Reaching the Pinnacle

Yesterday, we dragged all the kids out of bed by 6:45am and drove about 2 hours north to a place called the Pinnacles Desert.  The Pinnacles Desert lies on the "Turqoise Coast".  Perth is located on the "Sunset Coast".  If you go a little further north you will be on the "Coral Coast".  I'm not sure if there's a geographical feature that delineates the different coasts or if it's something else.  In any case, it was our first visit to this area, although, we've gotten about half way there on a couple of other trips.

 The Pinnacles Desert is located in Nambung National Park.  Throughout the park there are these enormous white sand, monolith-like dunes.  Because we've had quite a bit of rain lately the area was quite lush and green .  So whenever one of these white sand monstrosities popped out of the red and green desert it was surprising.  The are formed by the prevailing winds, which can be quite strong in certain areas, so strong that an international wind-surfing competition is held in nearby Lancelin annually.

 The Pinnacles are really quite interesting.  They are difficult to describe and frankly, the photos don't do them justice.  The tallest one's are maybe 20 feet high but most are probably between 4-8 feet in height.  The cause of the pinnacles are a question of some debate.  They are limestone formations that most people believe are the result of seashells that were broken down into lime rich sands which were blown inland to form high mobile dunes.  After that there's some disagreement. Some think that the broken down limestone sand was fused together by the aciddy rain and grew upwards like a cave stolagmite.  Others believe the minerals from the sand seeped into trees and essentially fosilized them.  Others believe that the minerals went into the tree roots.  Then over thousands of years as the ground was eroded by wind and rain the limestone tree roots were exposed. 

 The area covered by the pinnacles is actually quite vast or at least it seems that way.  Today, the Pinnacles receives 250,000 visitors per year.  However, the area was really "discovered" until 1960 when it was included in Nambung National Park.  Although, I'm confident that it was likely "discovered" by the aboriginals a few years before that.

 After our tour through the Pinnacles Desert we continued north to Thetis Lake.  It's a small lake tucked away just offshore.  It's main feature is that it is 1.5 times more salty than the ocean.  This results in some interesting things.  The first of which is there are no fish in the lake.  The second is that it is a very good place to watch certain bird species.  The third, and most unique, is that it is home to Stromatolites (pictured above).  Stromatolites are colonies of cyanobacteria.  These are microbial communities that produce oxygen.  These were once widespread through the planet but are now only found in isolated places where the conditions are suitable with few marine animals to eat them.  Further north, in the Pilbara region, there are stromatolite fossils that date back to 3.4 Billion years ago!  That would make them one of the oldest living organisms on the planet.  These particular ones in Lake Thetis are a mere 3500 years old.

 After the visit to the pinnacles and stromatolites we settled down for a picnic lunch.  We are getting very good at picnics, although, I've been very good at anything involving the consumption of food for several years now.  Despite it being winter in this region, it still is fairly nice during the day.  It was t-shirt weather in the afternoon during our picnic and we managed to have a day mostly without rain.

Nothing follows a picnic quite like a walk along the beach.

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This weekend marks a couple of important occasions:

1) It's Fathers Day in Canada.  So, for all the Canadian fathers I hope you have a great day of sitting around, watching sports, having your meals made for you and occasionally scratching yourself.  Or in other words, the same as every other day.

2) It's my mom's birthday.  Happy birthday mom!  Hope you have a great day!!!

The Storm of the Century?

Recently Perth has been having some nasty weather.  This has included a couple days where the winds were in excess of 120km/h.  Some tree branches were broken and a couple house roofs were blown off, but otherwise it wasn't too bad.  Nobody was hurt and there hasn't been any catastrophic damage.  We lost power for a couple hours in the middle of the night but it didn't turn out to be a big deal.  Despite that the media reported on as if it were the storm of the century and that we should all run to the hills.  There's an email that's making the rounds that sums it up nicely:



These people have no idea what real bad weather is.

Take the Perth Quiz

How well do you know Perth?  Have you been paying attention to anything written here?  Take this short quiz to discover how well you know Perth.

