While Not Working

"I only wanted to go to Melbourne for the weekend." The woman from Port Pirie sat with me in uncomfortable airport seats, watching all the ticketed passengers saunter onto their flight.  "And I've got to come back tomorrow and then drive back to Port Pirie."  She sighed and refreshed the Qantas app.  "I'm going to get coffee and figure out if this is worth it." Luggage trolley queue. All this waiting resulted from something going up in flames over at the Qantas terminal in Melbourne the night before.  Planes with all of a sudden nowhere to unload were parked all over the tarmac, the terminal was evacuated, and Qantas passengers found themselves cancelled and re-booked all over the place.  All the passengers who had planned to fly from Adelaide to Melbourne on Friday night found themselves booked on my flight on Saturday morning, and I was relegated to the side-lines.  I drank overpriced airport coffee and watched all the morning activity outside. S...

The old cat lay stretched out on the artificial grass in the courtyard, belly up to South Australia's fickle sunshine. He hadn't moved all morning. "I think he's dead, " I said to Roger, and poked him with my toe. He snorted and opened one disapproving eye to glare at me. OK, still alive. We'd cared for this cat intermittently for the past four years and all of a sudden he'd become an old man cat. At the ripe old age of 17, mind you, so nothing to sneeze at in cat years. Living his best doorstop life. "He sneezes quite a bit," his owners informed us blithely as they nipped out the door bound for Africa. "Make sure you give him his medicine." Medicine taken, the cat settled next to Roger on the bed, both of them channelling their inner geriatric. Next minute an explosion of sneezes echoed down the hallway, followed by howls of horror. Roger appeared in the kitchen all ln a rush, franticly washing his glasses in the kitchen sink. "He...

 Real life was calling. We jumped on a plane and flew out of Perth on a beautiful morning. I had a window seat and the plane was old enough for me to have full control of my window, so I took a lot of photos and now I'll share them with you. We flew over the Canning Dam, one of Perth's  water reservoirs. And over the Lake Grace salt lakes and Chinocup Nature Reserve. Islands in the salt of Lake Dundas formed delicate scallops of salt, sand, and earth.  Somewhere between Balladonna and Caiguna we flew off the edge of the world, and into the clouds. Clouds stayed with us all the way across the Bite, gave a teeny tiny glimpse of Port Lincoln at the bottom of the Eyre Peninsula, and an even more fleeting glimpse of the shoreline of the Yorke Peninsula. Then there was a peek at the Barossa Reservoir, and before Roger could say " This is smoother than I expected" we were touching down in rainy Adelaide. Hmm, are you sure we've left the UK? We collected our luggage, reun...

Fresh off our tour of the Round House, we wandered up to the old Fremantle Gaol on the hill behind our flat.  The prison was initially built by and for convicts, but in 1886 became the State Penitentary and new home for our friends from the Round House. Built out of limestone blocks quarried from the ridge on which it stood, it has the distinction of being the best preserved convict built establishment in the country and enjoys World Heritage status. Convict origins aside, the complex was a prison for much of its life and also served as an internment centre during WWII. Entrance to the prison was and is through a medieval-style gatehouse. We were led around the prison by a very entertaining guide who was absolutely bursting with interesting anecdotes and stories, many of which I suspect sacrificed fact for the purposes of a gripping narrative. Indeed, at one point she confidently informed us that WA still had the death penalty, something which was easily checked and blatantly false...

DB Shaw arrived in Fremantle on October 21st 1892, tasked with overseeing the unloading of his ship for his employers, Messers Simpson & Shaw, New York.  On October 27th he wrote sourly that "My crew are half drunk. Some have cleared out and the others too drunk to work."  Sarcasm crept into his writing as he noted "I have not received any letters or papers from you.  Hope you are so busy in the Store that you could not find time to write."  He signed himself off as "I am, Gentlemen, your obedient servant," and went back to supervising his recalcitrant crew. DB Shaw's letters took pride of place in a cell in Fremantle's Round House Museum, down the end of High Street overlooking Bather's Beach and the breakwater. The Round House occupied the top of a limestone ridge between Bather's Beach and High Street.  Completed in 1831, it is the oldest European building on the West Australian mainland and incorporated eight cells and a jailer'...

Having done my work penance, I was keen to act like a tourist for the few days we had left in Fremantle.  Off we went to the West Australian (WA) Shipwreck Museum. Rusting anchors featured large in the Shipwreck Museum's grounds, each one of them representing a shipwreck. I spent hours at the Shipwreck Museum, staying long after Roger had to take his complaining back home. Ship's bells are apparently very useful in identifying ship wrecks, as they (usually) have the ship's name on them. The museum was full of stories: here's the tales of one plate, a ship wreck, and an engine as told by the museum with a little bit of help from my friend Google. The Plate : Back in the 1600s the Dutch developed trade networks all over the then known world.  Bless their little trader hearts, they weren't the slightest bit interested in empire building in the manner of some of their neighbours (I'm looking at you England, France, Spain, and Portugal).  They figured out how to use ...