It was great to see Tania, Lou and Rhiannon, we haven't seen them for over a year. We parked the van in their front yard and Tania said we could sleep in the house as she had a spare room, at first I said we would be OK in the van but then it didn't take too much convincing us otherwise. We had a bedroom, a kitchen, a large shower and toilet right in the next room.(No waking up & having to go to a toilet block in the middle of the night) I think Jim might miss the camp kitchen because he can't go and strike up conversation with some of the young backpackers, especially the blonde ones (all he will find in this kitchen are Tania, Lou, Rhiannon or myself)

Nellie & Ivans daughter Kylie came over for a visit. Nellie & Ivan came for lunch Xmas Day, Tania cooked us a beautiful roast dinner, finished off with trifle. For Xmas Jim & I decided to purchased tickets to the Hopman Cup, thought that it was too good an opportunity to miss out on, we got tickets for both sessons on the first day. We stayed at Nellie & Ivans on the Friday night and headed off to the tennis on the Sat morn, they only live about 15mins from the new Perth Arena. The new Perth venue for the hopman cup was fantastic. The temp outside was 41' so they closed the roof, the air con in the arena was fantastic, I think someone said that the seats had temp control in them. The roof closed so quickly unlike Rod Laver or Telstra Dome. We saw some great matches. In the morning session we saw Sth Africa vs Spain (who were the eventual winners) and in the night session we saw Aus vs Germany.

Tania & Lou took us for a drive to Serpentine Dam it was a really nice drive and we went to a lookout where you see over Perth, Freo and surrounds. We also went for a drive to Rockingham one evening and did some fishing off the jetty, it was a very drizzly night but it was still lovely and warm.
Monday 31st we met up with Ryan & Bianca, Sam Hutchy (Ryans friend from school) and his girlfriend Kelsey. We headed to Rottnest Island for the day, when we arrived at Rottnest, we got our bikes at 11am and headed off around the island. Me being old, very unfit & not a bike rider did not cope with the heat and the hills. The temp was 30' at 9am and apparently it got to 42', I only rode to Porpoise Bay and turned around and rode back to town. We had a lovely day after having lunch we got back on the ferry and headed back to Freo. After cooling down at the apartment we left Ryan and the others and headed to Nicole & Stuarts house and had tea with the family which was really nice to see where all the family are living in Perth.

On the second of January Tania had to go back to work, we were so lucky to be able to spend the holiday break with her, the following day Jim started work on a farm about 8km away. The job was to spray cotton weed on a property, we weren't sure how long this would be for but the farm was only 150acres so I said to Jim, "it shouldn't take that long", when he got home that evening he told me that I need to stop and think about what I am saying before I say it out loud. The farm may have been 150ac but he informed me that it was very rocky and mountain goat country. He was riding a gator (4wd Buggy) but it even struggled to get to many places, even going in reverse up the hill. He would park the bike and then walk up the rocky hills, not like at home where you can actually ride next to the weeds. Areas that you couldn't get to, they wanted you to put on a napsack and walk up the hills.