Perth – Travels with Ali

~ A Town Mouse or a Country Mouse, which one are you? ~

This is the question posed by Tina from Travels and Trifles this week. We are all familiar with the famous story by Aesop from our childhood. The moral of the story is “living a simple and happy life is better than living an extravagant life with constant fear“.

Of course we all want a happy life, not so sure about simple. I love living near a city, but not in one, just near enough to get an exciting vibe whenever I feel the need. On the otherhand, I do like the peace and quiet of the Perth suburbs.

Having lived and worked in London and also Hong Kong, I enjoyed the hustle and bustle of city life. We lived in the countryside in Hong Kong, an anomaly right there, but it wasn’t too far to drive into the city.

Hong Kong City – Day & Night

Hong Kong Countryside

Perth – Countryside and City

I love a city break for two or three nights, see the sights and visit fancy restaurants. Coming home to my serene suburban life is always welcome at the end.

🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭 🐭

~ The Changing Seasons – November 2024 ~

It’s been a fairly quiet month here in Perth for me. Many outings with Rosie of course, including one to the zoo. A few dinner dates, a concert in the park and a trip to the cinema. The weather has been very changeable, with a few hot days, extremely windy ones and too many cold ones!

On the day we went to the zoo it was slightly overcast and a few rain clouds about. Ideal for walking. I thought I had arrived early enough to find a carpark near the entrance, but not early enough as it was full. We drove around up and down the side streets and eventually found one, around ten minutes walk. Rosie seemed happy to walk. We hired a stroller once inside, but I ended up pushing it mostly empty! We had a lovely few hours checking out all the animals.

From here it all went downhill pretty fast. We walked back the allotted ten minutes and I said to Rosie, “hmm, I don’t remember walking past this building”. Well, after dragging Rosie up and down for almost 40 minutes, I called my daughter. I said, “Sorry, but you will have to come and pick us up. I’ve lost the car.” This was supposed to be her day to herself. We had to wait another 20 minutes but I was glad of the rest. Anyway, of course we found the car pretty quickly, I had missed a turning. Needless to say, the zoo is off the list for a while.

A day out with the munchkins at our favourite place, Chapel Farm. They keep some alpacas on the grounds. Such cute animals.

From a walk around Subiaco, looking at the new murals being painted.

Christmas cookie baking, although the icing was the best part

Taken on separate nights while having happy hour in my garden

Linking to The Changing Seasons, Last on the Card and Lens Artist Challenge – “Make me Smile”

🌺 October Highlights from Perth 🌺

I’m joining “Changing Seasons” and “What’s Been on Your Calendar” for the month of October. Feature photo is from my garden.

I see from most of the posts people are enjoying the Autumn months and getting reading for winter. Here in the South Hemisphere we are coming up to our hottest months. We are still having a few cold nights here and there. So, I haven’t put away my winter clothes yet. Although I have been here too long to really appreciate what cold actually means!

It’s been a fairly quiet month, no travelling, having just returned from Bali at the end of September. The school holidays still had a week left at the beginning of September. So, I spent a day with the munchkins. In our local town they had arranged a dinosaur hunt. This entailed looking for posters of dinosaurs in and around the shopping centre, with prizes and games along the way.

We sure had a big long walk around town, which made for a quiet afternoon.

I thought my garden could do with some new flowers, so one week I took Rosie to the local garden centre. We had a lovely wander through the plants and flowers and Rosie chose a Kangaroo Paw.

I love Alstroemerias, also known as Lily of the Incas. They are always in flower and are a great ground cover adding plenty of colour to the garden.

We enjoyed a visit to one of our favourite wineries, Stringy Bark. It’s an hour’s drive, so Anthony’s car had a good run.

Iron sculptures at Stringy Bark

There are some new murals in a nearby suburb, I managed to see two on our way to dinner.

The mural below is by Wild Drawing. A Balinese artist. His work can be found around the world. WD is based in Athens.

