Wednesday morning blues

This morning arrived and we are more than a little sad that today is our last day in Perth. The city itself is in a magnificent location, with water and bays all around. Richard and Margaret have been wonderful hosts and despite their attempts to kill me by making me cross dangerous 4 lane highways, where there are clearly no foot crossings, they have been more than kind and generous.

On Monday Margaret lent us her car which was really nice and somewhat foolish as I haven't driven an automatic since the last time I was in Australia. Luckily the quiet area in which they live gave us the chance for a peaceful practice, before we hit the main freeways. We were honked at a couple of times in our first journey but after that did fairly well. We went to see Richard's school which is well worth a visit, and having been to plenty of schools in my time it takes quite a lot to impress me. We met the principal who explained a little of her philosophy, in that she wanted it to look more like a university campus than a school, and you have to say she has achieved that.

After the school it was off to some personal study for us in the Swan valley vineyard  area. Unfortunately, as it was Monday many of the cellar doors were well and truly shut. This was a vital piece of information which had not been imparted to us. We travelled for a while on the Great North Highway and found a national park which we decided to visit. The Walyunga national park is the basin where the Swan and Avon rivers meet.

Our arrival was greeted with glee by the millions of flies who were waiting for the first visitors of the day to arrive, we saw only two other cars in the park and therefore to the flies we must have seemed like fresh game. They descended on us in their droves.the Western Australian salute, i.e. batting flies away from your eyes was very much to the fore.We walked along one pool for about a mile and saw a kingfisher, we then returned to the car and went to other pool where we saw two kangaroos. Now Australians are fairly blasé about kangaroos, but when we see one in the wild we become very excited and tell each other how lucky we are. The fact that there are millions of them out there does not dampen our enthusiasm.

After our wildlife adventure we found an open vineyard that had a restaurant on site. So we had lunch there and afterwards Rosemarie did a wine tasting. We spent some time talking about vine yards we have visited, a subject no doubt we could bore the world with. The wines were good and we bought a couple to share with Richard and Margaret. A quiet  evening ensued with our hosts to mark another wonderful day in Perth.