Andrea’s Place

Nestling in the northern suburbs of Perth is Ocean Reef. It has no reef but it does have an ocean: the Indian Ocean to be exact. And our friend Andrea’s house is 300m from it on the curiously named street of Volante Elbow.

John having breakfast – note ocean in background

Thankfully the suburb has no other streets named after body parts. What it does have is miles of cycle paths through the Marmion nature reserve, an area of coastal wildlife that makes you feel as if the coast has been untouched since time began.

Andrea’s a teacher who I worked with in Korea where I taught English. In Australia though, she teaches at primary school and she took us to visit it. To us it could have been a classroom anywhere, that is except for the cleaners who were wearing these nifty hoovers on their backs. That’s a new one on us and a great idea.

When Andrea and her Korean husband Seung Wook (aka James) decided to settle in Perth, selling up a small flat in Seoul enabled them to buy a four bed bungalow with gardens front and back (into which they inserted a pool). It’s amazing what the same money will buy you in different parts of the world.

It was great to have them as hosts, to catch up with their lives and see Nathan who was hardly walking last time we saw him and is now a real chatterbox with a great Aussie accent. We were able to go to church with them too where we met up with Andrea’s sister and mum who we’d actually met back in Korea.

Andrea took us out to the Western Australia Reptile Park and to the coastal town of Fremantle which will be blog posts in their own right. She also introduced us to what has to be one of the best fishes we’ve ever eaten: baby shark which is a very common meal here apparently. Amazingly meaty, we thought we were having a chicken steak when we sat down to it. Thankfully, it doesn’t taste like chicken though. For the record, it tastes like fish.

While staying with them, we couldn’t get over what a blessing it was to have a house so close to such a pristine beach and coastal environment. But, like most things, when it’s on our doorstep, the novelty wears off somewhat. James said he’d much rather jog on his running machine than head off for spectacular views, sunsets and nature along the cycle path each day.

We were completely smitten with the coast. And the sunsets were absolutely amazing every evening as the sun falls straight into the sea and the light in this part of the world has to be seen to be believed. I’ve travelled a fair bit and I’ve never seen light  with the piercing clarity as it has here. It makes for some spectacular light for photography.

Swiss summary…

Standing in Sargans, on the slip road of the autoroute to Zurich, we thought a ride to the city would be a sure thing. Not so, by 2pm it was cold, starting to drizzle and half of Switzerland had ignored us except for one chap who risking someone driving into the back of him had stopped to tell us that he was only going about five miles down the road. Kind of wished we taken the lift just to see how far it would have got us, but he was insistent that where we were was better than where we would be if he took us.

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Bled

A very quick hitch NW out of Ljubljana is the town of Bled. It’s such a quick hitch that it actually took me more time to make the sign than it did to wait for someone to stop. That’s the kind of day’s hitching I like.

We’d heard about Bled before. Back to our hostel in Zagreb, we’d shared a room with, Scott, a Californian. We chatted over places we’d been and places we were going to go. He’d had a lot of different experiences all over Europe and he had a lot to say about them. But Bled, our next planned destination, stopped him in his tracks. He could do no more than emphatically and economically describe it in a word of one syllable.

Now we’ve seen enough of west coast USA to know that if someone from California has to resort to an expletive to express their impression of the beauty of a place, it’s worth visiting. Sure enough, we stayed a night longer than we planned.

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