Another week gone by - the time seems to go so fast! This was Dad's second week of teaching and it went well this week. The guys continue to be enthusiastic in class asking more questions and everyone passed the exam at the end of the week.
My week was filled again with classes at the Leisure Centre and Tai Chi and knitting at the Seniors' Centre. This week was also the monthly meeting of the library book club. The book we read was called 'Caleb's Crossing' and I actually didn't finish the book - I just couldn't get into it. The story was sort of interesting, but not interesting enough to read anymore than I did. There was a good discussion about the book during the book club meeting - there were about ten women there - and after the discussion finished, it was time to just socialize with everyone. They are a friendly group - we'll see how next month's meeting goes. The book for April is 'Catch-22' - one I remember was read a lot in high schools, but not one that I ever read.
On Friday, my friend, Thea, picked me up from the Leisure Centre and we spent the afternoon together. Of course, we started out with an iced chocolate and then had lunch by the pond near the Leisure Centre. It's always nice to hang out with friends and have a good chat. 😃
Iced chocolates with Thea
The view from our picnic by the pond
Yesterday, Dad and I drove to a quaint little town east of Perth called York. We thought it would be nice to get away for the weekend and check out some other places around this area. We started off going to the Peace Park Charity Markets - we thought that we might find some different things for sale there, but it was really just a garage sale in various stalls. York has kept a lot of their heritage buildings (you know how much I love that old-style architecture) and so Dad and I spent 1 1/2 hours walking up and down the main street listening to a self-guided walking tour which Dad had downloaded onto his phone. It was really interesting learning about the history of the different buildings. Along the way, we stopped for some cake for morning tea at the local bakery. Next stop was Penny Farthings Sweets - a (lolly) candy store - we enjoyed poking around the store, especially me since there were a number of lollies which reminded me of my childhood in Wagga. We ordered some Chinese food for lunch and ate it in Avon Park by the Avon River which was really nice and then walked along the suspension bridge which goes over the river. After lunch, we drove to the York Ice Cream Company to taste their ice-cream which had been touted as the 'best ice-cream you have ever tasted'. Dad ordered passionfruit and I opted for their award winning licorice ice-cream. It was expensive ($5.) for 150ml and, although it was tasty and very flavourful, Dad and I both agreed that we would rather have a Kawartha ice-cream. After a visit to Mount Brown Lookout to see a view of the town of York and look for a geocache (we were successful), our final stop was at the Tipperary School Museum. When we got there, a volunteer called Ken gave us a tour of the one room schoolhouse and told us some of the history of the school along with some local history. He was a fountain of knowledge and we really enjoyed our time there. On the way to our Airbnb, we searched for two more geocaches and were successful both times. Our host at the Airbnb, Erin, was waiting for us at her place which was a little out of town of the next place we visited today (Northam). She and her husband built a little add-on to their house for family who come and visit from England - when there is no-one visiting, she puts it up on Airbnb. It was a fabulous place - so large and everything was so comfy - we very much enjoyed relaxing for the evening in the big leather chairs and had a great night's sleep there. In the morning, we ate a fabulous breakfast which Erin provided (croissants, yogurt, fresh cut up fruit and orange juice).
York Town Hall (excuse my thumb shadow on the left - I am still getting used to taking photos on my new iPod 😏)
The Castle Hotel
Old blue car we saw on the street
The Davies Building
York Motor Museum
York Courthouse Complex
Dad with his banana cake for morning tea (it was supposed to be a carrot cake, but we weren't watching the girl closely and didn't notice she put in a banana cake)
My mud cake - pretty tasteless which was very disappointing
Western Australian Bank
Penny Farthing Sweets - such a trip down memory lane walking through this lolly (candy) store
View from the picnic table where we ate lunch
Dad with his Chinese food (honey chicken) for lunch
Our lunch guest
The Avon River - views from the suspension bridge
Dad and me on the suspension bridge
Me eating licorice ice-cream
Dad eating his passionfruit ice-cream
Look what someone added to this tree to make it so cute 😊
View of the town of York from Mount Brown Lookout
Living area where the teacher lived - one large room attached to the school (one classroom) at the Tipperary School Museum
Written on a slate in the one room school at Tipperary School Museum
Dad sitting in a student desk at the Tipperary School Museum
Ken, our tour guide of the Tipperary School Museum, sitting in the teacher's chair
Dad and I riding our 'horses' at the Tipperary School Museum
Riding our 'horses' outside the Museum under a Sandalwood tree
Dad showing one of our favourite geocache hides for this day - the owner of the geocache had made the cache to look like a survey marker - but the metal survey plate screwed onto the top of the marker post was actually attached to an emptied out glue stick in a hollowed out wood post
Another geocache - hidden in between two tree trunks under a rock
First part of our breakfast at the Airbnb
Today, once we got going - it was hard to get out of the comfy bed 😀 - we drove over to another little town called Northam. My friend, Thea, had told me it was pretty ordinary compared to York ...and she was right. We did have a tasty iced chocolate at the cafe in the Visitor Information Centre and enjoyed walking over the suspension bridge which spanned the Avon River. However, the self-guided walk of the main street left a lot to be desired. It was nowhere as good as York's, so it was quite disappointing. After checking out the silo art, we decided to leave the town and head home stopping at various geocaches along the way. We found nine out of nine of them - we were very happy about that and considered it a successful day!
Hard to see unless you click on the pic to see it close up - I'm holding a travel bug we found in one of our caches - we will now place this travel bug into another cache and someone else will do the same - many of these travel bugs will travel around the world landing in various geocaches
Fountain in the Avon River outside the cafe at the Tourist Info Place at Northam
Pelican in the Avon River at Northam
Me with my iced chocolate at the cafe in the Tourist Info Place in Northam
View from the suspension bridge in Northam
Dad and me on the suspension bridge in Northam
Decorated trash bin in Northam
There are 12 bronze and iron sculptures around the town of Northam - they were 'installed on columns with engraved story plaques providing a unique visual tribute to the town's past' - this one is called 'Win-the-War-Tearooms' - a tearoom was set up and profits went to assist the war effort - soldiers would come to the tearoom by foot or by bicycle
This sculpture is called 'The Taxi' - the Shamrock Hotel provided this hansom cab and carriage service to taxi its customers home
'The Eclipse' - it is thought that the local river pools provided the water for the brewing process for the Avon Brewery and Ice Company
Bank of Australasia
Old Shire Council offices
Shamrock Hotel
Monument in front of the Northam Tourist Information Centre - it's called 'Five Premiers' and was erected to commemorate five previous premiers of the state of Western Australia
The Commercial Hotel
The Uniting Church
St. Johns Church
A fabulous geocache - the cache is a metal box made to look like a bolted-on bracket on this metal support post. The cache is magnetized to the post to make it look like it belongs. Quite tricky to spot!
View of Northam from Mount Ommanney Lookout
Someone had painted on these rocks - we saw them on the way down from the lookout
Silo Art - two artists were commissioned to paint these silos - the first two pics (one far away and the second a close-up of the first) were done by a British artist named 'Phlegm' - he painted 'whimsical characters in their fantastic transportation devices'
These colourful silos were painted by an American artist named Hense - he 'lobbed his explosive patterns across the silos in blocks of bright colour'
Beautiful wildflowers we came across when we were geocaching
