Friday, March 26, 2010

Vacation in Wa- Day 10

Day 10 and we were up early for our drive back to Perth. Family shot outside our cottage. Say bye bye to the flies. YAY!


Our last accomodation. A lovely newly revamped cottage in East Victoria Park called The Urban Owl. I love it so much. You can say that our new place is loosely inspired by The Urban Owl :D



Nothing much to do today. Was already quite late by the time we had our rest. So we went to the botanic gardens. Superb view! Too bad the tree-top walk was already closed.





I love it here! I could come here everyday. Very grassy and looks so inviting to sit and have a picnic or do nothing at all.



Thursday, March 25, 2010

Vacation in WA- Day09



I always forget how bad the flies were and was again looking forward to the animal feedings. This morning, we went next door to Wonky Windmill Farm & Eco Park. We went into the reception, had some jam tasting, bought 2 bottles of jam, got our bag of feed and went outside into the hot sun. Yes, and be swarmed by the flies. Please remind me never to go in the summer again.


The piece of land where the animals are kept is quite a big one. They are nicely separated and there's a path where you can walk follow and it will lead you back to the house. As you go along, you can see the different types of animals and they are separated from the other species. There's not many of each species, more of the common ones and sometimes just one or two for the less common ones. I was very pleasantly surprised to see 2 lovely deers!
















There's not many shots of Aidan cos mostly, he's trying to beat or run away from the flies.


Then we were off to a much more pleasant place. The Margaret River Chocolate Factory! Rows upon rows of chocolate! Needless to say, Aidan was delighted. There were free samples and I think it was Aidan's first chocolate treat. He couldn't get enough of it. Have you met any kids who doesn't like choc?


"woah! I want more!" He's thinking.





To my surprise, their chocolate are really good! We bought lots to give away but I'm regretting we didn't buy enough for ourselves.


Lunch at Duckstein Brewery!
More Yummy food!









Here was when I found out about Aidan's love of pigs. Could it be due to that he was born in the year of pigs? He kept asking me to draw pigs.





Very nice and huge estate at Duckstein. We had a walk after lunch.








Took this pic when we were travelling on the road. The cows are always huddled together and not moving and looks like they are deep in discussion. Conferencing perhaps?


Aidan loves taking family pictues. When you point a camera at him, he usually looks away. But when I say, take a picture together, he'll smile so sweetly and ask for more! :)




Monday, March 8, 2010

Vacation in WA- Day 08

On the morning of Day 08, we woke up in a cottage on a 'farm'. I booked all the accomodation online in Singapore and had wanted to stay on a farm to experience the farm life. However, when we arrived the day before, we quickly realised that it's not a real farm, as in, it wasn't a working farm. It's more of a tourist farm, a piece of land with several cottages and some animals for feeding. There're many such establishments around where you can just pay to do animal feedings therefore you don't have to stay on a farm like this. Luckily, the cottage was pretty decent and clean so we didn't really minded much.

So this morning, we went for our animal feeding. We had looked forward to this for a long time and again, the flies really spoilt the experience for us. All Aidan could handle was to swat away flies on his face. It was most irritating.

Feeding the ponies.
The goats


An alpaca. This one was sweet and shy and not like the one on Country Life farm, which was snorting and spitting mucous at everyone.

In the shed with the guinea pigs. It's so much better in the shed as I quickly learnt that flies like it hot.


After feeding, we were off to the Shearing Shed to see some sheeps being sheared!

Shearing in progress. At first, Aidan was quite terrified by the way the man was (man)handling the sheep in a really rough way and seeing the fur being shaved off. If I remember right, another small girl in the group cried.



Almost done.

Nice and naked. Hehe...I wonder if they feel relieved of all that fur. It must have felt nice and cooling as the weather was so hot!

All that fur! You see the fur at the back that looks grey in color? That's how dirty it is on the outside. But inside, as you can see from the front of the picture, the true color is creamy white!

Picture with black sheeps in the background.

Then we went outside and there was a demo of sheep herding. Most exciting to see the whole herd of sheeps thundering towards us.

Sheep dog pouncing on the sheeps. I don't know why it does that.

A border-collie


Then we came back in to feed baby lambs! Aren't they cute?
I was feeding the biggest lamb of all! It's so big and strong that no one else wanted to feed it. It sucked really ferociously on the bottle.

Then it's lunch. Another beautiful vineyard for yummy food. We got clever and decided that instead of sharing miserable portions of food and ended up dissatisfied, we would have our fill at lunch, then cook our own dinner back at the cottage.
This is the starter tasting plate. Every dish was delicous. Even the cous-cous that I don't usually fancy is fantastic.

Risotto done to perfection!

My memory is failing me but I think this was my Veal. Extremely tender and juicy. *slurps*
Saw this at the deli outside the supermarket and I couldn't resist. Anyway, we cooked eggs for breakfast every morning so that's not a problem.
I think all eggs should be this way. Coming from free range, happy chickens and not from the factory style, unhappy and immobile chickens where most of our eggs come from.
Lovely eggs and most delicious too!

A shot of the back of our cottage. Do you see the electric bbq?