Artist – Finton McGee

As we move into November it’s high time we sorted out the garden and patio areas. This means weeding and cleaning in preparation for a houseful of guests, arriving in late December.

There’s always time for a cocktail though.

~Monochrome Madness – Shadows in the Playground ~

This week Sarah from Travel with Me has chosen everyday objects for Monochrome Madness. I took Rosie to the playground yesterday and snapped a few of the equipment and used the shadows filter.

I’m not sure if playground equipment qualifies but I thought they were objects and used everyday!

Everything in this playground is safe and fun. Squishy floors and tree bark to break any falls, safety chains on small swings and gates with locks at all sides. Nothing like the playgrounds of our youth, which were a veritable minefield. Vertical slides so high with smooth shiny surfaces to help you fly down and land in a heap on the concrete floor. Roundabouts that spun out of control as you held on for dear life and wouldn’t dare try to get off. Kids swinging and jumping off when it was at its highest. Most of you over 50’s probably broke a bone or knew someone who did!

Although saying that as we sat down for a snack on a bench, a kookaburra flew straight into Rosie’s face to see if he could snatch her croissant! We were both so shocked, she was so brave though and had a little quiver in her lips when she said “But I’m so kind to kookaburras”.

**Had to laugh at this man, shouting at him,**
**“I’m going to throw my cap at you”**

~ Postcard from Perth ~ Swan River and Heirisson Island

At the beginning of the month I had an overnight stay at the Crown Perth with my lovely friends. The hotel sits right by the Swan River and even though none of us had taken the correct walking shoes we still managed to have a wander by the water.

I was happy to see some sculptures along the way too.

Spanish Black Granite Sculpture
Oushi Zokei

Willem de Vlamingh was a Dutch sea captain and arrived in Perth during the late 17th century. He named the Swan River after the large number of black swans he saw. He and his crew first landed on Rottnest Island and saw numerous quokkas (a native marsupial), and thinking they were large rats he named it ‘t Eylandt ‘t Rottenest (“Rats’ Nest Island”).

The reason for our stay was to have our last girls’ hurrah before the lovely Lisa departs for good back to the US. A few photos below of the fun we had.

Having our own rooms was a luxury.

**High Tea complete with gluten free and vegetarian options.**

Next was a swim by the pool and then off to the casino to try and win some of our luxury stay back! Sadly we didn’t hit any jackpots.

Then some fun in our rooms before checking out.

🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂

With school holidays on at the moment I thought I would take the munchkins to Heirisson Island where there is a kangaroo sanctuary. It’s not far from us but never having been there I asked Anthony along to be the driver. We easily found a carpark and proceeded along the river in search of kangaroos. Rosie didn’t bring shoes so all I had to offer was an old pair of Lachie’s wellies, which were a tad tight! After walking for ten minutes she started to cry saying her feet hurt, so onto Anthony’s back she went.

With the extreme hot weather Western Australia has been experiencing, everything was very brown and scrubby.

We walked along the river for a while and there was a lovely breeze blowing off it, but once we were in the middle with no shade it was fairly hot.

Still excited and not too tired yet!

We finally found a bench to sit and have some snacks but no kangaroos had been sighted.

Thinking we would have to walk back we came across another family who were looking at their phone. I went up to them and said have you seen any yet, and was informed that the husband had found a group but we had better hurry as they were bounding away.

They were hard to spot, being camouflaged by the brown grass. As you can see Lachie was very happy that we finally found some.

Heirisson Island was named after French midshipman François-Antoine Boniface Heirisson in 1801. It was once home to the Nyoongar people.

Also linking to Jo’s Monday Walks

~ Postcard from Perth – February 2024 ~

The week before last Laurence and Maddy flew over from Melbourne for one of their friend’s engagement. As we have known his friend Harry for the same length of time we were also invited to the party! I was very excited to be going, not so my dear husband. He said he would only stay a while, which was fine by me as I had both children there and their partners, so would be well looked after – or “babysat” as my daughter so kindly put it.

