Southwest Australia

Margaret River Country - March 12 & 13

Collin and Linda arranged a trip to Margaret River country, south of Perth. The area is renowned for its many wineries. 

On the way we stopped in the costal city of Mandurah for coffee and a visit with Linda's friends who live there.  While we sipped coffee, something like a Walk for the Poor passed by led by a bagpiper.

We picked up fresh vegetables at a Farmers Market before stopping in Busselton for a late lunch seaside. The pirate ship must be lots of fun for kids to clamber about. We had very good fish and chips with our beer, before riding the little train to the end of the jetty and back. The Jetty at 1.84 km is the longest timber piled jetty in the southern hemisphere.

Stopping at Mandurah for Coffee and Visit with Friends

                                         Busselton State Park

                                        Equinox Restaurant & Bar

                                                   Busselton Jetty

Eight Willows

We stayed two relaxing nights at the Eight Willows retreat barbecuing our dinner  both nights.  Our day in Margaret River country began with a stop in Cowarump for a look round and the village of  Margaret River for coffee and to pickup a sandwich to go. 

Cowaramup

Hamelin Bay

Hamelin Bay is known for stingrays but we did not see any.  A few raindrops sent us scurrying to a shelter for lunch.  The beaches near the mouth of the Margaret River, part of the Leeuwin Naturalist Natural Park, are denoted  Margaret River Main on the signage.  The board walks reminded us of the board walks around Albany south of here.  A number surfers waited offshore for just the right wave.  Richard walked down the steps to the beach just for fun.       

Margaret River Main - Surfing & Beach

Happs Winery 

Wine tasting at the picturesque Happs Winery is free with more than two dozen wines from which to choose with no limit on the number sampled! However, one must buy a bottle to drink out on the lawn. We did.   Then it was time to return to Eight Willows for dinner and a restful evening before the drive back to Perth. 

Perth Revisited - Part Two

March 11 - A day pass for Perth Transit costs only $4.40 AU or about $3 US.  With the pass we rode the train into Perth and back took the ferry across the Swan and back!

Train at Edgewood Station

Exiting the train station in Perth, we were just steps from the pedestrian mall on another beautiful Perth morning.

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The figures atop the clock go round when the clock chimes.

Eight years ago we attended a reception with the mayor in the building in the background.

                             We were here and now we are back.

Bell Tower - We ran the bells last trip and added a lock.  No luck finding it, the lock I mean!

At Elizabeth Quay.   Was all under construction eight years ago. 

                  A ferry ride across the Swan.  Perth across the river.

                                     Perth from the Ferry

Rottnest Island

 

March 10 - We drove down to Hillarys Harbour, a large marina to board a fast ferry to Rottnest Island. Tons of bicycles boarded with us. Seems like bicycle is the preferred mode of transportation on the island as private motor vehicles are not allowed. Cycling is not for the weak of heart, however, as roads are all up and down. We chose the hop on hop off bus as did the half of Perth without a bicycle did too.

Leaving the Marina

                                     Rottnest on the Horizon

I rode on the top deck under a clear blue sky skimming over blue water for the forty minute trip to the island. The island was inhabited for thousands and thousands of years except for the likes of Quokkas. Quokkas look a little like rats hence the Dutch given name Rottnest. The island was once all pine forest but is now mostly scrub. Nevertheless, amongst the rocky shoreline are beautiful white sand beaches, snorkeling spots and mooring fields. Rottnest is a supreme destination for Perth cruisers; we saw many on moorings, all power, no sailboats

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Power Boats at Anchor

Toes in the Water at one of the Many of the White Sand Beaches

Rocky Shoreline

Due to the unexpected number of hop on hop off riders, we didn't hop off at many really inviting places as we planned to for fear of not being able to hop back on.

  Quokka

                                               Quokka

Quokka by the Tail

Quokkas are nocturnal so are likely to be spotted in the wild only in the early morning or late evening. A few apparently have adopted to modern times and hang out around the food court. 

After our return to the main land, went attended a birthday party at a seaside restaurant for one of Colin and Linda's daughters. Joanne and I split an order of Indian Ocean fish and fries. The both were excellent.

Perth Revisited Part One

March  9 - Collin and Linda drove us Cottesole Beach Park on a beautiful Perth morning. We had a coffee and walked along the beach to view the beach's modern art. Lots of children and their escorts wearing matching hats and tee shirts were bouncing about clearly on school field trips.  

 Cottesole Beach Park 

With a little sand in our shoes, we headed for the GameField by the Optus Stadium for a pizza. After pizza and beer, we walked across the Matagarup pedestrian bridge that spans the Swan River. This is all new to us to Perth as well the stadium dating from 2017 and the bridge 2018.  

