From Apples to Tulips

On Friday morning we were roused by screams and cheers from the crowd down below in the street as the Apple store opened just before 8 am to start selling phones to those who has slept out in the street overnight. Apparently, the reasons to why there was a large number of Asian people inn the queue was because there were many people from Hong Kong who had flown into Perth to be the first to buy a new iPhone. They would have had to queue for four days or so in Hong Kong, but could get one here by only queuing overnight.

Because David and Yuki were both working, Jill and I drove out into the hills to the little historic town of Jarrahdale. We didn’t really have a firm agenda – just stopping to see whatever we came across. We saw a sign pointing to the Serpentine Falls so we made it our first stop. At this point, the Serpentine River dropped over a large outcrop of gneiss rock into a pool that made a nice swimming hole.

Our lunch was at the nearby Millbrook Winery in Jarrahdale. This winery is part of a group that includes the famous Lakes Folly winery in the Hunter Valley in NSW. It is set in some beautiful grounds and has some stunning views across the valley. The food was excellent and the wines were very nice.

Our afternoon finished with a visit to the Araluen Botanic Park in the town of Roleystone. This extra ordinary garden is located in a beautiful valley setting. More like the cool climate gardens in the eastern states, it seems slightly out off place in the surrounding dry climate hills of Perth and WA. During August and September, the park is ablaze with the colour of tulips and other spring blooms with its annual tulip festival. Some of the mass plantings were well past their prime, but there were still enough flowering bulbs for a very impressive display.

We were glad to have our GPS App on our phone as we returned to Perth. There had been a mishap of some sort on  one of the major roads and a detour took us well away from our obvious route back. We had no idea where we were but it inly took a minute or so to locate our position and set up a route back to our hotel.

We started our day on Saturday by picking up David and Yuki from their new house in Subiaco. Their house has quite a lot of character and is situated in a suburb that is full of very nice properties and some creative gardens. There is a lot of use of the roadside verge, or nature strip, for planting gardens and even vegetable patches. Parking in the area was at a premium because of the Saturday farmers market at the local school but it was less of a problem later in the day.

We spent the day visiting the historic town of Toodyay in the Perth Hills and a visit to the Avon River National Park to see what types of wild flowers we could find. We enjoyed a delicious dinner in a tiny Japanese restaurant in an adjoining suburb to where David and Yuki live. Really good food!