March-April

From the theatrical sounding title of this instalment you can see that we have been busy. Most of our adventures this time around seem to include creatures, some extinct, some cuddly, but all vicious in their own little way. Sandwiched between our excursions came the annual shenanigans and merriment of St. Patricks day, complete with a dodgy parade and green coloured pints! So without further ado...

Crabbing in Mandurah.

During the last blog we mentioned that Mel had been in contact with her long lost uncle and cousin and that we had visited them for a birthday party and had a lovely day. Uncle Brian had then gone over and above and offered to take us south of Perth for the weekend to a place called Mandurah. Now hopefully you have read that as Man-dur-rah, if you did, then well done you have mastered the English language and are leaps and bounds ahead of the Aussie population. For the week or so before we went we were telling people at work and they were chuckling about our pronunciation of Mandurah. See over here the convicts pronounce it, Mannnnnnnnnn-dra, in their whiny inflected tongue. Chuckling and pronunciations aside Uncle Brian picked us up on the weekend and drove us along the scenic route through the bush the hour or so south of Perth.

We were heading to Brian's friends, sons house. His name was Bruce and he and his family welcomed us into their home and were a delight. Bruce and Sue have 2 lovely kids, Emily and Alex, which they pretty much forced to wait on us for the whole weekend. After spending the afternoon lounging around their pool having a few beers we set off to the estuary to take in the views. Whilst watching hapless Chinese people splash around in the estuary scaring all the crabs, Bruce told us that they had no hope of catching anything as it was the wrong time of day and they were even in the wrong place.

We had a quick stop back at the house to get our crabbing kit and we set off for Bruce's favourite spot. Now if you're totally lost on why were down in Mandurah it's for the crabbing, crabbing is essentially fishing but for crabs. All you need for this is some trunks/swim wear and a net. It also helps if you have a bag to put all the crabs in. Now under government restrictions we are each only allowed to catch 10 crabs each, which is slightly saddening as we both thought we would be super pros and catch hundreds. Mel's Uncle is referred to by Bruce as "The Crab Man" because of how prolific he is when out on the estuary. It wasn't until afterwards that we realised his nickname was totally unmerited.

So out we wade into the cold murky estuary, its dusk and we have about half an hour until the sun goes down and we'll be in the dark. Dusk is the best time of day to catch crabs as they start getting confident they can't be seen. The crabs spend most of the day sleeping in the reeds and at night move to different reed beds to find food and mate etc. This crucial time when they're out, exposed on the seabed is the best time to scoop them up and bag them. To cut a long story short we weren't very good at the lunging quick scoop and the crabs were at times taunting and laughing in our faces. Bruce had caught quite a few and had even thrown a few small ones back. It was getting tense. Who would be first, Melanie or Declan? Then it happened. "Ahh I got one" came the cry. Heads turned to see the enthusiastic crabber measure their prize to see if it was big enough to bag up. "It's big enough, where's the bag?" Bruce gave a nod of approval and started wading towards the crabber with a smile that signified a well done. He opens the bag and plucked the nasty little thing out of the net and declared................ (The full stops are to build the tension)................... "That's one for Mel!!!"

Under his breath Declan mumbled that he would now catch all ten crabs that he was allotted. Behind him even the CrabMan had snagged himself a few little blighters. Eventually Declan caught one that was big enough so everyone would go home happy. The sun eventually went down and out of our allotted 40 we had caught 10 between us. Now to head home and boil them up.

That night we had a BBQ and devoured some absolutely amazing steaks. Bruce had cooked up and de-shelled the crabs and Brian was happily going to take them home for his lunch for the next week. This would have been a lovely ending to our crabbing adventure, however Emily thought different and brought in a nasty looking de-shelled crab and plonked it on Declan's plate. Declan is a purely meat man and sees the idea of seafood as revolting..........why eat fish when there are cows, pigs and chickens happily throwing themselves into buns for our pleasure?.

So the crab lands on the plate and under Declan's trying new food rule, ( Rule 74. Declan will only try new food if he isn't paying for it) he is shown how to break it open and suck out the meat. Now he ends up eating the whole crab but his opinion is that after all the breaking and tearing and chewing, it is alot easier to just have chicken. We ended the night with a few more beers and turned in after a tiring but entertaining day.

