100 Days Remain…A look back at some Beautiful Beaches

The bittersweet countdown began this week…we have less than 100 days until we catch a VERY EARLY flight to depart Australia and return to the USA.  It is still more time before we will re-land in Bloomington…since we’ll be doing what we normally do and spending our summer in Washington State.  But, at least it will be home and someplace we are familiar with.  As I’ve mentioned in a previous post,we have been vacillating between basking in the fabulousness that is A YEAR (or so) IN AUSTRALIA and the trouble adjusting to spending a year abroad.  And so, this countdown will be very bittersweet.  Happy to be heading home.  Sad to be leaving.  

But, let me mark the occasion by catching you up with some of the gorgeous waterways we’ve been visiting over the past month or so.  I think, so as not to inundate you with pictures, I’ll focus on ocean beaches in this post and then some fabulous fun I’ve had along the banks of the Swan River in a near-future one.  

Surf Lessons @ Secret Harbour

Several months ago my daughter brought a flier home from school…it sat on the dining room table for a few days before I clued in and asked about it.  Apparently, she and her best friend had been signed up for a surf lesson about an hour South of us here in Fremantle at a place called Secret Harbour.  For those months, it became an anticipated event glimmering in the distance.  But, before we knew it we were taking a “dry run” to the beach…plugging it into the GPS…to make sure we knew how to get there.  And, the following weekend the Big Surf Lesson was upon us.  It was a part of the Rip Curl Girls Go Surfing Day, and I was quite impressed.  All the instructors were young women, all empowering these girls to take charge of their recreation.  But, I was also quite surprised because so much time had passed between us originally signing her up and the day of the event that we remembered it to be a 45-minute lesson.  Turns out, it was 3 hours (!) of instruction…they had so much fun, learned so much, and were so tired by the end of the day.  Check it out.  

And, although once they got out into the surf it was hard to tell one person from another…girls all in wetsuits with identical yellow shirts…some on blue surfboards some on pink…  

But, here is proof that at least some of them got up.  It was tremendous to hear my little girl talk about “catching a wave” later that morning.  

 

And my son got into it, too.  Although he’s too young to get into surfing lessons he is eager to get in the water whenever possible and has started to try his hand with a body board…check him out: 

The Round House & The Lighthouse

During the Christmas holidays my dad and stepmom paid us a visit!  It was remarkable that they were willing to make the > 24-hour voyage over here, although I am so thankful that they did…it was wonderful to show them around this beautiful country.  Plus now they can picture things like our apartment, the kids’ school, my workplace, etc.  One of the places we took them to early was The Round House.  It is the oldest bulding in the state of Western Australia, built in 1830.  1830!!!  It was built as a prison (no surprise there, ‘eh?) but now is a terrific tourist attraction in downtown Fremantle.  It is also right on the water and even though it was bloody hot when we ventured out…the breeze coming off the surf cooled us down right nicely. 

The Roundhouse used to serve a nautical function which is now re-enacted daily.  Sea captains sailing into this port city used to be able to set their clocks thanks to two attributes of the roundhouse.  At 12:57pm every afternoon, the black buoy seen in the top left of  the photo below bused to be raised and visible for miles out to sea (or so they tell me). 

 

Then, at exactly 1:00pm, the watchmen would fire off a cannon blast.  This would allow the seamen to not only set their timepieces to the correct time, but test the watch’s ability to track the 3-minute duration.  As I said, this practice is still done daily with a replica cannon…which I read in a brochure I picked up was purchased and donated by the local AFL team The Fremantle Dockers . 

Coogee Beach  

Here in Australia the Christmas and New Year celebrations fall within the kids’ SUMMER break. And so, in order to help my wife out, I graciously agreed to shift my hours at work so that I could accompany the family to local beaches and help haul the gear and keep an eye on the kids.

The first beach we went to was one recommended by Alida, one of the Research Assistants at ITRI as “her favorite.” Funny name, though, Coogee Beach is located about 20 minutes from our house and includes a really well-built pier jetting out and a floating dock with a slide on it. And, although my wife didn’t know we had the camera on that day, you will have to take my word for it that my daughter and I really DID go swim out there and slide off it several times. It was a great time, but the water was colder than I expected. And, I had rough premonitions of where my daughter will be in only a handful of years as I was watching teenage boys doing stupid diving stunts off the pier with girls–leaning on the “Danger, do not dive off dock” signs–looking on…pretending not to be impressed.

Cottesloe Beach

A few days later we went to one of the most famous beaches in the area: Cottesloe. Located about a 40-minute drive up North along the coast from our place, “Cott” is one of the summer hangouts for everyone who is somebody. The beach is most identified by its historic beach house building, which I expected to be dirty and rather scary, but was pleasantly surprised when I went in it later in the morning. On this day, much of my “keep an eye on the kids” responsibility was alleviated because my daughter br0ought her best friend with her and they could buddy up in the water to a certain extent. That allowed me to break off from the group and walk further up the beach to see a set of really jagged and fragile looking rock formations set back from the water by about 100 meters…I think…I mean, how far’s a meter anyway….I talk like someone who knows but if you know me at all you know I’m close to clueless on stuff like distances (and rdirection….so, take my placing of Cott north from where we live with a grain of salt. Here’s a look at the Cott rock cliffs….and BTW, I noticed later, upon a subsequent trip to the Roundhouse, that similar rock structures…likely due to wind erosion…surround that structure as well. 

Another icon of Cottesloe is the bouy (which locals in the ITRI Production Dept later called a “bell”) that sits quite a ways out from shore. My daughter and her friend wanted to swim out there…and I kept them company and provided encouragement. This time my wife DID know that we had the camera (I made sure, if I was gonna swim out there!). Here’s proof I could do it! 

Interesting thing about this picture is, about 2 hours after it was taken, Cottesloe Beach was closed for 2 days due to shark sightings! The next day, we went to a river…more on that trip on another posting… 

Hillary’s Animal Beach

We had the good fortune, over ten days toward the end of the kids’ summer break to watch Java–a friend’s terrier-mix. So, that gave us a perfect opportunity to drive back up North on the Ocean Beach Highway to the dog beach past Hillary’s Boat Harbour. Here the waves were much more forceful and the undertow some of the strongest I’ve ever experienced. So, that meant, of course, that the kids sure wanted to spend a lot of time in the surf! And, that meant that I got to play lifeguard. Luckily, the kids did a great job of listening to me…keeping between me and my wife, who stayed on the blanket with Java (the wind was so strong that day, we didn’t even bother to put up the sun tent). 

Later on that day, while the exhausted kids chilled out in the car, I hunted for a geocache at a nearby adjacent beach…whose name I do not know. And, although I was unsuccessful at finding that, I did get a chance to snap a few more pictures of parasurfers who were getting lessons there. 

Tagged as: Adventure, Australia, Travel