On the other side of the river stands the Friendship Force Wall.  The wall stands along a beautiful hike and bike trail that runs all along the river. 

We were here in 2014 with the Fort Worth Club in 2014. Here we are again. If you click on this picture, you can see the many clubs that the Perth club has hosted. Perth is a popular place! 

San Francisco on the Way to Perth

 

March 6 - Up at 5 AM and all packed, we left our home and Bleu to begin our month long trip from RSW. Joanne drove with Stan in the front seat and Richard in the back. Stan and Joanne talked the whole way to the airport. At the airport we said goodbye to Stan and handed him Joanne's keys so that he could drive my car back to our house.

Stan and Pam, FF friends from Western Michigan, will house-sit our home and care for Bleu while we are gone.

Stan snapped a photo of us at RSW 

Joanne's boarding pass for the final leg of our trip to Perth on Singapore Airlines did not print. The United agent assured us this wouldn't be a problem. We've been down this road before, so I was not reassured.

Over our long layover in San Francisco, we “chatted” and spoke with United and Singapore Airlines representatives for hours the result being there was nothing United could do. Joanne would need to check-in for the flight to Perth with Singapore Airlines before a boarding pass could be printed. Her boarding pass could not be printed at the gate. I had my doubts. We would have one and half hours in Singapore to fix the problem if our flight from SFO was on-time. It wasn't!

We rode the BART train to Montgomery Station in the city and walked a few blocks on a beautiful afternoon to the Modern Art Museum. Some of the works we liked appear here.

                    At the Museum on a Bright if Chilly Afternoon

Joan Brown, a local artist, painted the three above. A number of her works featured cats!

We left late cutting layover time in Singapore to about 30 minutes. While in the air I “chatted” with a Untied rep as we have free WiFi via T Mobile for text while in flight. He saved us seats on a Singapore Airlines flight that would leave much later getting us into Perth around midnight but did not rebook us right away.

March 7 - Day 2 vanished in flight. The head steward promised he would give it back to us if we flew back to San Francisco with him.  

March 8 - As our flight approached Singapore, the head steward, holding a text in his hand, told us that they were aware of our problem. He asked that everyone without a short connection remain seated so that we and few others could get off first. Of course, he was ignored but we still got off first. A rep met us as we entered the terminal with directions to the Singapore Airlines gate. Of course, it was at the other end of the terminal. We made it with two minutes to spare and boarded the plane bound for Perth!

Our bags ,as expected, didn't make the flight. They did however arrive on the next flight. Singapore Airlines arranged for a baggage service to deliver our bags to our hosts, Collin and Linda, home. All we had to do was provide contact information. I gave them the wrong house number.

Linda and Collin met us at the airport. After dinner and a couple of glasses of wine we stumbled into bed.

March 9 – On our way to the beach, a call from the delivery service driver to Collin revealed that we had provided the delivery service with the wrong house number, 28 instead of 29. Not a problem, Collin sent the delivery guy across the street to his house where his granddaughter waited to receive our bags. 

All is good.  To be continued.

St George Island

 We drove up to St George Island to visit with our friends, Betty and Richard, who were driving back to Houston from their Asheville home.  

Sunrise from the condo Sunday morning

On the Beach Monday Morning

Sand dunes are preserved in the state park.. 

IAN and United

  On the way to Turkey IAN ran into us or rather Florida on September 28th two days before our scheduled flight to Turkey from RSW. IAN was the deadliest hurricane to make landfall in Florida since the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 but we did not die. Our house remained intact. 

I, Richard, prepared by putting up our storm shutters, bagging clothes, books, electronics, etc. and stacking stuff as high as possible as a significantly high storm surge was predicted for Punta Gorda. I also raised the boat up high on the lift and strapped the boat down. As an afterthought, I added a stern line tied to a cleat mounted on one of the dock posts.  We had also parked Joanne’s car midlevel in Punta Gorda’s downtown parking garage. 

Following an old adage, Run from Water, Hide from Wind, Joanne, Bleu and Richard evacuated to a Day’s Inn along the Interstate and on high ground in Sarasota. We wanted to be close by so that after IAN passed by, we could drop Bleu off at the Cat Cottage and be home in time for our ride to RSW on the 30th. 

We weathered the storm in the Days Inn watching the horizontal rain blow by on the 28th and returned home early afternoon on the 29th.  Ian had uprooted our lime tree and bushes along our lanai, ripped branches off our Crape Myrtle tree and stripped away leaves and palm fronds leaving the palms and trees bare.  Some of our lanai screens blew out. Some water apparently blew in the vent on the roof but otherwise the roof was fine.