St Patricks Day

The following weekend we headed off to a suburb of Perth called Leederville. Leederville was to host the inaugural Paddys day Parade. It didn't take us long to get to Leederville on the train but we were amazed by the amount of green that people were wearing. Everyone on the train had some sort of Irish paraphernalia, kids decked out in leprechaun costumes, buggies with streamers draped over them even a dog had been spray painted green. Leederville centre didn't look like the sort of place to host a parade but as we turned out of the station we saw why they had picked this location. 'Fibber McGees' stood out like a saw thumb, an Irish pub in a coffee house district, although on further inspection we found 3 pubs directly opposite each other. Even at 10am the pubs had a queue going out the door, all offering an Irish breakfast before the big parade kicked off. We met up with some friends after having a scout around for the best place to stand. Even with a cracking place picked out it didn't matter as Perthians don't care for order and courtesy and a family clad in green parked themselves right in front of us. Now not wanting to get grumpy we just moved, can't be yelling at a young family on a Paddy's day, were not in Digbeth anymore!!!

As we moved a crowd was gathering around an open top bus and we stopped to have a look. Over a thick Cork accent the presenter announced that the parade would be starting soon and they had a special guest to open the gig. Who could it be we thought? Then out walks bloody Bob Geldof!!

After some spiel about sharing Perth's wealth with the world Bob mercilessly plugged his upcoming tour before finally opening the Parade. Considering it was a Sunday and the parade actually fell on the same day as St Patrick 's Day it would be obvious that there would have been some seriously sore heads in the morning. I think that Bob missed an absolute gem by not incorporating that we would 'not like Mondays' after the day's festivities, but more fool him.

On to the parade. It's quite humorous how similar the Parade was to Birmingham's. It was essentially a heap of Irish people on the back on a truck, either dancing or waving at people. The parade even had a heap of bikers go past and the obligatory rabble of bagpipers. The route was quite short and the parade lasted about half an hour before ending up in the Leederville Oval for singing and Irish dancing, or as the Irish call it, dancing. After the parade we started drinking in a bar called the Garden and we enjoyed the great weather and buzzing atmosphere. It was clear from the off that everybody that was out, was on a mission. Perth's construction industry would not be very productive in the morning we thought. We eventually ventured up to the park to grab a bit of sun and hear some Irish music. At the Oval Declan grabbed himself a Guinness and it did not go down too well. We drank into the early evening and then set off back home, unfortunately for us we had work in the morning and Melanie was even starting her new job.

Balti-Sculptures by the Sea

So to celebrate Mel's new job as a child snatcher we had a weekend out on the town. Mel isn't really a child snatcher; her new job is quite the opposite. Mel now has a job with an organisation that places children with disabilities into foster care. She loves the job and it is giving her great experience in the field of foster care placements. To celebrate Mel's new job, and for a bit of a catch up, we met up with Lisa and Gaz in the centre of Perth. We met up in a bar on the day of the massive Perth derby game. Western Australia's home sides are the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers. Now the game isn't footy, its Aussie rules footy, which is a totally different game altogether. The smart arse Australians think they have invented a game that only they can master but Aussie rules footy is essentially Gaelic football but using a rugby ball!!! We watched all of 5 minutes before being utterly bored of the 'American style' ads after every point. After a few beers we went in search of some food. As we are all born and bred Brummies, the Balti house was the only destination for us. It's been 7 long, long, long months without a proper curry. Australia is relatively new to abit of 'Asian Persuasion' and there just aren't many curry houses about. It might also be down to the fact that spicy food and 40 degree heat just don't add up. However putting all this aside we found a well recommended Indian restaurant called 'Balti'. The dinner was lovely, it had the right amount of kick to it and was by far the best curry we have had in Perth, it is also the first but who's counting. Not only was the Balti nice but the restaurant had imported ciders and we enjoyed a few Kopparberg's to wash it all down.

Fresh as daisies the next morning we headed to the beach for the annual Sculptures by the Sea. It's pretty much like Ronseal, its exactly what it says on the tin. The sculptures by the sea were various shaped and sized pieces of art scattered along the beach. Not being art folk we didn't know what thoughts some of the pieces were meant to provoke, but s*** art is s*** art. Some of the sculptures were terrible, there was one that was 4 milk crates, a fan and a doll head all cobbled together and painted red, blue and green. Now maybe we didn't understand it, maybe we didn't.....Get....The....Message, but we did get the price, it was $18,000. Who was that guy kidding!!!! Other pieces seemed alot more put together, as in, the artist had spent a very long time on the piece and we 'appreciated' them. Appreciated = looking at them, cocking our heads and saying "hhhhmmmm I get it". After wandering around the 50 or so pieces and avoiding all the Chinese tourists taking photos of everything on earth we sat and snoozed out our hangovers on the beach.

P-P-P-P-P-P-Pick up a Penguin

So for the Easter long weekend we decided to fill our time gallivanting around Perth. Well we say gallivanting, what we mean to say is, 'spending ever increasing amounts of time on the bus' but that's a mouthful and doesn't sound as captivating.

