Saturday, 27th March 2021.
We wake in what is basically a car park with ocean backdrop.
Morning spent trying to catch up on a few things. Paid Jack who fixed Anne’s ipad. Sent some to pay off card etc etc. Still lots to catch up on. 11.50am. ‘Have a break and do something.’
So as we are in easy walking distance of town, we easily walked to town.
Three minutes after leaving the van we walked past this poorly concealed spot on the edge of the oval opposite the van. This is the spot but photo taken on the way back hours later after the fact. The ‘fact’ was, we were quietly startled by the sight of a couple of youths in broad, and more or less public view, in a desperate but still amorous embrace completely unaware of our presence. Nothing too revealing. Just intense to the point where, similar to nature programs, they were in a trance like state. They say love is blind. In this case, I would say, also poorly planned.
On that note, just around the corner, we come across, yes, how about that, Dirty Rascals.
A clever name, but just have a hair cut. Not a shave.
We have a coffee and bagel at ‘Benesse’. We ask, ‘What does it mean?’ and am told it’d Portuguese for giving or a gift or something. We had never heard of it.
So we asked Mr Google … Something in Return Benesse is a term of classic Portuguese origin and has the connotation of making a Donation, non-profit, or nothing to ask in return. Understanding this “something in return”, such as profits, dividends, income from this donation.
By the way, fabulous bagel. Cream cheese, smoked salmon, looked like shaved red onion and rocket lettuce. I hear capers and lemon is good as well.
So we start the Heritage walk, identifying buildings. Through years of development, at ground level, they are just shop frontages. You don’t notice until you step back and look at the top façade or roof line.
This was a theatre which I think burnt down and was rebuilt in Art Deco style.
More shop fronts, in fact this is where Benesse is. This was the Central Hotel, for the ‘nice’ people so it didn’t serve alcohol. (?)
Outside a shop, an apparent Albert Einstein quote. ‘I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.’ Crap. He was a genius. I am sometimes passionately curious, but I am a long way from the theory of relativity. I have trouble making a sandwich.
Two more buildings. The corner, left was the WA Bank and on the right, a lawyers office.
The fabulous Rose Hotel, for naughty people who like alcohol. Then we lost interest and go for an ice cream.
Now we pick up art on the way to the art gallery. This shed has been painted up to show maybe a rat but I think fox, with an extended paw and a saw in the paw, sawing the wooden wall. Try saying that after the fourth drink.
At the pink Art Gallery that used to be a convent. Showed the outside a day or so ago. The plaque reads, Thanks to centenary of women’s suffrage. Mother Mary Angela Costello. 31st August 1855 – 4th October 1930. Sisters of Mercy Convent.’
… and here is the stone laid at the start.
In the front grounds, this. NO. I don’t know what it is either.
An example of art. A pink chair hanging of the edge of a balcony of a pink building.
The artist (not Anne) spent a month in China and has an exhibition, mainly in cardboard and paper. Quite clever actually. I think the title is something like ‘once were fields’ It is supposed to represent progress (?) of buildings replacing fields. Progress. Hmmm.
Art
A chap donated 20 paintings to start the gallery. Claude Hotchin Esq.
N.B : Esquire. 1. A member of the English gentry ranking below a knight. 2 : a candidate for knighthood serving as shield bearer and attendant to a knight. 3 —used as a title of courtesy often by attorneys usually placed in its abbreviated form after the surname John R. Smith, Esq.
Damn. Thought I might have been able to pick up something for nothing there, but I don’t qualify.
Art with bike tyres and poly pipe.
Art. A lady was in quarantine and she painted up each food bag she was given.
Art. A big photo of a blonde lady wearing feathers and holding a skull in front of her face.
As we understood it, this is the before mentioned Mother Mary Angela Costello’s room and her habit.
Art. Umbrella’s
Art. Twigs and pine cones with a symbol in the middle.
Now here is my favourite. It is lumpy black paint with two joined/overlapping white dots. It is called ‘Hey Moon’ and it is yours for only $4,500. OR I will do one for you for half that. OK. A quarter but that’s my last offer. I have my artistic reputation to think about you know.
On the way back, beautiful roses.
This one’s a stunner. I was told, and it usually pans out this way, that the more thorns on the stem, the more perfumed they are.
Now yet more art only this time in someone’s front yard on the walk home. Larger than life. Maybe stage props?
The foreshore as the sun is going down. This was a Basalt quarry right on the waters edge. Basalt/old volcanic rock for roads etc. In the old days at five o’clock, someone would walk around town with a red flag warning people to watch out and people would run for cover before the dynamite went off.
We get back and our neighbor in an RV has gone. Half hour later another one pulls in. We go for just an immediate local walk.
Notice my ghost standing next to Anne.
It says Wyaluf Rocky Point.
The Rocky outcrops are very striking with the water washing in.
Self adoration with sunset.
I wasn’t tall enough to get it through the circle and it was too bright and blinding when it was that high, so don’t say, ‘Why didn’t he put it through the circle?’
The moon was putting on a bit of a show as well.
Going, going ….
Interruption by helicopter.
What we call the ‘after burn’ about 10 to 15 minutes after the sun goes down.
Now here is a puzzle for the dim. Why do you think all these trees on the foreshore are all leaning away from the ocean? And NO. They weren’t all planted like that.
Sun down, getting cold, showers, pea and ham soup with hot rolls with melted cheese. Too cold for beer, so grape juice. TV ………..
zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzz