Photos galore: a meditation on my good fortune

I need to tell y'all about my second 3-day adventure, but first I realized I've got a serious backlog of photos that I never shared, even from my first few days here. So just to start things off right, here are some pictures from Kings Park in Perth... I went strolling up there around dawn when I was jetlagged and sleeping at weird hours while staying at the Double Tree in my first week here.

Perth and the Swan River

State War Memorial

Let Silent Contemplation Be Your Offering

Giant Boab: 750 years old and driven 3,200km to its new home in King's Park after a highway was planned where it was living before. Talk about a retirement relocation. It's been here for ten years but seems to like the new neighbors!

Eucalyptus Blossoms

Can you tell I was obsessed with these gorgeous flowers?

Pioneer Women's Memorial

Perth

Another adventure from weeks ago that never made it to the blog was going diving with my coworker friend Alison and her partner! Darrell, the partner in reference, has his own boat. Ali, my coworker friend, is kind and welcoming and invited me out with them for a day of diving. They have the most beautiful/hilarious relationship. I thanked Darrell at the end of the day for inviting me along and he informed me that Ali more like notified him I was coming and he didn't have any say in the matter. But that he was happy to have me along. I think he's gotta be one of the most easy going men alive. Every time they're in the shop together on one of her days off they end up leaving with Darrell grabbing her hand and towing her out the door while she continues to chat as she exits.

Anyway, we spent the day out on the water near Garden Island. First dive was all four of us (one of their brothers came along) going out looking for crays - Alison and I spotted, the boys caught. Second dive we abandoned the boys and just went to look at pretty things. Ali takes some lovely photos, and here's some of what she captured that day:

Nudibranch

It was this amazing, lovely day on the water, and being welcomed so warmly as/despite being the new girl in the shop warmed the cockles of my heart. Thank God for friends.

Speaking of things I'm thankful for, I am so inordinately fortunate that I chose to move to Perth when I started this international adventure. I've been almost completely unimpacted by the bushfires, let the record show. The only times I've felt the impact have been when I traveled to Albany a couple weeks back and wasn't able to go hiking in the Sterling Range as intended because the National Park was closed, and when I woke up in a panic at 3am one day thinking my house was on fire because I could smell smoke. Fortunately, after panic searching my room/the house/the yard and finding no fires, I had the presence of mind to check the national bushfire alerts and found one that indicated a fire two hours drive away was smoky/windy enough that the southern suburbs of Perth would be impacted and we should close our windows if the smoke got too thick.

While I've woken up on subsequent nights with the smell of smoke in my room, I've been able to calmly check the alerts website, see that I'm still safe, and go peacefully back to sleep. So many folks here haven't been able to do that. Loss of property, loss of animal and human lives (three more fire fighters - Americans who came to help with the devastation - were killed today, and biologists are estimating that nearly 1 billion animals have been killed... lots of cattle ranches out east have been devastated), and loss of a sense of safety have been all too common this summer in Australia. Because I took my cousin Dave's advice and moved to Western Australia, though, I've been safe and sound. My grocery store can't get limes because of road closures keeping produce out, but man, how lucky am I that's all I have to contend with?

For those of you who are still concerned about my welfare, here's a handy map that allows you to superimpose landmasses over each other. The continent of Australia is roughly the same size as the lower 48. I'm living in California and the wildfires you're hearing about are concentrated in the Carolinas/Georgia. The bushfires that we've been getting out here in Western Australia have all been rapidly contained, unlike the ones out east that have been almost impossible to contain or control. Here's a handy reference map if you're interested in getting a visual of where the fire action is currently happening.