I had bought a new dress, red wine in colour. When I told Elena she sent me the invite again “black /white cocktail dress”. What to do? Wear it and hope no-one noticed or do as I was told and dress in black or white. I’m so glad I did as I was told, as the fiancee wore bright pink in a sea of black and white.

It was such a fun party and I was reluctant to leave but Elena and Damian were also going home and I didn’t want to hang onto the tails of Laurence and Maddy. I had also had a few too many!

Many of Laurence’s old friends were there and it was good to see them all again. All grown up into prosperous young men, which I may have doubted back in the day when I used to find bodies all over the house in the morning. Our house was a bit of a hub for gatherings and sleepovers, of which I was grateful for, on most occasions. Getting woken up at 3 am by the doorbell was a fright I had many a time. I would look out of the window first to see if there was a police car, breath a sigh of relief when there wasn’t and stomp down the stairs with great anger saying “how hard is it to take a key”.

Sunday dawned and I didn’t have much time for a lie in as I was also going to be out for most of the day. My friend Lisa had bought ten tickets to & Juliet. We were going to the matinee performance at Crown Theatre, Burswood and having brunch before.

I think it was unanimous that it was a day well spent. The musical was magical with marvellous performances from all the cast. I’m not that keen on musicals when I don’t know the songs, but we all knew the songs taken from a modern day playlist.

The story of this musical follows Romeo and Juliet if they didn’t die as Shakespeare wrote. Anne Hathaway decides she doesn’t like Shakespeare’s ending and wants to rewrite the story. At the end of the performance everyone was up and dancing by their seats, it was a great feel good musical.

The rest of the week has been extremely quiet and I’ve hardly left the house. On Monday I thought I would sweep the leaves at the front and pull up some stubborn weeds. By Tuesday I was in agony with a pulled back muscle. I’ve been to the physio and due to go back next week. I feel a slow recovery happening. Until then no dancing, zumba or aqua aerobics. Plenty of binging tv shows and reading. My family think I have a low pain threshold, but who knows someone else’s pain – what is low and high.

Posted as part of Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share

~ Postcard from Perth ~ November 2023

This last week has been another busy one for me, beginning with entertaining guests from the UK. I have been chatting a while now with Little Miss Traveller (aka Marion from Love Travelling Blog) and when she emailed and said she would be visiting Perth with her son Mark I immediately invited her to stay. They had a few days in the City before joining us for their last few days. We hit it off immediately and Anthony and I showed them around different parts of Perth.

Perth was in the grip of a heatwave and the temperatures were late thirties, but we still ventured to Kings Park the next day. We enjoyed a good walk around the park but I had to concede in the end and sit in a cafe while Marion and Mark carried on for a while.

We then drove into Claremont my local town to have lunch and a look around before heading back for a rest (for me anyway!). That night we had dinner in Fremantle at a beachside restaurant.

On Sunday we drove to the Perth Hills to one of our favourite wineries, Plume. We always receive a lovely welcome here and the service is outstanding as are the views.

I had told the lovely owner that I would be bringing guests and she arranged a wonderful table for us overlooking the valley and vineyards. We enjoyed a delicious charcuterie board and a dish called Flammekueche a German style pizza.

We stopped off on the way home to take some of the views of the Perth Hills and the Perth Skyline in the distance.

Over the next two days Marion and Mark took themselves off and explored other parts of Perth, which I’m sure Marion will be posting soon.

On Marion and Mark’s last night we had an early dinner overlooking City Beach to watch the sunset. It was one of my favourite restaurant/pubs Clancy’s Fish Pub. Unfortunately for Anthony in my haste to take a photo of the sunset I knocked over a whole pint of beer into his lap and over his dinner! Luckily the manager replaced these free of charge, but poor Anthony had to sit through dinner very wet indeed. He was extremely gracious about it.

It was a pleasure to meet Marion and her son Mark and we did compare other bloggers who we follow and found we had quite a few in common. So many of you will recognise Marion. Meeting someone in person, especially when you have been communicating a while can be daunting, but we certainly had no worries on that score and got on like a house on fire.

