How I love the cold and flu drugs on the market nowadays; they knock you out for the night and the day looks altogether better on the other side! However plans to get out into the sunshine were scarpered with incoming emails which resulted in a morning of administration rather than fun. While this is not the place to say more about that, I will say how astounded we were at the cost of sending a fax to New Zealand. The legal beagles looking after a third party’s interests were not satisfied with my photos of signed documents and we were requested to resend them by fax. The woman in the Kalamunda library was most obliging however there are set fees for this service and our eleven page fax cost the grand total of $52.80! And worse still is the possibility of some having to be amended and re-faxed! Such are the penalties for dealing with business matters while on the road.
While in
Kalamunda, we shopped for groceries at both the supermarket and the local
greengrocer. I am sure I have said this before, but will say it again; shopping
with competitive suppliers does add to the shopping experience in such a
positive way.
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| Churchman Brook Reservoir |
After lunch, we headed off for another lovely drive, again through the Perth Hills but this time south, back up to Kalamunda, and on through Walliston, Carmel, through the State Forest of Canning Mills, past numerous fruit orchards of Karragullen and Roleystone. There we planned to drive further into the hills to visit the Canning Reservoir however the access road was closed. We popped our nose into the Araluen Botanic Gardens, admission fee applies, however decided that should we choose to call when the spring flowers were not springing, we would come with a picnic and a plan to spend the day. Instead we drove to the Churchman Brook Reservoir, parked in a lovely picnic area and walked up on to the dam. From there we saw the very low level of the water and wondered how much water is actually supplied to Perth. The dam was built in 1929 across the creek that might sometimes flow on into the Canning River, which in turn flows into the Swan River opposite Perth city. There were signs about Cockatoo Care and pictures of black cockatoos, but no real birds in evidence. It would seem that galahs and other more common birds have diminished the nesting areas of these beautiful birds and they are under threat here in the Perth Hills. We had seen a small flock yesterday as we drove north from Lake Leschenaultia out to the Toodyay Road; here in Western Australia they are white tailed as opposed to the red tails of those seen on the Savannah Way up near the Gulf.
We wound our way on through to Armadale, a suburb in the city of the
same name. The population of the entire city is about 55,000, estimated to
increase to 85,000 in the next ten years. The city, spread over 545 square
kilometres, is a collection of nineteen suburbs, many of which are very old
established townships. Kelmscott is one such, barracks built in 1830 as part of
the original Swan River Colony.
We called into the Visitors Centre, chatted with one of the volunteers
and learned about the fruit orchards we had seen further up the hill. There are
some grapes grown in the area, but mostly peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums,
cherries, apples, persimmons, oranges and mandarins. Today the trees were bare
of fruit, dressed only in golden autumnal leaves apart from one grove of
persimmons I spied from the road, their bright large orange globes hanging on
otherwise bare structures.
Armadale has many attractions and facilities we did not bother with; a
manmade lake system for water sports, an Elizabethan village, a pioneer village
and a very large shopping centre. We spent some time in the small museum
attached to the Visitor Centre, the Bert
Tyler Vintage Machinery Museum and the Armadale
Outpost Telegraph Centre. Bert Tyler was a keen engineering type who on
retirement spent every moment of his spare time lovingly restoring old
machinery. What to do with this when he down sized? Give it or lend it to the
City of course! Often these collections are works in progress and really just a
heap of junk, but these pieces are clean, complete and regularly dusted, no doubt
by the volunteers in the Visitor’s Centre. The museum is full of certificates
and photos of this generous man, he with one of those very strange beards that
the Amish men tend to wear. The museum is worth a visit even if only to
acknowledge there are a multitude of odd collectors out there in the world, although I did not come away a whole lot more informed about the history of
Armadale. A visit to the WA Museum is still on the list and becoming more
urgent.
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