feijoas which we scoffed in record time. (If feijoas ever turn up in the shops in Mandurah they cost $2 each and are small, woody disappointments).

Other highlights included exploring various historic sites including the convict gaol,

which included an extensive and very entertaining collection of miniature scenes,

and other random curiosities including a boat made out of matchsticks.

We took a tour of a replica of The Brig Amity and found Batman's berth - no not the Batman, just a marine batman or manservant.

And yes, although I often bang on about how recreational shopping is for people who need a bit more happening in their lives, I shopped.  How could I resist when the original Ricarda boutique is there?  (Amongst other labels they stock Camper, Trippen, Kartell, Margiela, Comme de Garcons, Junya Watanabe, Marc Jacobs, Lee Mathews and Zambesi.  Sigh. We certainly don't have any of that carry-on in dear old Mandurah!) I took the newly fashion-aware teenager with me.  She has lovely taste in clothes.  My purse got hammered again.

We went to Whale World (but whales will get their own post at some stage), on nature walks,

and to beautiful beaches.

I would and will do it all again as Albany is far more than just cold.  Albany is cool.