Mandjar, the meeting place

For the past two weeks I have pretty much lived in a different world. Just a little bit though. (Kids were allowed to eat lots of lollies, watch a lot of Tv, stay in their jamies all day, eat and eat, play whatever they liked and so forth.
For the kids holidays we went down to the Suburb Dawesville, Mandurah, (originally called Mandjar by the Noongar people). However, we didn’t really live in the suburb but on one more secluded road, right by the ocean. Here sheds face big villas and everyone has a long enough driveway to themselves. Our drive has a little ‘valley’, so the kids love to ride scooters and skateboards up and down. This street is the most peculiar one I have ever been on! Ragged sheds face big villas, always depending on how much the owner was willing to pay.

Our house here is small with one bedroom downstairs, which I shared with the kids, and bedroom, living room and kitchen upstairs. There also is a beautiful balcony facing the dunes and the sea, as well as the drive way and front yard in order to have an eye on the playing children. It is dominated by comfortable couches. Three in the living room, one on the balcony and neat sofa chairs in the garage shed. There is no television, but since it’s the holidays the kids are allowed a few movies on the laptop before bedtime, when it is too dark and cold to play outside.

This lower one, with the long drive way, is ours.

In general there is no way not to spend a lot of time outside there, which left me pretty tired. Walking the dog multiple times a day, as there is no fence in the garden to keep her from chasing rabbits and roos. Talking the kids out to the beach at least twice, going to the zoo, walking to the playground, hanging up laundry and so forth. This leaves me pretty tired at the end of each day! It is easy to go outside though, and enjoyable since the sun usually shines now. I love walking barefoot everywhere. Even to the playground which is basically surrounded more by dunes than houses. Being able to walk barefoot is good, since it prevents tan lines on my feet. Yes! You read right! I get tan lines and I actually am quite tan. Relatively speaking yes, but definitely visible and my neck has crispy dark spots! You will not recognize this chocolate, when I come home. 

Since most of the surrounding homes are holiday houses, human encounters tend to be pretty rare - animal encounters even higher! As I mentioned I shared a romantic shower with a spider, but besides this a lot of little worms and snails crawl along the drive way and if one isn’t careful enough the downstairs bathroom. We even found a beautiful dried up emerald beetle in the sand. My most intense animal meetings have been with mozzies and roos. The 21 mosquito bites I was given within 5 minutes still itch terribly! Although I am happily surprised every time still, I have gotten used to looking to the side and seeing a kangaroo pop up on the lawn or between some bushes. Today alone I met them in the morning after a walk on the beach and again when I drove up to Mandurah train station.

At this point I will throw in one very special activity of this week - a visit to Peel Zoo, which had me go up close to a few animals. It’s a zoo specialized on Australian animals. The Zoo itself is very small and pretty expensive, but features four “Streichelzoos”. Four areas in which you could cuddle and feed selected animals. I do not want to spend too much time talking about the time at the zoo, except it is where I met my boyfriend! 

Just for Mama -> this beauty. Because I know how much you love birds :)

That big black bird, that all of a sudden hopped onto my arm to eat the seeds in my hand. With perfect timing, another bird bit Alastair, who burst into tears and came toward me crying. I didn’t have bandaids and I couldn’t have brought any, because he used all of them up with his many deadly injuries. To free my hands I hopped up and down as the woman at the reception had advised us. And yes, the bird moved but different from what I expected, didn’t fly away. Instead it dug its claws into my shoulder, determined to not let go of me, but instead try eating my hat. Well, lets go piraty then. With my new friend moving positions from shoulder to shoulder to get a better bite at my hat, I pulled out my water bottle to first of all clean Al’s hands and later wrap a tissue around, which I had asked for from a nearby couple.

“I am never going in there again and I absolutely hate birds!”, Alastair sniffed. 

To cheer him up we went back to our friends the kangaroos. They really are very curious animals! The most creepy thing are their little Joeys, their babies. When they actually stick their head out of the bag, which Playmobil makes us believe they do, they are pretty adorable. That position, though cute, must be pretty uncomfortable because they rather hide their heads deep down mommy’s fur and prefer letting their abnormally long legs sticking out.
“Mrs Kangaroo! But why, you have to legs sticking out your stomach!” But those mommy’s didn’t care at all. Their protective instinct did not seem to ever have existed, because it was no problem for my kiddies to pat theirs! I must say I bribed the roos towards me with those apparently delicious seeds, but they did love me for it!

As did the sheep and deer in another section, but those a little too much! They loved the seeds so much, they nearly knocked me over. Sheep are cute and all that, but when about ten of them crowd around you and snap at your hand all you want is out. And I haven’t even mentioned that Emu with its hole ears and that creepy stare! I found the peacock who greeted us with his show off performance at the reception much prettier. There he stood presenting that gorgeous fan of feathers and moved around slightly as if to say: “Now, what do you say to that? Want a better view? Yes, please take pictures. My secretaries will sign them for you.”

