A tale of sunshine ...
Whew. I think I'm now up to speed with LJ and I've just finished my emails. I was going to fit in my Elfwoody comments as well, but I don't think I'll have time before my BBC comedies start (Wild West, Bromwell High and Little Britain back-to-back in the one night *hugs ABC imports*). If not this evening, tomorrow! I have late conga lines to join in ;)
Since I didn't talk about my holiday last time, that's what I'm going to bore you with today. Muahaha! There is no escape! Unless you just don't click on the LJ-cuts, I guess. But otherwise, there is no escape!
First up, I have to apologise to everyone for my sudden vanishment! I was going to mention the fact that I had a holiday lined up with my meagre little savings, but the Blackberries ended up gulping all my free time in that last week. I really wanted to finish it before I left ... no holiday distractions! (In the end I only managed to finish it about five hours before I had to leave for my plane!)
So, yes. I went to Perth to stay with my sister and her boyfriend in their absolutely gorgeous apartment *jealous mutters*. It was brilliant. The weather was A-class Western Australian summer, no cooler than 30 degrees and no hotter than 34 the entire time I was there. And it was dry WA heat, not humid Nagoya heat. We could go out and sit in the hammock outside wearing T-shirts at 12am ... where else, I ask you, where else? :D
I had no idea how much I had really been missing home until we were driving around West Coast Drive beside the Indian Ocean. I mean, obviously I've been pining for a decent bit of sunshine for forever, but I guess the old ocean fever eventually stops biting you until you feed it again. I could have cried to see it, except that it would have been girly and my sissy would have teased me. ;)
I must go down to the seas ocean again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied ...
(I can't remember the rest of that [mildly edited ;)] poem. Whose is it? Anyone know?)
There is nothing, absolutely nothing I find more beautiful than looking out at that vast, flat expanse of turquoise water just engulfing the horizon, lined with perfect white sand. Well, nothing except maybe seeing the same view at moonlight when it's all gone silver, with all the stars coming out in the big, open WA sky. I even miss those noisy, thieving bloody gulls hovering in the breezes over the water. Argh, argh, argh, it's bitten me hard and I want to go home :(
... I feel I may have digressed somewhat :P
Holiday. Yes, holiday. We packed a lot into a pretty short stay - the Big Day Out concert (my sister bought me a ticket for Christmas, which is the reason I took the holiday ... we saw Franz Ferdinand and they were fantastic!), a visit to the AQWA aquarium (SEALS! *squee*), a visit to the planetarium and SciTech, and Rottnest Island, which deserves its own blathering section. As for SciTech, it's kind of a science exhibit place, but a lot more fun than it sounds ... this season's display was espionage technology, and I got to sneak through a room cross-beamed with security lasers :D
Rottnest Island is a beautiful little island just offshore - I think it's only 10km or 11km long, something like that. It's the most famous home of the quokka, a gorgeous little marsupial that looks sort of like an insanely cute hopping rat, hence the name (a Dutch explorer called Vlamingh named the place). It's also famous for diving around all the shipwrecks that ended up there.
We took the ferry out in the morning, hired some bicycles (cars aren't allowed on the island! yay!) and went for a pedal around the place. I nearly died, picture of health and fitness that I am, but it was brilliant fun. When we stopped for lunch there were fearless little quokkas hopping around and nudging tourists' legs, trying to prod them into giving out food. Unfortunately the 'Do Not Feed The Quokkas' signs sort of spoiled that for them, but I was tempted. ;)
After our munchings we went snorkelling around the reefs at a place called The Basin. So, so happy to be swimming around in my ocean again :D We saw lots of fish - a whole pile of some sort of wrasse that swum around without paying much attention to us, and some small shoals of tiny fish you could swim through and scatter (I guess they thought we were jerks), and even three beautiful angelfish. And stuff. It was fantastic.
We stayed a bit too long, so we missed out on the glass-bottomed boat tour we'd been planning to take around some of the reefs and local shipwrecks, but that was all right. More to do next time ... and there -will- be a next time.
I won't keep glutting the detail - I can hear the snores from the back row already - so suffice to say it was a wonderful, wonderful holiday, yaaay. I have pictures, but they're not uploaded to my computer yet. Instead, here's a mildly confusing jump to some of the pictures I uploaded of Hastings Caves before I went away (that was during my first holiday here in Tassie with my Japanese friend).
One of the back chambers of Newdegate Cave, with a really beautiful shawl.
