Exploring... probably the only city we will see this holiday..

Jet Lag!!! I was up at the ungodly hour of 6.00 am the first morning and that was it it!!! But it was fine, and we got up leisurely and had breakfast and then headed off to find a Australian sim card - harder then it sounds - 4 supposedly intelligent people who had no idea what to buy - the waiting time in the phone shop was 90 minutes so we were advised to go to the supermarket and just but one of the rack - but which one? anyhow we finally made a decision and got what we hope is right.

Next.. Fremantle - first, to recover from the ordeal of buying a sim card, to a lovely quirky coffee shop with a little - well actually quite big- art gallery showing local art and a lovely outside seating are for nice coffee - I finally felt I was on holiday- the temperature was about 29 degrees blue skies all around and serious cafe culture!!!

Fremantle is an artist town - the old bit is really pretty full of interesting buildings that in terms of Australia are quite old the are populated by bespoke shops and small galleries - we spent some time in a really fab gallery showing original First Nation art - some fantastic pieces - very varied and so incredibly colourful even the ones that seemed to done in what I would call earth tones - If I had had to pick on I wouldn't have known where to start but actually at the end of the day I would probably have gone for one of the more traditional earth toned ones - but to be fair I wouldn't really know what was traditional!

We moved on through the town, to the Jail - the oldest building in Fremantal known as the Round House. Set on top of promontory overlooking the sea this was built a s a jail for early prisoners - by early prisoners, and was small but probable very effective. There were some stocks and the volunteer on duty ( who is also allowed to fire the cannon) put Dr Fred in them - it looked very uncomfortable - back in the day people would have been in the stocks for a minimum of 6 hours while passerbies wold hurl abuse and rotten food at them. We were kinder to Dr Fred and he was only in there for 2 minutes... and we didnt throw anything at him!(early days). I played at being a prisoner with a sign around my neck - that was plenty for me.....

During the second world war loads of children were evacuated from the UK to Australia. Dr Freds Dad was one of them - aged 14 he was put on a boat with a lot of other young people and shipped halfway around the world!! The boats first landed at Fremantle and there is a large monument dedicated to those people that migrated either by choice or not to the southern hemisphere - we were sure of the criteria to have you full name on the tablets but we looked for Dr Freds dad to no avail - some of them were cordoned off so we couldn't cover them all but we stood and reflected next to the statue of young children with a suitcase and considered how hard it might have been to be so far away from home and in such an alien place. Dr Freds dad ended up the other side of the country in Queanbyan - which we had visited 10 years of so ago.

Time then for lunch- another outside cafe sitting in the shade - I have to say by this time I am flagging a bit with the heat and jet lag but we wandered though the busy town - I'm finding it amazing to see all these people in shorts and summer clothes - hard to imagine that back home its probably a tad chilly.

In the evening we went 300 yd down to the river with some snacks, beers and wine and sat watching the sun go down and made friends with a friendly rat that we called Nigel for no other reason than the name Nigel hasn't been registered in the UK for many years now.

We've had two really good quite full days made welcome and shown around by some good friends -I have loads of pictures that I will post but we have been so busy and still a tad jet lagged that I just haven't had time yet... today we went downtown Perth here is a taster but more next time I have internet access

Tomorrow we pick the van up and I don't know when we will have wifi again but I will keep as up to date as possible this is already shaping up to be a fabulous adventure.

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank. Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished... it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh... I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic! there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....

Planet Ruby Starrs

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