Despite the stern line, the wind pushed Lickity Split about two feet forward on the lift. The cleat on the dock post almost pulled out. 

A bunch of sheet metal we later learned was part of our neighbor’s chimney mangled our mail box but that was about it for damage. We were lucky.  

The power was out and the water just trickled out the faucets. 

Although the Cat Cottage was intact, the owners refused to take Bleu as the next-door unit in the strip center suffered extensive roof damage.  United informed us via email that our flight out of RSW was cancelled.

Our friend, Judy in North Fort Myers, agreed to add Bleu to her troop of two dogs and one cat. Joanne changed our reservations to fly out of Miami Saturday evening. 

She made a confirmed reservation for a rental car to be picked up at the Punta Gorda Airport in the morning. I had my doubts but kept my mouth shut. Sure enough, in the morning we found the rental car building damaged and obviously closed.  Deciding to drive Joanne’s car the Miami, I made a reservation at Park and Fly for the car and we were off to Turkey! 

After we checked in for our flight, Joanne called United to change our return trip to Miami. The agent said we really couldn’t do that once we checked in but he would try.  Later I checked the United app on my phone and we were all set, we thought.

Skip forward three weeks. Time to come home. 

I checked my United App – we were all set for our trip home. United had even emailed me request to choose entertainment options for our trip to Miami. 

I had made a reservation through Trip Advisor for a transfer from our Izmir hotel to the airport for 3:30 AM. The van arrived right on time.  A smooth check-in at the airport for our Sun Express flight to Frankfurt went well with a minor glitch: our boarding passes for  the Frankfurt to Newark and Newark to Miami didn’t print out. The gate attendant assured us that everything was fine; happens all the time. Our bags were checked to Newark. After boarding the plane, I checked my United App again; our final destination was now Frankfurt!

At the United gate in Frankfurt, we found that we weren’t on our flight, it was sold out and we weren’t on any flight at all!  We waited about hour and a half for the gate agent to finish the boarding of our plane. In the meantime, Joanne called United’s 800 number; United waitlisted us on a Lufthansa flight. Our helpful gate attended realized that made no sense and got us confirmed on Lufthansa to Orlando connecting via American Airlines to Miami. My reservation printed out but Joanne’s would not!  He said Sun Express had control of Joanne’s ticket and she would have to go to their main check-in station to get it. 

We went to Lufthansa to get my ticket and get help with Joanne’s. The agent told Joanne she could not help her and to go back to United. She told me to go to gate Z19; she even wrote “Z19” on my ticket.  So, I went to Z19 to wait and Joanne went off to find Sun Express.

After a while Joanne called to say that she couldn’t find Sun Express and that nobody seemed to know where they were.  Well, I thought maybe the Lufthansa agent at Z19 might know where Sun Express was located. I explained our problem. She said that it made no sense to go to Sun Express and anyway their agents had all gone home as they no more flights that day!  She made a couple of phone calls and then told me Joanne could her ticket a gate Z58, the gate for our flight! Why I was at gate Z19, I will never know. 

We got to gate Z58 in plenty of time for the flight but the flight was delayed an hour and a half because the caterer was late with the food. 

We arrived in Orlando late but missed our connecting flight. Our bags made it too! We had to rent a overpriced motel room for the night before getting a flight the next morning.  

After a bit of confusions and a near melt-down on my part we got our boarding passes for the American Airlines flight. Joanne’s boarding pass included the TSA Precheck verbiage; mine did not. The regular security line didn’t seem to be that long so I thought I would just get in line.  Wrong! The line made a right turn and down the airport about a block and back again. Luckily, a CLEAR agent offered to sign me up with CLEAR which would allow me to skip the line completely so I went with it.  It cost $189/yr but I could cancel within fourteen days at no charge. I did. I made it to the gate. We made it to Miami We picked up our car at Park & Fly. After stopping at Five Guys for hamburgers, we drove home.  We were lucky!    

Back home debris was piled high nearly to the sky. Our was mostly lawn waste. Around town, we could see furniture, insulation and all kinds of stuff lining the roads. Blue tarps covered parts of roofs  everywhere.  Friends' boats suffered damage far worse than our boat did. 

The FEMA claw picked up our yard waste the end of October; many many piles of yard waste and rubbish still line the streets of Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte.  

October 24 - Welcome Home! Later, we added the lime tree and the pile got bigger!

 

October 31 - The Claw Comes to Lido Drive