Oooh. Ahhh. (Click on any of these to look at the full one, by the way.)
A rain of stalactites and straws ^_^
Next time, some quokkas!
Since I didn't talk about my holiday last time, that's what I'm going to bore you with today. Muahaha! There is no escape! Unless you just don't click on the LJ-cuts, I guess. But otherwise, there is no escape!
First up, I have to apologise to everyone for my sudden vanishment! I was going to mention the fact that I had a holiday lined up with my meagre little savings, but the Blackberries ended up gulping all my free time in that last week. I really wanted to finish it before I left ... no holiday distractions! (In the end I only managed to finish it about five hours before I had to leave for my plane!)
So, yes. I went to Perth to stay with my sister and her boyfriend in their absolutely gorgeous apartment *jealous mutters*. It was brilliant. The weather was A-class Western Australian summer, no cooler than 30 degrees and no hotter than 34 the entire time I was there. And it was dry WA heat, not humid Nagoya heat. We could go out and sit in the hammock outside wearing T-shirts at 12am ... where else, I ask you, where else? :D
I had no idea how much I had really been missing home until we were driving around West Coast Drive beside the Indian Ocean. I mean, obviously I've been pining for a decent bit of sunshine for forever, but I guess the old ocean fever eventually stops biting you until you feed it again. I could have cried to see it, except that it would have been girly and my sissy would have teased me. ;)
I must go down to the seas ocean again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied ...
(I can't remember the rest of that [mildly edited ;)] poem. Whose is it? Anyone know?)
There is nothing, absolutely nothing I find more beautiful than looking out at that vast, flat expanse of turquoise water just engulfing the horizon, lined with perfect white sand. Well, nothing except maybe seeing the same view at moonlight when it's all gone silver, with all the stars coming out in the big, open WA sky. I even miss those noisy, thieving bloody gulls hovering in the breezes over the water. Argh, argh, argh, it's bitten me hard and I want to go home :(
... I feel I may have digressed somewhat :P
Holiday. Yes, holiday. We packed a lot into a pretty short stay - the Big Day Out concert (my sister bought me a ticket for Christmas, which is the reason I took the holiday ... we saw Franz Ferdinand and they were fantastic!), a visit to the AQWA aquarium (SEALS! *squee*), a visit to the planetarium and SciTech, and Rottnest Island, which deserves its own blathering section. As for SciTech, it's kind of a science exhibit place, but a lot more fun than it sounds ... this season's display was espionage technology, and I got to sneak through a room cross-beamed with security lasers :D
Rottnest Island is a beautiful little island just offshore - I think it's only 10km or 11km long, something like that. It's the most famous home of the quokka, a gorgeous little marsupial that looks sort of like an insanely cute hopping rat, hence the name (a Dutch explorer called Vlamingh named the place). It's also famous for diving around all the shipwrecks that ended up there.
We took the ferry out in the morning, hired some bicycles (cars aren't allowed on the island! yay!) and went for a pedal around the place. I nearly died, picture of health and fitness that I am, but it was brilliant fun. When we stopped for lunch there were fearless little quokkas hopping around and nudging tourists' legs, trying to prod them into giving out food. Unfortunately the 'Do Not Feed The Quokkas' signs sort of spoiled that for them, but I was tempted. ;)
After our munchings we went snorkelling around the reefs at a place called The Basin. So, so happy to be swimming around in my ocean again :D We saw lots of fish - a whole pile of some sort of wrasse that swum around without paying much attention to us, and some small shoals of tiny fish you could swim through and scatter (I guess they thought we were jerks), and even three beautiful angelfish. And stuff. It was fantastic.
We stayed a bit too long, so we missed out on the glass-bottomed boat tour we'd been planning to take around some of the reefs and local shipwrecks, but that was all right. More to do next time ... and there -will- be a next time.
I won't keep glutting the detail - I can hear the snores from the back row already - so suffice to say it was a wonderful, wonderful holiday, yaaay. I have pictures, but they're not uploaded to my computer yet. Instead, here's a mildly confusing jump to some of the pictures I uploaded of Hastings Caves before I went away (that was during my first holiday here in Tassie with my Japanese friend).
One of the back chambers of Newdegate Cave, with a really beautiful shawl.
Oooh. Ahhh. (Click on any of these to look at the full one, by the way.)
A rain of stalactites and straws ^_^
Next time, some quokkas!