Good Friday was spent at the waterfront just up the road from where we live. We headed down there armed with books, pizza and some cheeky beers to soak up the sun and laze about all day. This was for two reasons, the first being we were lazy and fancied a break and the second, well that's the shocker. Perth and we think maybe the entire land mass of Australia seem to be firmly planted in the olden days when it comes to certain things, one of those things being Good Friday. The whole of Perth, not just some of it, all of it, and all its 1.7 million people don't do a stroke of anything on Good Friday. All shops were shut, the buses and trains didn't run, 24-hour McDonalds closed, hell even people in hospital were left to fend for themselves. Well the last part is a slight exaggeration.........

McDonalds doesn't close!!

We were slightly taken aback by this, there is usually always something open, even on Christmas day in Blighty, but not in Perth, they take their Good Friday seriously, so like I said we relaxed on the waterfront.

Easter Saturday we enjoyed the delights of Hugh Jackman and friends in the spectacular musical Les Miserables. This was the second time we had seen the film but not in this way. We watched it this time in the open air cinema in Mosman Park, 5 minutes from Declan's work. As the season over here is moving towards winter, the open air cinema wasn't going to be open much longer and out of all the niche films it shows, Les Miserables was the best option. We didn't quite fancy watching a film called Thérèse Desqueyroux, simply because that is the most French word you have ever read in you life!!!! The cinema was a real delight and it was weird looking up and seeing the stars halfway through a film with the world's greatest star in it (Hugh Jackman, obviously).

Easter Sunday offered up a festival for us to go and view. The Fremantle streets arts festival is an annual festival and the biggest of its kind in Australia. By street arts we don't mean, glammed up beggars with performing monkeys. The streets arts festival showcases the best of the best of the streets arts scene. Fremantle had about 6 different pitches dotted about the coffee cultured suburb. The pitches had a variety of different acts playing at different times. We were lucky enough to get there so early we could of helped set up (slight dig at Mel there for getting us, up and out so early). As we watched the different acts we realised that this was more than just randomers on the street. Each act played their pitch for at least 45 minutes, and the pitches were packed with people watching. 45 minutes with a few thousand people watching is some serious pressure on the performers to deliver. And deliver they did. Each act was better than the last. The two stand-out acts were a duo from Ireland and a comedian/juggler. Let's start with the juggler. Now that guy did some baffling physical comedy. along with producing ping pong balls from everywhere and man juggled 4 flaming batons while getting changed. He didn't just switch jackets; the man juggled and changed his trousers!!!!! He also had a robotic dog that scared children and he had a really dodgy moment with a Mexican!!

The duo from Ireland though stole the show. A camp/electro/dance/acrobatic/comedy extravaganza is the easiest way to describe what we witnessed. Famous Seamus and Seantastic wow the crowd with their comedic dancing and jovial ribbing. The duo were brothers? Lovers? we didn't quite know, but that was part of the humour and we were entranced by it, even in the blistering heat. The fact that they weren't believable as dancers made their moves even more impressive, culminating with the fatter of the duo aside a ladder doing the splits!!!!

Easter Monday was the winner though. This particular day started early o'clock because we were heading south of Perth and we had to get the train. To buoy our spirits on this long journey we fortunately stopped off at a place called Cockburn Central!! Now this isn't funny to Aussies because of their stupid pronunciations of things. They call it Coburn central. But they spell it the other way, and for people that can read and know their phonics, it was Cockburn central. Declan has since debated at length with work mates why they include a 'k' if they aren't going to pronounce it, it hasn't yet yielded any results. Back to our journey, we arrived early at the port to catch a boat over to Penguin Island.

Obviously on this particular day everyone and their dog decided to go to Penguin Island. We had to wait for a while and decided to get a very expensive breakfast from a conveniently placed cafe that had also decided to 'up' the prices because it was a bank holiday!! The scoundrels!

Penguin Island was again everything it sounds like. An island full of penguins! The penguins on this tiny tiny island are funnily enough also the smallest penguins in the world. Being in a land where they name things as they see them, the world's smallest penguins are called.........Little Penguins. As mentioned the island was tiny, about the size of big Tesco's up in Monkspath so it didn't take us very long to wander round it and hunt for some penguins. Naturally we didn't find any, during the day the little blighters are out at sea frolicking about catching fish, they only return home at dusk. All was not lost however as the island has a rescue centre for injured and lonely penguins, so we popped in there for a while to see them being fed and waddling about. The rest of our day was spent trying to avoid annoying children and having a rest on the beach. The bus home was also an exploit as we had the world's most racist driver. Being the only 2 people on the bus for a while Derek decided to start talking to us about his life and how much he hated everyone and everything. This tirade also included about how the world was better 40 years ago and generally everything in the UK and Australia was screwed, he was also unhappy about the price of pork pies!!!! What an end to a weekend!!!

