First signs of spring

Seasons are a bit vague here in Perth.

If you judged Perth climate by UK summer – we have summer all year round.
Autumn is a week of changing leaves between 35 degree summer days and the start of rain and a cool change
Winter comes and goes, but only exerts itself hard enough to warrant a jacket for a few weeks. It can be wet though – much wetter than a UK winter.
Which leaves Spring.   Spring is hard to pin down – it can be wet and cold but also hot and dry like summer.  If viewed by the calendar Spring definition, Perth has 2 or 3 seasons during that time.

The Aboriginal Noongar people that inhabited the Perth area before colonisation had defined 6 seasons.  We should use these really, they make a great deal more sense here than the English seasons the settlers brought with them. Read More

Winter sunset.

As winter approaches, the skies become awesome again.

Not that clear blue skies with endless sunshine over summer isn’t awesome – it’s just that autumn and winter do sunsets better.

I was on the roof at the weekend, clearing out the guttering, as you do (well, as we do here in Australia – the gutters are stupidly designed and can’t cope with the rainfall we have) and I spotted that the sky was looking pretty interesting out over the ocean (which I can see from the top of my roof!) so I packed up the ladder and headed out to the beach. Read More

Ride out to North Dandalup and Pinjarra

I woke up stupidly early today for no good reason, so I decided to take advantage of the morning.

Firstly, I chatted to some friends in LA (hi Amanda, hi Tim!) and then headed out on my motorbike to have some ‘me’ time before anyone woke up!

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Point Peron and surrounds

I went out for a ride on the bike in the afternoon sunshine last weekend.  Not too hot, not too cold – perfect.

I’ve taken snapshots, proper pics, family pics and on-the-way-home-iphone photos of every inch of the local landscape (or so it would seem) – so these are just repeats.

But its so pretty, so my care factor is low 😉   Read More

Off road ride to Mt Dale

I’ve been off the bike for serious rides for a bit due to winter being crappy (see radar pic!) and very wet and the fact that I’m a big wuss and also I was back in England (as you may have gathered)

But there was a serendipitous break in the weather, I didn’t have any commitments and my family were all stuck into art or TV shows or other stuff.

So I fired up the mighty DR and went out on another adventure off road. Read More

Cold winter photos.

It’s cold.

I know – you’re thinking – bah, Australia, cold?  Bullshit!

Well I’ve got some news for you – Australia has winter just like everyone else.  And sometimes, it’s really not very warm.  Like 0 degrees just before sunrise.  And possibly single digit daytime temperatures (although, to be fair, in Perth these are mercifully rare).  I lot of Northern Hemisphere dwellers are laughing their arses off at this.  ‘Thats not cold…’ blah blah.

Well, friends, thats fine, you’re right, but remember we don’t have:

1.  insulation
2.  central heating
3.  double glazing

So even a little cold feels properly cold.

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Off-road to Mt Solus

There’s an old fire tower on top of a good sized hill deep in the forest near where I live.

It’s been staring at me from google earth for months and I’ve been working my up to riding to it.  The forest here being what it is (remote, noone there, no phone signal) I decided to wait until I had company before trying to get to the top on the bike

This is the tale of the ride to the top of Mt Solus.

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Some pics I forgot to post – Australia Day 2014

 

 

We (the whole family) decided that we wanted to go to the beach on Australia Day and take some photos, run about, journal for a bit, collect shells and other seaside flotsam and generally have a few hours out.

So we all headed out to Point Peron for some R&R Read More

Pics from the daily commute – 2

 

Twas a lovely morning for it, but then it usually in in Perth in the summer to be fair.  You really have to be on the road early before the sun has had too much time to crank up the heat, but as I’m in work before 8, thats not usually a problem 🙂

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Pics from the daily commute – 1

I got a GoPro camera for taking all kinds of video footage, but primarily for taking videos when I’m on the bike.

The videos are fun (I’ll post some up later) but I don’t have a fast enough computer to be able to process my daily files and make decent clips (that’s about to change though, as I have a shiny iMac about to be delivered (if we can ever time the delivery to when we’re actually home..)) – but what I can do is take stills from the camera and show you all how fun my day is. Read More