Japan

OK, haven't been blogging for ages.

I went to Japan last month to see the cherry blossom, explore the art, history and crafts of Japan and, most importantly, to shop for fabric!

I did this and more. I drank lots of sake, explored bazaar department stores and toy shops and spent lots of time on the wam, comfy bullet trains.

I came home with about 9kg of fabric and other mementos!

Unfortunately, I didn't come back with nearly as many photos as I had taken. My brother (usually a computer wizz) busted my memory card and I lost all but 300 photos out of 1800 taken in the first week and a bit of the trip.

Anyone know how to retrieve photos from a dodgy memory card???

Here are some of the pics I took (ok, still ended up with 1000 pics)

Clippers

The yachts from the Clipper around the world yacht race arrived in Geraldton in mid December. They had sailed from South Africa and they are now on their way to Singapore in the fifth leg of the 56,000km race which began in Hull, UK in September.

The presence of 200 crew members and their families was a real boost to the local economy over Christmas while surrounding towns recorded a dip in visitors.

The race was supposed to stop in Fremantle, but the council there didn't think it would do anything for their economy so refused to host them. Our win!

They departed on Sunday afternoon. The race goes for 10 months, but each crew only does one leg of the race on the 68 foot yachts.


<--Spitit of Australia yacht

More info can be found here on the official website

and in our local paper

Yachts race passed the Sun Princess cruise ship

After having been on this ship the morning I went to see the yachts, the 68foot-ers didn't look so big!

Denmark's main attraction

The little town of Denmark in SW WA is but a little spot on the map. It is surrounded by beautiful forest, has an award winning bakery (best known for its pies), is mainly populated by hippies and has the World's Largest Barometer.

This is the 12m high Bert Bolle Barometer in the barometer museum in the Denmark visitors centre.

According to the tourism website Bert and his wife moved from the Netherlands to this town (perhaps they got a bit lost?) in 1999 and couldn't part with his beloved barometer, so brought it with him.

The Giants

The SW of Western Australia, especially around Walpole and Manjimup is known for its tall trees. I've seen lots of trees before, some of them quite tall, but I wasn't prepared for the size of these!
This tree is the Diamond Tree Lookout near Manjimup. Towers were built at the top of these trees for fire lookouts. You can kind of see the lookout in the second picture.
There is a ladder of spikes running all the way up.

Here are some crazy people climbing it! I wasn't game. Nor did I have the energy.

Amos looking thrilled at the prospect of another bumpy road

The pictures really don't do justice to the size of these trees!

New Blog

I have started a new blog called 'Strangeness'. This will be filled with strange pictures of strange things I have come across in my travel and include some attempt at humour.
If you have any strangeness pics, feel free to send them to me!

uvobs.blogspot.com

Mandalay Beach

This is Mandalay Beach, also near Walpole. Named after the ship that was wrecked there (last photo). No, I didn't bother climbing down the stairs...