Rockingham

Our time at Rockingham hasn't been entirely spent playing golf. Apart from a pleasant beach front, the main local claim to fame is Penguin Island. This is a reserve populated, as the name suggests, by little, or fairy, penguins. The penguins spend all day at sea and only come back to their nests in the evening, so you don't actually get to see them. However, there are 10 penguins that live in an enclosure at the visitor centre on the island, due to injury or other causes that makes them unsuitable to be released back into the wild. They are hand fed 3 times a day, during which the park ranger gives a talk on all things penguin related. The little fellows are really cute, but they treat their human keepers with quite a lot of disdain, some of them even having to be coaxed to have a few fish for breakfast. Apart from the penguins, Penguin Island is also home to masses of other sea birds. Pelicans have created huge rookeries on the tops of several hills, and terns, seagulls and various other birds nest on every square inch of the small island. We spent a pleasant half day wandering around, although you couldn't afford to be too fussy about what you stepped in. If you expand the boardwalk photo above you can see what happens to every horizontal surface with so many birds about.....

On another day we caught the train into Perth city. As we mentioned in our previous post, Perth has a wonderful new train service. It took only half an hour to get to town from here, and trains run every 10 minutes in peak hour, every 15 outside peak. They have designed the system so that the stations aren't too close together, so the train doesn't have to stop too often, but the stations all have huge carparks and bus terminals so you can connect easily from the train to all local destinations. It only cost $8.80 for an all day ticket on the entire system, with the restriction that you couldn't start before 9am. Perth is a lovely city, lots of imposing buildings from the gold rush days in the late 18th century and lovely wide streets to allow the camel trains to turn around. We spent hours walking around looking at the various historic sites and lovely buildings. The photo to the right is of an arcade built in the style of Ye Olde London streetscape, quite a contrast to the rest of the city. John was particularly impressed with the waterfront bar where we had lunch - as well as the tv screens showing interminable sport around the bar, they had a screen above each urinal, so he didn't miss a ball of the one-day cricket replay!

Of course, we spent most days playing golf. Last weekend John played in a 36-hole tournament at Rockingham, with Wendy offering loyal caddying support. Unfortunately he wasn't a lot more successful than Wendy had been in her tournament a week earlier, so we haven't managed a single prize, or even ball down the line, between us. For those interested, we have played the following courses in and around Perth while here: Royal Fremantle (Wendy only), Rockingham, Kwinana, Secret Harbour, Kennedy Bay and Joondalup (including the famous quarry nine). While the scoring hasn't been great, we have had a wonderful relaxing time, and feel we're just about ready to win big.