1) A "bogan" is:

a) A perjorative term for an individual who is recognized to be from a lower-middle class background or someone whose limited education, speech, clothing, attitude and behavior that expemplifies such a background.
b) A type of vehicle common among people in Western Australia.
c) A fish that is unique to the Perth estuary system.
d) The Australian slang term for the stuff stuck up someone's nose.

2) Rottnest Island earned it's name because:

a) The original Dutch sailors mistook the rat-like marsupials called Kuaka's that are rampant on the island for rats or "rott" in Dutch.
b) "Rottnest" is an aboriginal term meaning "a short swim away".
c) From the mainland Rottnest Island looks like an unkept birds nest.
d) It was named after Karl Rott, the German explorer who was shipwrecked and lived on the west side of the island for nearly 3 years before accidently discovering that there was a city just a short boat ride away from the eastern side of the island.

3) The acronym CBD stands for:

a) Central Business District, aka downtown.
b) Convention on Biological Diversity: an environmental conference held annually in Perth.
c) Carboxylic acid or Cannabidiol, a cannabinoid found in cannabis- a local popular treat.
d) "Can't be done": a common reply uttered in Perth when being requested to perform a service on time that has been paid for in advance.

4) Perth is said to have a Mediterranean climate because:

a) The summers are hot and dry and the winters are cool and wet, like in the Mediterranean.
b) The city is deep in debt and on the verge of default, much like Greece and Italy.
c) Most businesses are closed for 6 weeks in the summer and yet people still complain that they work too much.
d) People tend to talk with their hands a lot.

5) A "Ute" is:

a) A popular utility vehicle, much like a pick-up truck but lower to the ground.
b) A large, flightless bird that is indigenous to the area.
c) An abbreviation for a u-turn.
d) A "young person", as pronounced by a lawyer from Brooklyn.

6) The most succesful Australian musical group of all time is:

a) The Wiggles
b) AC/DC
c) The Bee Gees
d) The drunks at 4am beneath the window of our first apartment in Northbridge.

7) A "POM" is:

a) A person from the UK, aka, "prisoner of motherland".
b) The common abbreviation for pomegranate fruit.
c) A single frilly tool waved about by sports teams cheerleaders intended to maintain the spectators enthusiasm when, inevitably, the game gets boring.
d) A hairstyle much like a mullet except, if you can believe it, even more ridiculous.

8) In Perth the most popular sport is:

a) Both cricket and Aussie Rules Football- too close to call.
b) Rugby.
c) Soccer.
d) Succesfully jaywalking.

9) The main economic driver of the Perth economy is:

a) Iron ore mining.
b) Liquified Natural Gas.
c) Tourism.
d) The local liquor stores.

10) The creature that has caused the most fatalities in Perth recently is the:

a) Great White shark.
b) Red-back spider.
c) Tiger snake.
d) Foreigner driving on the wrong side of the road.


And now the results.  For each of the above, if you answered:
a- Well done.  It's practically like you live here.
b- You're close but clearly not paying enough attention.
c- Perhaps you should consider getting more sleep on a regular basis.
d- You are doing an excellent George W. Bush impersonation.

It was a dark and stormy night...

Last week in the Perth northern suburbs there was a tornado that did quite a bit of damage to some homes.  Then on Sunday, throughout Perth, there were winds of 140km/h that did some more damage.  The people whose homes wre damaged in the tornado must have thought that they were experiencing a deja vu.

We happened to be out and about during the wind storm and, frankly, it didn't seem that bad.  Yes it was blustery and gusty and there were some tree branches down but that's about it.  People here don't really know what bad weather is.  When it rains a little there are hundreds of car accidents.  When it's windy and rainy people stay home out of fear of the 'storm'.  People will literally not leave their homes in these "inclement" conditions.  People even complain when it's only twenty degrees outside.  Mind you, the way the homes are built 20 degrees feels more like 10 degrees when you're just sitting around the living room.  In general, Perthites are quite dramatic about the weather even though they don't really have dramatic weather conditions, with the exception of the odd tornado.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to disparage the real safety concerns that exist whever there are extremish weather conditions.  A tornado is certainly a seriously dangerous weather phenomenon.  However, people are spoilt when it comes to weather.  If they experienced a Canadian winter storm they would likely think it was a sign of the approaching Armageddon.  Perthists need to toughen up when it comes to a little wind and rain.

