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What I Did On My Holiday
Jul. 23rd, 2016 02:59 pmIt's raining again at the moment. This is very much an old style winter; the sort we used to have years ago and which I haven't noted for several years. Wet, in other words! I took the week just gone off work anyway, since I hadn't had a break since Easter [for Swancon and also for a virus which had not been invited].
Miraculously, several things coincided on this week, which almost never happens [ANH]. Saturday 16 was a meetup of the Perth transguys, which ended at the Court Hotel, dodging some of the heaviest rain this winter. On Sunday I went to a gathering held for the Swancon History project where, since I'm apparently an elder fan, I was fed and allowed to ramble for hours about my memories of Swancons past, particularly the very early ones. This ANH. I have not forgotten, peeps, I still have to turn my notes into something actually readable and useful.
Monday night was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stephen_dedman's V & V game, where we had a new player. However, Mike is an actor and was able to slip into his role with ease. It wasn't his fault that he got knocked unconscious by a superhero villain and fell out of the sky, same as it wasn't mine when that happened to me and Dr Sigmund, rattus norvegicus and team psychiatrist, had to radio for emergency help.
On Wednesday I got up at the arse crack of dawn, otherwise known as morning peak hour, to travel by train to Fremantle and then to B Shed at the docks to catch a ferry to Rottnest Island, where friends R and L were having a detox from civilisation. I hope to get their permission to add some of their fantastic photos of the island to this post, but for now you'll have to make do with a couple of shots of me doing the island tourist thing.
Rottnest is half an hour by ferry off the WA coast; once a colonial-era prison for Aboriginal people. This dark past has largely been covered over, although there is a museum on the island which tells the story.
The island is now a favoured tourist destination for locals and tourists alike. The little furry guy posing with me in one of the pictures is a quokka, a rare type of wallaby found only on Rottnest and in a couple of small mainland colonies. They are very tame, since they're allowed to rule the island, and the shops have to have special gates to stop them coming inside and stealing food. They gave Rottnest its current name. When Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered the island in 1696, he mistook them for rats, so named the island Rottenest or Rats Nest. The indigenous name for the island is Wadjemup.
Rottnest in off season is very peaceful and although very cold, the morning minimum temps are higher than the mainland and so it was okay, as long as one stayed rugged up. There are no cars on the island except the service vehicles, so one stays warm with much walking or bike riding. But yes, I did take my shoes and socks off to go wading, as I decided you can't be on a beach and not do that.
I had to come home on Thursday afternoon, since I'd left my rats at home alone with food supplies and didn't want them to wreck the place with partying. Friday visited M [mother] which wasn't exactly fun, but kind of obligatory. And that's about it. I'm back to a normal weekend schedule and will be shackled to the computer desk on Monday. As always, I would seriously like to avoid that fate!
Miraculously, several things coincided on this week, which almost never happens [ANH]. Saturday 16 was a meetup of the Perth transguys, which ended at the Court Hotel, dodging some of the heaviest rain this winter. On Sunday I went to a gathering held for the Swancon History project where, since I'm apparently an elder fan, I was fed and allowed to ramble for hours about my memories of Swancons past, particularly the very early ones. This ANH. I have not forgotten, peeps, I still have to turn my notes into something actually readable and useful.
Monday night was
stephen_dedman's V & V game, where we had a new player. However, Mike is an actor and was able to slip into his role with ease. It wasn't his fault that he got knocked unconscious by a superhero villain and fell out of the sky, same as it wasn't mine when that happened to me and Dr Sigmund, rattus norvegicus and team psychiatrist, had to radio for emergency help.On Wednesday I got up at the arse crack of dawn, otherwise known as morning peak hour, to travel by train to Fremantle and then to B Shed at the docks to catch a ferry to Rottnest Island, where friends R and L were having a detox from civilisation. I hope to get their permission to add some of their fantastic photos of the island to this post, but for now you'll have to make do with a couple of shots of me doing the island tourist thing.
Rottnest is half an hour by ferry off the WA coast; once a colonial-era prison for Aboriginal people. This dark past has largely been covered over, although there is a museum on the island which tells the story.
The island is now a favoured tourist destination for locals and tourists alike. The little furry guy posing with me in one of the pictures is a quokka, a rare type of wallaby found only on Rottnest and in a couple of small mainland colonies. They are very tame, since they're allowed to rule the island, and the shops have to have special gates to stop them coming inside and stealing food. They gave Rottnest its current name. When Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered the island in 1696, he mistook them for rats, so named the island Rottenest or Rats Nest. The indigenous name for the island is Wadjemup.
Rottnest in off season is very peaceful and although very cold, the morning minimum temps are higher than the mainland and so it was okay, as long as one stayed rugged up. There are no cars on the island except the service vehicles, so one stays warm with much walking or bike riding. But yes, I did take my shoes and socks off to go wading, as I decided you can't be on a beach and not do that.
I had to come home on Thursday afternoon, since I'd left my rats at home alone with food supplies and didn't want them to wreck the place with partying. Friday visited M [mother] which wasn't exactly fun, but kind of obligatory. And that's about it. I'm back to a normal weekend schedule and will be shackled to the computer desk on Monday. As always, I would seriously like to avoid that fate!