Western Australia - Pt 3

In Busselton, we visited the longest wooden jetty / pier in the southern hemisphere (2km). Unfortunately, the underwater observatory at the end of it was closed due to poor sea visibility, but we caught the little train out to the end of the jetty anyway.

Quokky took advantage of the sunshine to sit and have a refreshing apple juice with lunch.

After lunch, we went to an outdoor archery range for a quick round of field archery. 

The next day in the Margaret River area was pretty busy. It started with a trip to the wonderful Ngilgi Cave where we went on a semi-guided tour. We were taken into the cave, told the history and about the formations and then left to wander around ourselves at our own pace.

That afternoon we went to Yallingup Maze - a giant timber maze - where we spent far too much time trying to find our way to the four towers (damn false walls lol), and far too much money on puzzles in the shop :) Every table in the cafe had puzzles and games out so you could play with them while eating. Very clever marketing! We ended up buying a metal knot puzzle and a Rubik's Cube to replace Billy's old one which had broken.

Our caravan park was near the charmingly named Cowaramup - we had to stop and look at the fibreglass cows :)

And since the caravan park was also a working farm, the visiting kids got to feed the animals that evening.

This is where our lovely weather ran out with heavy rain over night :(

Western Australia Trip - Pt 2

After we picked up the motorhome, we did exciting things like find a supermarket to shop for food etc to stock the van. That actually was more exciting than it sounds as the van was obviously bigger than a normal car so parking was an adventure :)

Our 1st full day we caught the ferry over to Rottnest Island, 18km off the coast of WA. It's a reserve, so no private land ownership is allowed, and it's full of history and gorgeous scenery. We caught a bus tour around the island, as well as taking some time to walk around the settlement area.

And for me, the main attraction are the quokkas, small macropods native to the area. They are the cutest things ever and many on the island are quite tame. Some of these cheeky ones were coming right up to sniff the camera (most shots taken by Billy).

We couldn't resist buying our own toy quokka (since we weren't allowed to smuggle a real one off the island!)

The next day we travelled to Bunbury, where we stopped at the Dolphin Discovery Centre. Wild dolphins regularly come into the bay where the centre is, but unfortunately we weren't lucky enough to see any that day. We did get to look at their aquariums with gorgeous seahorses, starfish and octopi, as well as view the dolphin information displays. It was quite an impressive place for something entirely run by volunteers.

On the way out to dinner, we stopped to look at the Bunbury lighthouse. I'm not sure if there's anything significant about it other than its paint job! I remember seeing it as a kid so it was nice to show it to Billy.

Our Dolphin centre entry fees entitled us to go back to the centre 3 times, so we called in there the next morning in the hope that we'd see dolphins this time. We watched feeding time in the aquarium and then were lucky enough to see some dolphins - WAY out in the bay. Binoculars helped! Billy did manage to capture one in one photo - see the black dot around the middle of the photo :)

We then headed down the coast to Busselton. More later...

Western Australia Trip - Pt 1

The first few days of our trip were spent in Fremantle where I had my writer's conference. Before the conference, we had time to do some sightseeing.

We started off with Fremantle Prison, built as a convict barracks in the 19th Century and remained in use until 1991. We took a guided tour - very interesting stories, although we had to dodge the rain showers!

Next we visited the Fremantle Round House, the oldest building still standing in WA. It was originally the prison until Fremantle Jail was built, then used as a police lockup and living quarters for the chief constable.

We also had time for taking in the harbour views, and eating fish and chips and gelato on the foreshore.

 

and walks around the township.

 

Hubby and Billy did various things while I was at the conference, like going to the markets and a football (AFL) match, until finally, the conference was over and we picked up our new home. The adventure had kicked off in earnest!

Homeschooling monthly memories - July 2013

This feels like the geocaching edition of our homeschool post :) It's formed a big part of our life in June and has resulted in lots of cool learning.

Scouts 'Curriculum':

• Scouts has involved campcraft skills, ropes/knots etc.

Intentional Learning:

Creative Arts

• Finished editing the Zombie movie and made a DVD cover for it.
• Drama classes.
• Singing lessons & started learning trumpet as well. (Oh my aching ears!)

HSIE

• Australian History

• We're reading "A Waltz for Matilda" by Jackie French 
• Our geocaching has taken us to a lot of historical places around the area including:

This 'tempietto' is a water-fountain built as a monument to West Maitland's first mayor, Richard Alexander Young

A monument to the dairy farmers of the area.

Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle, and gravestones dating back to the early European settlers in the area.

The graveyard at Cathedral Park is one of the earliest burial grounds in Australia and was featured on Tony Robinson's Time Walks around Newcastle.

Rose Cottage, Newcastle's oldest surviving building.

A lane-way in Maitland, decorated with a mural of the history of the area - but also the site of a public hanging - yep, our history is covering everything!

A local barn decorated with an historical advertisement for the wonder-cure of the time.

Maths

• He continued using the Mathletics curriculum.
• Real-life use of Maths in cooking, measuring
• Coding puzzles 
• Longitude and latitude practice - reading and following the GPS
  

Science & Technology

• Java coding
• Photoshop
• Researched different operating systems and set up Ubuntu Linux to trial

English

• Watched the "Animated Tales of Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream"
• Learning about definite / indefinite articles

PDHPE

• AFL / AFL training
• Archery

Italian

• Back to Italian class

As well as plenty of time spent hanging out with friends and family.

The last few weeks...

A few photos to catch you up on what we've been doing lately.

We've done a few more geocaches and seen some lovely sights like this pair of swans.

AFL season is drawing to a close - 3 more games to go.

Billy has started Scouts officially - here they were making a very wonky tables with knots.

He was invested into his Scout group - now I have to sew his badges on his shirt!

My writer's conference is coming up very quickly for me - in mid-August. It's in Western Australia, so we're making it a family holiday and hiring a motorhome for a couple of weeks afterwards. We've made our itinerary - it'll be a busy holiday but we're looking forward to it.

Geocaching!

We have a new obsession - geocaching. To use the official definition - "Geocaching is a free real-world outdoor treasure hunt. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using a smartphone or GPS and can then share their experiences online."

We're just using my phone as the GPS with the official app. We headed out yesterday with the plan to find 2 caches.

The first location is only a few minutes from our home at this lovely wetlands area. I've actually walked in this area before with a friend but it was Billy's first time there.

We spent over an hour looking for the cache but to no avail! However, we did get up close and personal with a mob of kangaroos who decided to bound past about 5 metres away from where we were.

 

Eventually we gave up and headed off to the 2nd cache. Our bad luck continued - we were walking to the spot when my phone battery died. We had a quick look around where we thought it might be, but didn't find anything.

We headed home disappointed...

Undaunted, we went back out today. We went to the 2nd site first and found the cache easily. That cheered us up!

While we were there, we decided to play tourist in our own town and went for a ride on the mini train around the lake :)

After our success, we headed back for the original cache and found it within a couple of minutes - and yes, we had been searching very close to it!

We're already planning our next search! It's great fun, good exercise, out in the fresh air and we get to see some lovely places. What's not to like?!