Bloody Weather- with a twist

Recently we've had some news of tornadoes.  We read about a tornado in Southern Alberta, around the Taber area.  Then that night, we had a tornado in a Perth suburb about 5 km east of us.  It did quite a bit of damage but I don't believe anyone was hurt badly.

From what I gather, tornados aren't very common here.  They're so uncommon that some of the locals confuse them with cyclones (southern hemispheric version of a hurricane).  Occasionally they do get a water spout off the coast (a tornado over the ocean) though.

It's been a strange weather year here.  The summer was very hot and dry- even moreso than usual.  The cyclones up north were particularly bad this year, although, they are not nearly as destructive as hurricanes have been the last few years in North America.  We had the coldest day in Perth in 98 years (1.5 degrees).  And now we've had a tornado.  Bloody weather.

Backyard Visitors

One of the great things about living in Perth is the abundant wildlife in the area.  Some of the wildlife is nice and some is nasty.  We get visitors of both varieties on a fairly regular basis in our backyard.  Here are some of our regular backyard guests.

 Fred and Wilma.  We're not sure if they're doves or pigeons.  They are pink and quite pretty and visit our bird bath at least once a day, in the morning, although we've also seen them later in the day also.  In this picture there are 3 birds but normally there are just the couple.  How do we know that they are a male and female?  Well, let's just say that they aren't shy.

We get all sorts of little lizards in our backyard.  Not sure what this one is but he's smaller than my pinky and was just hanging out with us on one cool morning soaking up the warmth from the sun.  When we first moved in we found about half a dozen little Geckos throughout the house (inside) but we haven't seen any since the summer.  We don't mind having these guys around as they eat bugs.

Speaking of bugs, there are a lot of them.  In the summer there are flies galore.  In the fall we get thousands of little centipedes all over the place.  Crickets are quite common.  Also, there are these little beetles that are everywhere for a few weeks.  One of the other common 'guests' are spiders.  There are many spiders here; some large, some small, some harmless and others dangerous.  In the picture above, this is a dead spider, beside my finger for scale.  Believe it or not, this isn't a particularly dangerous variety, although, I'm sure it wouldn't feel very good to be bitten by it.

And then there are the visitors that are actually invited.  This is the neighbours dog "Archie" that Keva will occasionally take for a walk and sometimes bring to our house to hang out.  There are a lot of dogs in the neighbourhood and most of them are very well behaved.  Our back yard is open from the front of the house so we tend to get a lot of our neighbours dogs running through our yard (and occasionally leaving a land mine).

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We've been trying to explore as much around us as we can to learn about the area, become acclimitized and have some new experiences.  We've really only gone 'away' on one trip to the Gold Coast of Australia.  The rest of our trips have been fairly local, i.e. within 1 hour of Perth.  We've been south to Rockingham and Penguin Island.  We've been north to Yanchep and the caves.  We've been east to the hills of Perth but we haven't been west yet to the top tourist attraction in the area: Rottnest Island.  In the meantime, here's what we've been up to recently:

 Climbing some red rocks in an area called John Forrest National Park in Mundaring just east of the city.  This is actually a waterfall without any water.  It was dry when we took the picture about 3 weeks ago.  Now, with the rain we've had, I'm sure a river runs through it.  The area is very Australiana with it's bushland and red and green landscape.

 

 Here are the boys walking through an old rail tunnel in the same park as the picture above.  The tunnel was about 500 meters.  Despite it being a bright and sunny day once we were in the middle of the tunnel it was so dark we couldn't see our own feet for where to step.  All we could see was the pinprick of light ahead of us and behind.  It's a very unnerving feeling. 

 The primary wine region of Western Australia is about 3 hours south of Perth in the Margaret River area.  However, there are still some local wineries just outside the city in the 'Swan' region.  Nadia and I spent a day visiting an area about 30 minutes outside of Perth that housed about 40 wineries.  We even managed to go to a free tasting although most of the wineries were charging for it.

Just yesterday Nadia and I went to Lesmurdie Falls just east of Perth.  It is a wild pocket of nature surrounded by suburbs.  We hiked for about 2 hours and then stopped for lunch.  It was a very picturesque locale despite being surrounded by an industrial park.