Western Australia (pt.2) ... Geographe Bay to Denmark & Albany

"Oscar" the 9 week young pug puppy, who joined in on the National "Walk against Warming" to raise awareness about the effects of Global Climate Change



Hello Dear Ones,

I have some very excellent news ... it's been 1 day short of 2 weeks since I received my new orthotics in the mail down in Denmark, Western Australia ... & over the past week (the past few days especially) I have been sensing things feeling better for my feet with these new inserts. I am not in the free & clear yet, but I am soooo very relieved to be experiencing the relief that has been arising so far :) :) :)

I have one more day here in Melbourne, after a two day excursion southeast of here to go see Phillip Island, famous for the adorable little blue penguins that come onto land every night after 4-5 days out fishing in the ocean ... & a day at Wilson's Promontory National Park ... the little blue penguins were absolutely adorable & Wilsons Promontory was very, very splendid!!

I would have liked at least a week there, not just one day ... we also saw some koalas, wombats, emus, kangaroos, wallabies, a variety of coolourful & songful parrots & sea birds. The closer encounters with the wonderful koalas & the other critters I listed were at the Maru Wildlife Centre, where we were able to walk among the roos & the wallabies, feed them some of their grain food ... some of which the very BOLD emu I was trying to take a picture of lunged forward to peck into my little bowl, scaring the BEANS out of me, which then caused me to let out a very funny scream, ... followed immediately by laughter of course!! We got to feed a baby wallaby & pet a baby wombat too.

When I was over feeding the little albino roo, the big male that I had fed nearby a few minutes earlier came over & proceeded to push his way in & push around the poor little white roo with some of his kangaroo boxing moves. well, the big guy for sure didn't get any more from me & I followed the little blind/low vision roo to where moved off to give him more food.

I even went along with purchasing the very commercially organized picture (that they take of every visitor that goes in to see the koala for all of 5-10 seconds) of me & an adorable koala in his photo perch tree, which swivels to help get the best photo! It was all quite funny since the koala really doesn't give two beans worth of a care that we are coming & going & that the staff are using a flash on their camera!!! Oh well, amid doing my bit to support the local economy of south Gippsland, the $$ from this photo will go to help plant trees that the folks at Maru need to feed the koalas they are caring for. I went along with this for you Auntie Carol Lynn, since I know you would have loved to be the one to get so close to a koala.

Even more GREAT NEWS ... I enjoyed the 7 km hike we did up to Mt. Bishop at WPNP, which involved going up & then coming down, not too steep a trail (with no pack on) ... & my feet/toes travelled quite well, with the exception of the last 15 minutes or so & then they seemed to recover shortly after (within a couple of hours). This feels like a great step forward in my recovery :) :) :) ... the new orthotics seem to be doing there very good work for me, thanks to Dr. Tom!! YIPPEE!!

I wound down my travels in the SW, difficult to leave such an amazingly gorgeous part of the country & such delightfully wonderful friends. Here's a quick update on my most splendid, amazing, spectacular adventures around SW Australia ...

dear, sweet Jarrod's birthday at Jo Vallentine's backyard in Perth, WA ... it was marvellous to reconnect with both of these splendid Seed Mates!!

Not long now until the big election Jo, then you can relax!! It was also most excellent to see Jarrod in action at one of his EPYC workshops ... I have added a link to Jarrod's EPYC webiste under my Aussie links, along with heaps of other excellent ones connected to my dear Seed Mates. I know there's more to add & I will get them on sometime soon ...

Phoebe, it was soooo great to hang out with you & Ilka, do let me know how you are doing :) It would have been great to have more time to muck about with you for sure! Thanks heaps also for enabling me to do my SW roadtrip with your little purple car. It was great to go where I wanted & to do so in a very fuel efficient way. Looks like I have to share my other Perth pic's with you in my next posting, looks like I can't add more as I go back through to finalize this note ...

near Point Piquet on Geographe Bay ... absloutely GORGEOUS!!!

deep blues of the Indian Ocean at Cape Leeuwin

how cool is this??? I really enjoyed my time out on the rocks at the base of the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse :)

I also really enjoyed my visits with Margaret Whittle in Denmark, WA, the place where we had our Seeds for the Future intensive with Joanna Macy almost 3 years ago now at The Cove!! I joined Margaret for a bit of fun with the nice older children she was taking care of in the evenings & the Saturday I was visiting ... Samuel joined us for a field trip out to Albany to see the Albany Fair ever so briefly, but even more fun was the stop at Lowlands Beach on the way ... what a most spectacular WILD beach!!

Sam enjoying our intertidal beach hopping fun!!

Basil Schur & I at the Albany Wind Farm

The Wind Farm, which is quite amazing, is right alongside a most spectacular section of coastline of the Southern Ocean ... & the start or end of the Bibbulmun Track ... that runs all the way up to Perth.

Teresa in awe of the Southern Ocean coast!

majestic wind turbine in the sky

Basil was involved with the planning of the Wind Farm as one of the Community representatives. Basil has been involved with heaps of other very excellent & important community, environment projects in SW Australia through his work with Green Skills & the Centre for Sustainable Living ... I've added a link to Green Skills on my BLOG, I'll have to check on the link for the CSL as well ... thanks for your kind hospitalitiy Basil, it was great to reconnect with you while I was in your hometown!

Margaret Whittle & I in front of Margaret's most recent & most splendid quilting project to-date ..."labyrinth"

It was a real treat to reconnect with Margaret, a fellow Canadian & our lone Seed Mate not surfing the waves in cyberspace, good for you Margaret!! We had a lovely visit indeed & I am very grateful we were able to meet up again before I head back to Canada.

Teresa enjoying the serenity of Wilson Inlet at the base of The Cove ... among the "paperbark", malaleuca trees ... the beach is mostly covered in water now, since the sand bar at the end of the inlet has not been opened up yet.

I saw heaps again on my way back to Bunbury from Denmark (more stories & pic's on this in another posting) & I also had a chance to reconnect with some of my fellow ROMEO's & other OBA friendsat the WW base near Walpole ... more on this in my next posting, since I think that this blog set-up can only handle so many pictures in one posting ...

Hugs 'n' Bugs, love,

Teresa