28.02.2019 Warnbro, West Australia.
A morning spent on the MRT from Harbourfront to Changi Airport. A minor setback was at a second security check where some over-enthusiastic security guard discovered an invisible pinprick hole in my tamper-proof bag which contained a carton of coconut water. I couldn’t see it but they made me go back and get it repacked anyway. I was hoping for at least a controlled explosion.
It was a nasty flight to Perth mostly because I had a miniature Kim Jong-un lookalike and his downtrodden mother sitting next to me. Four hours of shouting and switching reading lights on and off was very trying.
Met by my baby brother in Perth and driven to Warnbro.
01.03.2019 Mandurah and Warnbro, West Australia
Today was a day to live the dream and finally get to see a living stromatolite. I’ve seen many a dead one on geological field trips in the past. Stromatolites are the visible, usually fossilized, remains of one of the earliest creatures to evolve on Planet Earth. They are a sort of unspectacular mound of sticky algal mat, sediment and calcium carbonate. In the absence of anything evolved enough to eat the algae they flourished in the early seas and seriously polluted the young atmosphere with poisonous oxygen. We animals later evolved to breathe in this oxygen so I suppose we should be a little bit grateful for that.
In modern times stromatolites and their slightly lumpier cousins, thrombolites, only grow in a handful of places where the conditions for them are just right. Most of these places are in West Australia. The classic is Shark Bay but it is also a long way from here. Others include the lakes of Clifton, near Mandurah and Richmond, near Rockingham and I drove to both these lakes today.
In the evening we went to a Retired Servicemen’s club with friends Sue and George for cheap drinks, eats and live music. We didn’t win anything with the raffle which I was not at all unhappy about.
02.03.209 Fremantle and Warnbro, West Australia
We drove to Fremantle and had a look at the market there. Amongst the many and varied offerings there were stalls selling jerky and biltong made from almost all Australian roadkill creatures you can think of. We got some kangaroo jerky and also bought some bush tea and some fancy popcorn but declined the Roopoo flavour. On the way back to the truck we stopped for a micro-brewery beer and saw the big wheel where Matt proposed to my niece Tara a few years ago. Duncan’s sprawling place of work was passed on the drive back home and I discovered that giant tanks of acid are more interesting than you might imagine.
In the evening we battled to connect with Pickup’s Snr. via Skype and later watched the Tom Hanks movie, Apollo 13 on the TV. The technical similarities were striking.
03.03.2019 Rockingham and Warnbro
I played golf today for the first time in over 10 years. Duncan took me to the Rockinghham Golf Club where we met up with friends George and Tom. There were dozens of kangaroos all over the course which we nearly ran over in the golf-cart a few times but they are something you get used to very quickly. I surprised myself by managing to hit the ball and sometimes in the right direction. Apart from a persistent slice that kept putting me near the Black Boy grass trees and ‘roos to the right of the fairway. We followed up with a couple of beers in the clubhouse.
Later we had a barbie in the garden with Tara and Matt and our golfing mates George and Tom and wives. Also another workmate who entertained us with wild conspiracy theories. The best was that the Moon landing never took place as NASA now says the Earth’s atmosphere extends to the Moon and spacesuits were never needed. I have no problem with out-of-the-box thinking but bat-shit crazy …
04.03.2019 Secret Harbour and Warnbro, WA
It was a public holiday in Western Australia. Had a few hours at Secret Harbour beach body surfing with Duncan, Callum and Aidan. I think it was the first time for me in the water in Australia as there is usually something nasty in the water that is hell-bent on killing visitors. Back home and we floated in the pool for the rest of the hot day.
05.03.2019 Fremantle and Warnbro, WA
Drove to Fremantle and visited the Maritime Museum there. There was also an unmissable exhibition of Kylie Minogue stage dresses which made the whole trip 😉
06.03.2019 Warnbro, WA
Had a guided tour of Duncan’s workplace. Enormous petrol and chemical tanks and distribution centre.
07.03.2019 Warnbro and Rockingham, WA
The weather has got a cooler and a bit rainy. Fish and chips lunch in Rockingham with Lesley. Duncan was in Melbourne on business. We also took a quick look in the musty local history museum.
08.03.1019 Warnbro
Duncan back home and friends visited. Drinks and food outdoors on the patio. A very irritating noisy frog was scared into silence with a flame-thrower aerosol. Scared me too.
09.03.2019 Fremantle and Warnbro
A visit to Fremantle Prison today. A really good tour through tunnels under the prison with Duncan and George. A gloomy rainy day so it was a good place to be. We had to be breathalysed before going down the shafts on ladders to the tunnels and boats. The tunnels were a groundwater collection system and water reservoir which was very important to the early days of the Swan River Colony. The old prison was obviously a nasty place to be locked up but the full experience of that is to be had on other tours. No cameras were allowed underground just in case they were dropped on to people below so you just have to imagine that vertigo and claustrophobia were not the most useful of things to take along.
Lunch with Duncan and Lesley and George and Sue in seafood restaurant in Fremantle habour.
10.03.2019 Rockingham and Warnbro
This being Sunday there was another round of golf with Duncan and George. A second game for me in 10 years. There was the usual wildlife with mobs of kangaroos hanging around the tees and kookaburras laughing at missed shots. Also lots of noisy, brightly coloured birds in the trees which I guess were parakeets of some kind. We re-hydrated in the clubhouse.
11.03.2019 Warnbro and Perth
Lesley and I caught the train into Elizabeth Quay in Perth and got on an open-topped hop-on hop-off bus. It was very sunny needing my best sunblock. After an interesting trip around the city and Kings Park, we hopped off to meet up for tea and cakes with my niece Tara who manages at a newly-opened private-sector student housing tower block in Northbridge. We got the guided tour of the building which all seemed very luxurious compared to my own spartan student housing back in the day.
12.03.2019 Warnbro
Had a day fretting about Brexit and trying to get some German grammar into my head so I can eventually get a German passport. Later Lesley and I walked on Warnbro Beach. The beach is just a short walk passed a few houses and some sand dunes. Warnbro may just be a suburb of Perth but the streets and houses are immaculately kept and that, combined with mature decorative and native trees and near perfect weather, must make it one of the better places in the world to live.
13.03.2019 Warnbro and Rockingham
A farewell dinner was held for me in Rockingham with Duncan, Lesley, Tara and Matt and half a dozen old golfing and Navy friends. most of whom seemed to have names ending in “-o”. We started off in the old Rockingham Hotel for beers and ended up in a Vietnamese restaurant called Little Hanoi which had fabulous food. The toast was “Bugger off Martyn”, which I will take as a term of endearment.
14.03.2019 Perth and Singapore
Had a fish and chips lunch with Lesley and Leanne in Rockingham then a final round of golf at Kwinana Golf Club with Duncan and George. This course had no kangaroos but it did have flocks of ducks and geese and the occasional parakeet flouncing around on the greens.
Duncan drove me to Perth Airport for a flight to Singapore where I had 4 hours in a lounge in Changi Airport doing my best to recover the cost at the free bar, then an early hours flight to Bangkok Don Muang.
