4th Jan 2011 (Final day)
Another
beautiful day started. We were all quite happy to have those wonderful sunny days. The forecast when leaving Perth was not all that great, but somehow the sun smiled on us in Albany. A day earlier sometime between breakfast and the beginning of the day trip, Kir and Rosh had gone for an early morning walk on the nearby Middleton beach. Ash-da and I had picked them up and brought them back to the beach house before heading out for the adventures that I talked about
here. While they walked and made the beach house look less crowded, the rest of us stayed home and waited for the maintenance lady to show up to unlock KK and bhauju's room, which they were accidentally locked out of. Me being me, I immediately thought of our 2-3 restroom lock outs in Kansas City-Kansas apartment that KK was involved in and put the blame on her. I was wrong of course and it wouldn't be the first time. The push button lock pressed against the wall and locked itself. It was poor design, really.
We had a long drive back home (Perth) with a detour to Bluff Knoll mountain. We had to get on our way ASAP but of course not before taking the time to enjoy the Middleton beach. A nice half an hour walk on the beach and a bicycle/walking trail and we got to Emu Point beach with a small cluster of coffee shops and a swimming area (not a pool). I had seen nothing like it before, so I'm going to try and explain. Kir and Rosh first and then KK and I a bit later walked into slightly deeper than knee-high water upto the board walk. The boardwalk cordoned off the swimming area from three sides with the side towards the beach being open. There were swimming lanes in between the opposite sides of the board walk. As we walked, we saw a young man and a middle-aged woman doing their morning swim and the cool thing was there were fish swmming right next to them. Well we saw fish on the other side of the board but of course the board is only at the surface. We were about to make our second turn to get to the last piece of boardwalk and we saw a stingray swimming by. We were quite surprised and impressed by the opportunity to swim alongside marine life, although Steve Irwin's accident did cross my mind. While Kir and Rosh walked back to the beach from the other side of the board which turned out to be deeper, we took a safer and shallower walk back. Ash-da, bhauju, Swe and Pa-jwai were talking and enjoying themselves in a shady spot and our return prompted our walk back to the beach house. The topic of conversation this time circled around economics and KK took the hot seat in trying to explain a tiny bit of the topsy-turvy financial world that we all live in these days.
Back in "12 by the sea," we packed up and were
on the road again. Skipping through the van conversation, let me fast forward to our lunch stop. I'm not so sure anymore but I think the name of the town is called Gnonup. I tried to find it on internet but I couldn't. Anyhow, it was a really small town and we stopped at a gas-station cum diner. We were hungry enough for lunch already, and decided to barge in. The eating area was completely decorated with Elvis stuff. And when I mean completely, I mean all the way. Every crook and nanny. The menu had no vegetarian items except fries. The server/cook/possibly the owner was nice enough to create a vegetarian sandwich for KK. I had fun with the ketchup. I was expecting
a peel-off but I had the
squirting kind in my hands. The result of course was tomato sauce all over my face, good enough to generate a few laughs. A tasty grilled sandwich, plenty of fries and a piece of Ash-da's burger later, we were getting ready to get on the road again when D-bhauju heard me say "thank you sir" to our server for handing me the key to the restroom. She urged me not to say 'sir' in this part of the world, as people might not take it very kindly. Later Ash-da would tell me some people reply with a humorous "I've not been knighted yet." Outside the petrol pump though, our van was stuck behind a huge gas truck. I was going to help Ash-da get out of there when the truck driver took over my job. Ash-da struggled to get himself out of there. The trucker lingo didn't help one bit. We were all relieved to see him finally pull out.
Conversations continued as we drove and drove up the hill on Bluff Knoll access road. It was a clear day and we could see the Bluff Knoll mountain from a shade near the parking lot where the hiking trail up the mountain begins.
Bluff Knoll was green, probably its not so dry summer look, and many-faced to agree with what the local aborigines (Qaaniyan and Koreng) have to say. Thus we saw the highest point in Western Australia (WA) and headed back to Perth, the largest city in WA.
We stopped by a little street side vendor to pick up some fresh cherries, nectarines and an unappealing box of dates. There was a little convenient store nearby as well where Swe and Pa-jwai walked in to use the restroom and walked out with a cone of ice-cream in Swe's hands. Price of using the restroom I suppose. The guy we bought the fruits from told us there was an accident a few minutes up the road, and though I wasn't too keen on believing him right away, we did run into it. We had to wait about an hour before the Albany highway opened up again. It was good to know nobody died, and supposedly a helicopter carried away the injured to a hospital somewhere. It was quite hot, flies were all around, and red ants were crawling all over the roadside. I was quite happy to get going again.
Ash-da's buddy from his Nepal engineering college, Aso-dai, his wife Rea-bhauju, and his brother-in-law Sudip were waiting for us as we arrived in Perth. They had prepared a lot of food for us and we were quite hungry for it. Aso-dai is working on his doctoral research in some sort of a water resource management. Sudip had moved to Perth from Sydney a few months ago and was planning to go to Nepal in a week's time to get hitched. Rea-bhauju is working on her Master's degree in Civil Engineering as well. The gundruk-bhatmas-sandeko appetizer was the best and I helped myself to second and third servings.
No matter where we went to, Kir knew how to ease off the atmosphere with a carefree one or two liners. I loved him for it. Pa-jwai always had a puzzle or a joke or a little anecdote from Japan (where he spent around a decade of his life) or elsewhere handy. Swe had her innocent sounding questions ready to shower and her experiences were quite moving. KK's insights into things and her strong character are mostly appreciated. D-bhauju and I were the quiet ones mostly content with listening. Probably more so with Rosh, and she was upfront about committing herself to doing every single thing she could do, she is smarter than most but she wouldn't show it. Ash-da was the glue that brought us together and made it possible to have a great time. Albany trip has turned out to be one of the memorable events of my life.
Video Clip made with our Albany trip pictures and a guitar tune I recorded from a 10 year old boy playing outside the IGA store in Albany:
