It was a relief to get totally clear of the metropolitan area and to find myself among grass trees again and then to pass through sheep and cattle county.
Night 174 - Fremantle Village. Expensive and cramped but close to the city. Nights 175-178 - Golden Ponds Holiday Park. A super place with good value camping for long and short term stays behind the function centre and between the fish-stocked lakes. The time here was marred by extreme tiredness, rain and Bertha’s canopy getting twisted by a sudden wind gust. Night 179 - roadside, a bit before Placid Ark Roadhouse, S Western Hwy Coolup. Night 180 - beside Stockton Lake, near Collie. An interesting area with a history and a present of coal mining. Near to Wellington Dam, with its amazing mural. Night 181 - beside a sheep paddock near Dinninup. I’m taking the easy way and quickly pushing the story into an uncaptioned video here; and here is a broader view of the open cut coal mine near Collie.
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Sculpture on the Curtin University Campus.
Besides visiting Buddhist monasteries, I was excited to meet fellow students and staff from Curtin Uni Fine Arts and a friend from Sydney Uni Linguistics. So I got to visit various galleries (Art Gallery of Western Australia — 2 exhibitions, Lost Eden Creative at Dwellingup, The John Curtin Gallery, David Giles teaching studios, Moores Building Contemporary Art Space, Japingka Aboriginal Art, The Fremantle Arts Centre — 3 exhibitions) around and in the city (Perth video here and Fremantle video here). I also became obsessed with grass trees (video here). The Perth video includes some shots of Rottnest Island. I’d wanted to go there for about fifty years to see the quokkas (QuokkaCam not loading ). It turned out to be a worse than dispiriting experience with crowds of international tourists not being told about its history and the friend who took me whispering “Whitewash” as our guide skirted around historical facts. On YouTube Top Things to Do on Rottnest Island sketches an uneasy balance in contrast to the darkly confronting Truth of Wadjemup. This blog only records where I have slept in Bertha, so counting nights, it looks like I spent a few days in Perth (nights 169-173) whereas it was more like six weeks. And since I’ve been having spots of trouble with Weebly I’ve decided to let Apple compile some semi-automatic videos and posted them on YouTube; this has saved a lot of time and trouble. |
AuthorIn mid 2018 I started recording each night I sleep in Bertha: sometimes just for myself, sometimes to share with friends and other travellers. Archives
February 2024
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