In the long list of things I'm thankful for, my safety is way up there. But meeting amazing people who have made me feel welcomed and loved is way up there too. I'm getting a little misty thinking about how extraordinarily fortunate I've been here. I'm coming up on three months of living in Australia and so here's a bunch of random photos of SOME of the people who make me feel glad that I decided to give this mad experiment a try. To leave the comfort of a predictable job with income and benefits, my amazing community of friends and family, and the nation that I've always called home for this insane international adventure:

Jack, Rob, & me at Jack's going away party

Pinot, my puppy pal

Me, Nat, Simon, & Dom out for a day of diving

Me & Nat with the only shark we spotted on that day of diving; at Little Creatures Brewing

Grant packed road sodas for me - what a genius

Wiebke and a Very Large Zucchini

Moritz, me, Jack, Stacey, & Nat the day we snorkeled with sea lions

Jack, me, & Nat at U2

The only photo I could find of Terry lol

Jack, Moritz, Stacey, Nat, me

Jack, me, Nat & Simon at The Rocky; "could you POSSIBLY look any more American?" - Simon

Anyway, I should wrap this post up. I know I need to write one about 3-day adventuring Part II, but instead I'll just show you some photos of today's adventure:

Went walking on some trails at John Forest National Park

Went for lunch at the tavern inside the park after bushwalking; already liked the place because the sign was amusing.

Walked inside and saw THIS as I was ordering my chicken burger

Apparently his name is Dribbles...

... and we're friends now.

Best friends.

Grant, the wizard who proposed this adventure

Couldn't look more chill if he tried.

Me and my mob connections

Several people at the tavern mentioned my eyes looked like dinner plates when I spotted Dribbles. But, like, duh?

So anyway, this is what a random Thursday day off looks like in my life now. This is the part where I mention to Mom: yes, I know I have to come home in a year. Or two. :)

A month of updates

I almost can't believe it's been a month since my last post. Time is flying and I have so little concept of it - days are a blur of time spent in the shop, diving, and hanging out with friends. I honestly had so little awareness of the absolute exhaustion that comes with working a retail job in the days and weeks leading up to Christmas, but let me tell you: it's full on. I basically would come home, eat dinner (most nights, but sometimes I was too tired. Which, as we know, is NOT a thing for me. I'm never too tired to eat. Except apparently now I am), crash into bed, go back to work in the morning. And then after Christmas, everyone who got gift cards to spend at the shop came in and wanted to spend them! So the cycle continued. Only in the last week or so have things really properly calmed down so that I can breathe at work, and that's meant that I've been super lucky: I've had two weeks in a row with three days off in a row! Which is where the fun, bloggable, actually interesting parts of my life come in!

Okay, so I need to back the train up. After my road trip with Wiebke, I accepted the truth: having a car was going to afford me more freedom, not less. After selling Gracie, my first car/trusty sidekick/Mazda 3, I was happy to forego the expenses of car ownership for a bit. No oil changes, no insurance, no gas expenses; no headaches. But then having the rental car that weekend for our single ladies roadtrip reminded me of how amazing it is to just be able to say "hey, let's do the thing," and then go and do the thing. So I bought a new-to-me car/trusty sidekick/1998 Nissan Pathfinder and her name is Ten Ton Tessie.

Yes, she does have flood lights attached to the front grill. Yes, she does have a retro-fitted second fuel tank so it costs $150 to fill (both tanks) with gas. Yes, she did require new shocks and boots (don't ask me what those are, I think they have something to do with drive shafts, whatever those are) when I bought her and the mechanics gently chastised me for not having her looked at before I signed on the dotted line or whatever, but she is MINE! So now I've got wheels. Step one to freedom.

Step two to freedom: finish the damn Divemaster coursework. I finally did that two weeks ago when I submitted my mapping project. Except, surprise! I still had to demonstrate proficiency at some skills and have them signed off on by an instructor. Perk of working at a dive shop: instructors abound. Perk of working at a dive shop: my boss has a boat that he can send me out on course with. Perk of working at a dive shop: dive people are super encouraging and wonderful and no one batted an eye when I just showed up and told them I needed to go on a deep dive, do a dive briefing, and perform a search and recovery. They just rolled with it. So between the day out on the boat and an outing with another instructor that weekend, I got all the final skills done and my DM coursework is complete! On the weekend dive, I also FINALLY saw one of these weird little critters:

Full disclosure: not my photo. Credit goes to the Fishes of Australia website for this image of a Weedy Sea Dragon.

Perth has LOTS of these strange looking little seahorse things (allegedly), but they're really hard to spot because they live in the kelp beds (which make any normal person seasick as they sway ever so gently in the swell) and blend in extraordinarily well with their environment. So on my final dive as a DM in training I saw my first one. It was amazing. A whole bunch of us had never seen a weedy, so we were pumped.