Look at what we found!!

The last weekend we're going to report on was a trip into a Fremantle. Now we go to Freo pretty much every weekend for a mill about and a drink etc, it's about the same size as Solihull town centre and we now pretty much know our way around it and where everything is.

Or so we thought.

It turns out that an area of the town centre that we thought was just warehouses and factories wasn't. These 'factories' were all converted bars and restaurants that look out over the ocean and the Freo pier!!!! What a pair we were!!! So anyway we trundle on down to have a gander about the 'Esplanade' as it called, we walk past the point we thought was warehouses and we find the pier, the restaurants and even a beach. The smells coming out of the foodies were a delight and we are definitely planning another visit down there to try the fish and chips, which were told are as good as the Dolphin fish bar in Acocks Green.

Walking along the harbour front also led us to the Freo Roundhouse. The first building built in Western Australia!!!! Funnily enough it was built by convicts to house the convicts!! It also doubled as a lookout post and a lighthouse/beacon to oncoming ships. Unfortunately for Declan the stocks were for display purposes only and he couldn't lock up Melanie and head off for a quick pint.

Heading back towards town we happened upon a massive white tent and some bizarre sounds. Looking around for an entrance we realised the dinosaurs had came to town. 'Dinosaurs live' was an exhibition of full scale robotic dinosaurs that moved about and gave children nightmares. (Or night terrors as they are called over here??!!) The dinosaurs were all pretty cool and all the favourites were included. Strangely the velociraptors were ginger and the baby T-Rex was broken so it looked like he was shocking out on pills. At the end of the exhibition there were fossil pits for the kids to dig up their own dinos, Declan obviously got involved and found himself a bone of some sort. There was also a colouring competition that was entered into, but don't get your hopes up for a win as the judges are all ageist and it was only for kids!!!! The rest of the afternoon was filled in the Irish pub having a few swift pints whilst listening to some diddlely diddlely music before we headed off to Oz the watch the wonderful wizard.

That's all of our adventures for now.

Stay classy.

Ooooo wait there, the bee- have part hasn't been covered. Just for everyone's amusement picture the scene. It's a hot day at work and Declan is out next to a large tree that has suffered some broken branches due to the high winds. This tree is also the home to a hive of Australian bush bees. Now don't be fooled by them being bees, Aussie bees are vicious little fookers that take no prisoners. The job was a very simple one, the branches are dangerous and could fall an kill the kids (no joke, branches of this type of tree just fall off for no reason, its nickname is the widow maker for christsake!!!) So Peter takes charge and dons the bee protection gear and goes in with the long reach chainsaw. The bees are not happy about this. The 10 or so bees outside the hive quickly turns into 100s. They start buzzing around Peter and repeatedly dive bomb his suit and visor trying to force him back. Being in the proper gear he is fine and continues to chop off the branches ties a rope around them and moves on. 30 or so meters away Nick (Declan's nemesis, but we can save that for another time) is pulling the branches out by the rope and chopping them up to put them on the van. Declan is about 40 meters from the hive and he walks over to help Nick. Wham!!!!!!!!! Bang!!!!!!!! There was no buzzing just a massive smack in the face. Right above the eye!! Declan lets out a small "f***ing hell" before being hit again. "RUN" comes the shout, "they're over your head!!"

'Really Nick, I hadn't noticed the sting in the face and the giant yellow insect in the sky'

Instinct kicked in and Declan immediately turns and runs, being repeatedly banged in the head by a seriously pissed off bee. He decides now would be a good time to try and confuse the tiny beast and drops and commando rolls while knocking off his hat and sun glasses. Up he pops and off he runs. Peter has now stopped and is also shouting run, there is still bees flying around Declan's head!! The pain from the sting has started to kick in and Declan doesn't fancy being hit again. Off he runs in crisscross directions trying to fool the now mini swarm buzzing overhead. It took at least 200meters and some seriously quick running to eventually evade the bees. At one point Declan was figuring out the quickest way to the school pool. Collapsing to the floor Declan gets his breath back and looks around for some help. What he sees is two people rolled over in fits of laughter and delight at one man's struggle with a deadly insect!!! "I've never seen someone run off so fast in my life" came the chuckles. Upon looking at his face Peter pulls out the bees arse and sting and off Declan goes to the school nurse to get a jellybean and some antihistamines. There are pictures of Declan's face the following morning for everyone's benefit.

Now its the end. Stay classy.