At first he seemed friendly...

THEN THIS!

The famous Tasmanian devil we have a baking glove of. Did you know they teeth are sharp enough to bite through bone? Well, these are the animals which bite a whole into sheep and live in them until they have eaten them from the inside out. (At least James told me this story.) Pretty creepy right? They do look vicious.

Peacocks, pheasants, chickens and geese were all wandering around freely in the zoo and when we left, we even encountered them outside of the zoo heading towards the parking lot to get a ride home after a long day of work.

Yes, I know what you are wondering. We did see Koalas, but they were sleeping. So... I don’t have much to say about them. The fourth ‘walk in area’ contained alpacas. One was quite gentle, the other one pretty greedy. Lots of food, but please no pats. Whenever the kids went for his bush of hair he abruptly turned away as if saying: “Don’t touch this. Denenena, nena, nena - Don’t touch this. Hammer Time!” You can imagine what I listened to the kids singing on the way home. Speaking of which...

To the beach it’s only a three minute walking and the dog goes absolutely mad there! The kids as well dig holes, jump off the dunes, build sanding castles and pose for my photos. I myself either just sit bathing in the sun, photograph or collect shells over shells. The normal shells here are absolutely gorgeous! We would be going ecstatic in Europe to be finding even one of them. My favorites are white twisty ones, sometimes sporting brown specks.

As you can tell my life in the holidays is pretty simple. Walk the dog when getting up, make food, clean, play with the kids, walk to the beach, make food, clean, walk to the playground, supervise tidying up, make food, clean, tuck Katie in, walk the dog, relax. Walking the dog should probably be in there more often. I never realized how often she needs to wee.

Even hanging up the laundry feels oddly satisfying. At the back of the house on a long old fashioned washing line, while the sun heats your neck and you put up one piece after the other seeing just a streak of blue water between the bushes. Then your surroundings fall into shadow and you look up, worried about possible rain. However, the clouds in the sky are radiant white in front of the deep blue hue which promises the sun will be back in a few seconds.

Over everything the waves build a steady rhythm. Water draws back and for one second there is a silent pause before the wave breaks forcefully. When it rises up high you see the picked up sand swirl around in its body. Sometimes they crash like thunder when a large wave falls down onto the water. Majestic and wild unlike those french or Belgian beaches where tons of tourists crowd the grey water, or maybe blue at the cote d'azur. At the same time the sound of the waves is not as soothing as we are used to it. More like a steady swooshing sound. As I said, more forceful and dominant.

Helow, Puppy. You are so cute. Thank you for waiting in my bed for me every night.

It's pretty difficult to get an impressive photograph of the surf, but did I mention we get glorious sunsets as well down here?

On top of it the stars here are magnificent. Bright. Yes so bright that one of them (maybe a planet) cast a light streak onto the sea. There i sat cuddled up with katie, sheltering each other from the wind which blew the days stress away.

Overall I feel like these holidays let me bond even more with the kids. With James I still wasn’t sure. He always seems a little distant and didn’t really agree with Katie, that I was part of the family the other day, which really made me sad. Today, however, they all made me cry a little. I said goodbye to them for Florian, Anja’s and my trip down South this weekend. There was to be a swap at the train station, where Brett would arrive, take over the car and I would take off in the train back to Perth. Katie, as always, was very sad about being parted for those few days. She requested multiple hugs and sniffed at the idea of me leaving for (almost) good in a month. James and Al made it a more simple good bye, not really seeming to care. I got in the care, Katie standing next to the door and trying to sneak in with her PJs already on. Then James stuck his head out the door and shouted “I want to go with to Albany.” Then he came out all the way with the dog and the three of them stood next to the care, while I started the engine - actually blowing me kisses, even James! Saying “Goodbye, goodbye!”. I waved at them through the open window. “BYE SHIWIN!” That was Al standing on the Balcony and waving as well, while James and Katie followed the car backing up the drive way. Then even Kirstie hopped out on the balcony and I waved at all of them and felt like I was leaving for much longer than three days. The whole thing might have been a little exaggerated by me and the kids partly, by putting on old fashioned voices in the beginning, but I still feel deeply touched. I have found yet another family and yet another home. Katie made the promise to keep me up to date with the things going on and to keep sending some pictures. If my plan of coming back here in Fall works, the ‘then’ in ‘until then’ won’t even be all to far away.

It is certain however, that I will feel immensely lonely when I arrive at my new destination Adelaide a few weeks from now - but, I am not at that point yet. First I have to get through sleeping not in but on a car, making those horrid school lunches again and that old school routine, which all of sudden seems so surreal and far away.

This is my favorite one of them. Just look at Alastair, to the left, rocking it! He is a little super man. Then there are Princess Katie and James my dear goofball. 

I will get back to you, when I am back to the normal life. Or shall I say, more normal life.

Sending some sunshine your way,

Flipper

PS: I will send more pictures (YES there are more) to the family, anyone else besides the usual suspects who would like to see some?