I’m home, but …

I want to go back. I am much more suited to the west coast. Everything about it, but in particular the weather. Yes, it was hot. But I didn’t mind it in the slightest because it was dry heat. The tamoxifen flushes were barely there in that climate.

Some photos below.

I’m ‘sat’ here, confined to my bedroom already (as my housemate likes to watch US drama series and the like) with the fan blowing full on me, barely dressed, sucking down water like it’s air, humidity tiring me out, and with Picnic at Hanging Rock on one of the movie channels. It’s one of those movies which, although I have numerous dvd copies, I have to watch if it’s showing on tv regardless. What a happy happenstance.

I didn’t do as much as I would have liked while out west… teenage girls being notorious for being flakey and ditching plans for better offers! I studied (I’m loving my music course), finally learned to do Sudoku and became thoroughly obsessed, cooked good Thai curries and Asian stir frys, got loved on by the two CUTEST dogs ever to live (German Spitzes), watched all the episodes of The Seven Ages of Rock, did some drawing, shopped at Officeworks numerous times (because I love love love stationery stores, and even managed to find music manuscript books and Pitt Artists Pens there), ferried my niece around to dance classes during the week, and read  Buddhist books which were a present from Rena, and Slumdog Millionaire (and Dickens’ Great Expectations, but only because I have to!). Went for an eco-walk or two, but didn’t get pictures as I forgot to take my camera. I wanted to borrow my niece’s camera but when she was at work it was always hidden in her room, and there’s not even a chance of finding the floor in there!

Yes, she has a good camera. And now I have a yen for a digital slr. It’s on the ever burgeoning list of things to do/get in the near future. You never have a camera when you want one. On the two hour drive back up to Perth (for the 4th time in three weeks) to put me on my plane back to the east, we saw an emu, then a kangaroo. I wish I could have got those on camera. Even better, one Tuesday night after Tash’s pointe class, after picking up take away sushi and crispy teriyaki beef (another good reason for loving the place … even on a Tuesday night, the place is buzzing … it has a strong cafe and restaurant culture there), we were nearly home and saw two kangaroos just standing there in the middle of the street. We thought they were two big grey dogs at first.

There was so much more I wanted to do. There are a fair few nature/bush walks to do in and around Bunbury itself, an estuary a little bit away that has a good long walk and plenty of birds and wildlife to see, and a reserve out east three hours or more that I wanted to visit. We did, however, manage to do something I wanted to do, and that was visit a couple of caves two hours south, outside of a beautiful little town called Margaret River.  I could drive forever in Western Australia. The car helped … I drove their Subaru Outback and it was such a lovely car to drive. I just wanted to drive, and drive, and travel for weeks on end *sigh*. And yes, this time we had the camera! Although it couldn’t capture the vastness of the dolines that we had to go into (and back out of) to get to the caves, or the Karri forest around the first cave.

First we went to Mammoth Cave, which felt a little ‘mines of Moria’-ish in spots. A place you could imagine cavemen living in, actually. In fact, there have been remains there, and some are still embedded in the rock, of megafauna that date back over 44,000 years. It’s impossible to comprehend that time span.

We then visited Lake Cave, which has a reputation for being one of the most beautiful caves in Australia. I thought the 172 steps out of Mammoth Cave just about killed me. Lake Cave has 300 steps down from the top of the doline to the cave, and then when you have finished viewing the cave, you have to climb back up those 300 steps. Being as unfit as I am, it really was a huge struggle. I seriously thought I could not finish getting up there. Even Tash, the uber-fit classical ballet dancer, had very sore legs for days afterwards. Thankfully there were strategically placed benches on the way up for the fitness challenged! But it was well worth it … that cave really IS very beautiful. It really was an achievement for me, managing both Mammoth and Lake Caves. When I think back to when I visited WA just over a year ago, after just finishing chemo and radiotherapy, then I went for with my sister for walks on the beach. I’d go 100 metres and have to sit and wait for my sister, brother-in-law, and the dogs, to eventually come back after their walk, because I just could not go a step further. I’ve come a long way since then, but it’s a very slow process and I still have quite a way to go yet.

Mammoth & Lake Caves

This is one big photo gallery (I tried splitting it into two to avoid confusion but it won’t allow me to) … so these are just thumbnails linking to larger images. Descriptions of photos can be seen by hovering mouse over thumbnails. Believe me when I say it is well worth taking a look at the bigger versions!

Pictures 1-17 are of Mammoth Cave, pictures 18 onwards are of Lake Cave.

The pretty teenager near the end giving the YEAH pose is my niece Natasha. This photo was kind of a private joke. Throughout the day, we were plagued by Japanese tourists doing their ‘take photos of me standing in front of this!’ bit. It went on, and on, and on. At the end we decided we wanted to get a photo of Tash doing a cheesy “this is me standing in front of …” snap. I was telling her to move closer to the Japanese lady having her photo taken (who, incidentally, was a lovely lady) so I could get her in shot, “stand right next to her!” But Tash didn’t hear. Bad me. Funny private moment leading to much hilarity between us afterwards. Many belly laughs were had that day even in spite of the near death experiences from walking up and down nearly 1000 steps during the day.

Again, the vastness was impossible to catch. The walls of the doline were nearly black at Lake Cave, and were dotted by big white spider webs. It just went down, and down, and down, before we finally made it to the cave.

Lake Cave – the Suspended Table reflected

I ought to add that all of these photos were taken by Tash, except of course her cheesy pose. I also ought to add that some of the photographs are quite grainy, due to having the iso setting very high in preference to using a flash in some shots.

I miss her already. We had fun in the evenings–each of us on our respective lounges with our laptops commenting on each other’s facebook pages and ‘yacking’ with friends, listening to music on our respective iTunes and sharing finds.

It was a trip not without it’s dramas though. The car battery died one night after Tash’s dance class. The next day I side-swiped the car–my SISTER’S car–on a pole when we went on a side trip and now I’m going to be out $500 to pay for their excess. I missed my flight home on Sunday because my baggage missed check-in by 10 minutes … I could have gone without it but no thanks (we were held up by roadworks on the freeway into Perth), so there was an extra $90 to change the flight booking and nearly $40 cab fare to my motel because the flight didn’t get into Sydney until late at night and the motel’s airport shuttle bus stops at 10pm. My card wouldn’t go through at check-in and I couldn’t figure out why because I knew I had the money in my account … turns out someone had already pre-authorised it so they were effectively trying to charge me double (accidentally).

I also got sick with a cold my first week there (thank you whoeveritwas on the plane) and was hobbling around with an infected ingrown toenail.

But, I had a good time regardless. I love the place, I love my niece (and they had adsl2 internet!), and Christine and Darron came home with amazing photographs of their trip to New Zealand and a possum-fur hot-water bottle cover for me (um, the fur disturbed me a little but now I have grown used to it … it doubles as a teddy bear!)

So now it’s all systems back to normal, I have my little boy back, I’m still three hours behind on Western Australian time, and Picnic has finished and The Bridge Over the River Kwai is on.

Tomorrow, a lot of study. Poetry, and a couple of music lectures on melody in traditional European music.

And some serious work on the treadmill lol!