A380

One of the few exciting things that has happened in Perth in recent months was a visit from QANTAS' brand new A380 aircraft. Plane nuts flocked to the airport to witness the arrival of the world's largest aircraft.

I was lucky enough to be at work that day, so got to see the plane fly overhead and later taxi past my office! It is a very quiet aircraft which is surprising for its size, but shows how much technology has improved (the loudest aircraft here are the small older ones like the 717s)

Quiet

Ok, so I have forgotten about/been avoiding my blog for a while. Sorry to those dedicated followers!

My plan had been to do some exploring of Perth and the surrounds and get excited and write stuff. I did a little bit of exploring, got fed up and wasn't inspired. I think getting lost in Kings Park killed my exploring side (as did petrol prices)!

I also don't think I read any books following the previous post!

What has been taking up my time is sleeping, patchwork and art. I have been taking oil painting classes for just over 3 months and watercolour painting for 1 month. Don't have a whole lot to show for it (especially as my camera won't take good pics of it), but more pics to come!

Small things

I recently read the book 'The god of small things' by Arundhati Roy. Like some other books I've read of late, it meandered through a story, taking turns here and there, back and forwards through time, then returning to the present. It could be hard to follow at times, but the poetic language and the anticipation of all the tangents coming together, kept me reading.

Here is a sample:

"It was past midnight. The river had risen, its waters quick and black, snaking towards the sea, carrying with it cloudy night skies, a whole palm frond, part of a thatched fence, and other gifts the wind had given it.

In a while the rain slowed to a drizzle and then stopped. The breeze shook water from the trees and for a while it rained only under trees, where shelter had once been."

I just realised that, predictably, the quote is about weather...oh well

Mangles Kangaroo Paw

The long way round

Finally, one of my days off was going to have good weather, so I went to Kings Park in the city. It is a huge park with views of the river and city and includes the Botanic Gardens as well as bushland.

There is meant to be a wildflower festival on throughout September, so I went with great expectations of seeing lots of different flowers and displays (like Melbourne's Flower and Garden Show I guess). This was not to be.

The only thing with came close to a bloomfield were these pink everlastings around the carpark!


I had a bit of a look around the WA botanic gardens which feature plants from different parts of WA. There were lots of Kangaroo Paw (left) and Geraldton Wax (right). And then more kangaroo paw and geraldton wax.

So I headed to a path which said 'nature walk' and once I got passed a tour group, enjoyed walking through bushland and spotting wild flowers. Most of them I have already seen at work, so I wasn't too impressed (Though I did realise I'm quite spoilt having bush and wildflowers at work!). We have lots of grey cottonheads (yellow flower below - don't know why they are called 'grey cottonheads'!), kangaroo paw and wild gladiolus (pink below)

However, I did see a spider orchid along with donkey orchids (pictured in a previous post) and also Fringe Lilies, which had been my ambition to see. I was lucky to see them because they are smaller than I imagined (2cm across) and grow on vines which coil themselves around other plants. I was really lucky to have this photo come out, because I really needed super-macro!

<--Spider orchid

Fringe Lily-->

<--Blue devils



The nature trail was meant to be a circuit. I really should have guessed that Kings Park would be as badly sign posted as the rest of Perth. Turns out it is a circuit - if you know which paths to take. They are not marked. They just cris-cross each other. So I ended up walking for a rather long time and got rather sunburned (just like the other time I went to Kings Park). I eventually made it to the perimeter road at the south end of the park and considered hitch-hiking back to my car because it was quite a way. I was very unimpressed and really don't think the whole expedition was worth it to see a tiny lily and one orchid!

Light at the end...?

Had a crazy day at work yesterday. Winds gusting to 44kts (82 km/h), rain, changing visibility....

I couldn't open the balcony door because of the winds!

That was fine, until the automatic thermometers went down! I was sending out reports every 5-15 mins instead of the usual 30 mins, and had to run through the wind and rain to read mercury thermometers. Then I had to try to fix the auto ones.

I couldn't get a tech out to fix the thermometers (why do things only break on a Sunday?) so walked to the enclosure every half hour to read the temperature. I was feeling bad for the guy who had to do this on night shift.

They were supposed to be fixed today, but weren't. And now the auto rain gauge doesn't work either. So it's lucky there is no rain today!

So now I am on nightshift, wandering out into the dark, cold night twice an hour. I'm hoping it doesn't get as cold as last night: 0.4 degrees!

But at the end of the day I was rewarded for my efforts by witnessing these amazing rainbows!