I've skipped over some stuff here, but lemme just tell you that hot Christmas is weird. I went to the beach. I literally basked in the sun. On Christmas Day. After sleeping late from my midnight mass experience (where they sang Aussie Catholic Christmas carols, which are a thing), I went to the beach. What. The. What.

Christmas selfie

I'm getting away from the narrative for this blog post that I didn't properly lay out before beginning to write. But I'm getting away from it nonetheless.

Two weeks in a row of three days off. That's where I was.

So last week I road tripped with my friend Rob and we went to the actual southern coast. Still in the state of Western Australia, but no longer on the western coast. Is that obvious? So anyway, 4.5ish hours drive from the Perth 'burbs. Popped down to Albany after work on Sunday (pronounced AL-bany, not ALL-bany) and Denmark (same same) and went diving, went touristing, saw some enormous trees, drank wine, drank mead, drank whiskey & gin; essentially did all my favorite things. It was so freaking sweet.

So Sunday night we leave Canning Vale at 6:30ish, drive 4.5ish hours, and I get to have my first night of camping in Australia. Which would have been cooler if I didn't have to wake up to be at a scuba shop at 7am the next morning, but I also really shouldn't complain about my amazing life. So.

Successfully slept in a tent, woke up on time, made it to the shop for a 7am departure, and went for a dive on the HMAS Perth! She was intentionally sunk in 2001 and is a great wreck for a beginner wreck explorer like me. No leaking oils/crap, not many snags to get stuck on, lots of swim throughs to scope out, 133m long so there's lots of ground to cover. Plus she's now my deepest dive at 37 meters.

Me & Rob

On the bow of the HMAS Perth

Swim throughs

Rob takes some nice photos, I have to admit

Like, check out that color. Gorgeous, right? Good job, Rob.

 We did two dives on the Perth and then spent the afternoon poking around Albany. Lunch in town, then on to beach exploration in Frenchman's Bay (except not actually. More like the bay around the corner because I got impatient and drove us onto the beach too soon and then wanted to go explore some rock jumbles I saw, so we didn't quite make it to Frenchman's Bay. But we did our surface interval between dives at Frenchman's, so I'm going to count it anyway), then stopped for a whiskey(me)/gin(Rob) tasting at Great Southern Distilling. We ate a dinner that I know intellectually was tasty but realistically was mostly asleep for and then I fell asleep around 9pm. Ideal day, in other words.

D'you know what? I'm not entirely sure that was actually the first afternoon. It's entirely possible that was the second afternoon. I'll have to check with Rob. But carry on as if I'm following the correct timeline. Because to you it's all the same.

Day two was lots of touristing. We visited the giant tingle tree forests (HOW AMAZING IS IT THAT THE TREES ARE CALLED TINGLES!?) on a tree top walk; visited The Gap, a spot where you can watch the enormous King Waves (YouTube it, forreal) crash into the coast; and wrapped up the day at (three guesses and the first two don't count) a brewery/winery called Boston's.

The Gap

The Gap

Tree Top Walk

Giant Tingle Tree

Even more giant tingle tree

Not kidding: this tree is still alive. It had green leaves and everything. The things just keep growing despite diseases and bugs that make these giant holes in them.

Our final day was spent at Elephant Rocks, one of the most picturesque sites in WA (and one of the best beaches in the world, if magazines are to be believed). Man, I don't disagree.

We needed to hit the road, but then Rob knew about this place...

So we stopped and he tried some honey and I tried some mead. And then there's this great winery just down the road, but it's closed on Wednesdays, but let's just give them a call...

So next thing I know we're doing this wine tasting at a winery that isn't even open, but the nice guy who answered when Rob called said "yeah, just come by... the internet is out so I can't get any work done anyway" and I learned that Aussies rival the American South when it comes to welcoming hospitality and drank some really excellent wine and then was accidentally definitely not capable of driving us home. So Rob did. Y'all. It was such a good few days.

I have another road trip and 3 day adventure to tell you about, but my friend is here hanging out with me while I write this, and he's griping about how long this novel is taking to write, so I'm signing out. I promise, the next installment is coming sooner. xoxo Gossip Girl.