~ Postcard from Perth ~ 28 October 2023

The last week here in Perth has been pretty busy for me and last weekend I was out and about in the hills of Perth. On Saturday I went on an art trail with a friend. In the hills and surrounding areas there are many small galleries, featuring all kinds of crafts, artwork and sculptures. There was an open day so we took the chance to have a glimpse at the work. It was also a great way to see some of the countryside. The weather has been fantastic, but I haven’t put away all my winter gear just yet as it is still very cool in the evenings.

Some of the artwork in the gardens

We saw some beautiful houses, all very different, I couldn’t live up there though with the danger of bush fires throughout the summer.

On Sunday we had our winery date and once again drove out into the countryside, this time to the Wheatbelt region. About an hour and 15 minutes drive from our house. I had booked lunch at Stringy Bark Winery. In the middle of the state forest (luckily we didn’t get lost this time actually in the forest itself as we did the week before!).

It doesn’t look much more than a shack but nice and cosy inside and a good menu too.

**Chicken liver pate with cranberry relish**

This was absolutely delicious which I had with a glass ..or two.. of their Verdehlo.

**A bottle of their Cabernet Savignon to take home**

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Monday I drove over to Elena’s and had lunch with her and Rosie in a cafe on the river. I saw some amazing murals on the toilet block. Better than having them look like a concrete grey block. My feature photo is looking across the river.

Beautiful mosaic decorated box

The parks and reserves on the river banks in Perth are great places to visit. There are always bbq facilities, picnic areas and of course intricately designed playgrounds for kids. There are also purpose built playground equipment for wheelchairs. A day out doesn’t have to be expensive, who doesn’t love a picnic.

Linking to Pull up a Seat and Weekend Coffee Share/PPAC

~ A View Through a Web ~

I was at the park the other day with my granddaughter and this view caught my eye. I like a photo to be naturally framed.

This was taken with my Samsung S22, I didn’t edit it but did use Ribbett to frame the frame – so to speak. I like the sectioned views of the Perth Skyline.

Perfect for John’s Cellpic Sunday and Debbie’s One Word Sunday – View.

~ Postcard from Perth ~

It’s been a wonderful week here in Perth with the arrival of the newly engaged couple, Laurence and Maddy. We’ve had family lunches and dinners and days out with them. There’s nothing like having all your family around.

My featured photo is the golf course that I live opposite, I have to say though I’ve never been tempted to take up golf. My Dad used to love coming to visit for their annual three months, where he would take up a temporary membership. Just recently I have been walking to Bridge which is the other side of the golf course. I could walk straight across, but I’m not keen on dodging the balls and also don’t think the players would appreciate a random walker suddenly appearing between holes.

Walking around the golf course is like walking through an aviary. There are so many birds flying around now it’s become warmer. I can hear parrots squawking, kookaburras laughing, crows cawing, cockatoos screeching and magpies trilling.

The red Bottlebrush trees are in full bloom along my street. As you can see there are many trees, so not quite sure why our council has seen fit to plant 1,500 more trees along our street and the surrounding suburbs. Maybe to stop the many golfballs that come flying into our driveway. Only last month Anthony’s back windscreen was smashed. The Golf Club do pay for repairs, but it’s the inconvenience of getting it repaired.

These birds are all very tame and quite happy to pose and then fly on their way.

I saw a wonderful mural walking back from Zumba the other day and had to stop and take a couple of shots.

**“A Single Act of Kindness, Creates Endless Ripples”**

I loved the quote to go with it.

Also last week I went to watch my 5yr old grandson during his swimming lessons. I felt a bit sorry for the teacher trying to stop these little guys jumping up and down, they looked like tadpoles, such excitement. It’s amazing what was achieved in two weeks with the majority now water smart and being able to swim. I remember going for swimming lessons but around aged 8 or 9, not as young as 5. I came away being able to doggy paddle.

Now the house is quiet again as the happy couple have left for Melbourne, so we will have to start planning a trip over to see them.