Laugh kookaburra, laugh kookaburra. Gay your life must be.
We saw two kookaburras in the koala park we visited outside Perth, and we have seen countless gum trees driving across the open expanse of Western Australia. I had this song stuck in my head for at least 500 kilometres of our longest drive. Sorry if it gets stuck in yours now.
It's a red trunked gum (eucalyptus) that we have found to be so beautiful and that I wrote about last blog. Given there are 900 varieties of gum trees in Australia, I haven't been able to identify this beauty's complete name, though three have been suggested by locals: the Salmon Gum, the Red Gum and the York Gum. The trees line the highways starting about 200 km east of Perth. They shed their stringy bark as they grow, and red is the dominant colour of the trunk, but grey, brown, black and pistachio green can be seen from a close distance too. I think the red variety is the prettiest of all as the colour of this tall trunk mirrors the reddish earth we can all picture as being the base of the Australian landscape. I could drive forever on these roads and never tire of these graceful things.
If I could paintl, I'd try to capture it to hang in house (I may settle again one day). I think Carol Finn, the Haliburton painter, would do a stunning job replicating them. My photos do not do them justice.
It's too bad we aren't here to see all these plants flower in the spring.
We spent 2 nights in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, the mining town 550km east of Perth. I wouldn't want to live in this isolated place, but it was interesting to visit. It seemed most people were away on holidays as the campground was pretty empty. One day in the pool we finally met some people, but they scurried out as soon as the regular afternoon storm started rolling in - so much for getting to know people.
The museums were interesting and the open pit gold mine is huge and interesting to see. Try to find the regular sized pickup truck on the road with the big dump trucks.
I'll let the kids tell you about that (I know I said they could tell you about the animal park too, but we've been without internet for days).
We were all delighted to get out of the car by mid afternoon.
Last night at sunset, George and I saw a bottlenose dolphin just 15 feet of the shore. Molly was a little jealous so I know where we'll be tonight.