Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I left at 5:20am this morning for Perth and the moon was either full or as close to it as it can get. Which meant that the road was fairly well lit through the darkest and hairiest part of the drive from Bridgetown to Boyanup. Brilliant! I’ll have to plan my trips to Perth around the moon in future.

The trip was uneventful and I made it to work in just over 3.5 hours including a stop at the apartments to pick up my key. I went via South West Highway this time, and only hit traffic issues near the Causeway at 8:45am. Much better than a month ago when it took me 1.75 hours to get from Anketell Rd to Powis St on the ‘freeway’ (what a joke!). So all in all, a pleasant trip timed perfectly for me to get to my client’s site at 9:00am.

I wondered why I couldn’t see the stars this morning when I went out to get the paper. As daylight emerged, it was obvious – fog! We’re close to the top of a very large hill and it was foggy up here – I’d imagine that in the valley where the main street of town is, it was very foggy indeed.

The picture below is of part of the backyard, with some of the fruit trees, the old aviary on the left which is now my garden shed (note the shadecloth I put up over the weekend to deal with any excessive weather!), and the massive eucalyptus trees on the property behind ours. There’s a firebreak/track between us and those trees too, though you wouldn’t think it from this photo!

One of the things about living in a country town and on a largish block of land with fruit trees (yes, fruit trees – lemon, orange, mandarin, apple, plum, and a grape vine are those I’ve discovered so far), is that birds come and visit regularly… and they chatter all day long! I’m not a bird person, but so far I’ve been able to identify these: Western Magpies, kookaburras, blue wrens, Western Rosellas, Australian Ringneck parrots (known as twenty-eights), New Holland Honeyeaters, Bronzewing Pigeons, and lots of other little flitty birds that I don’t know. We’ve also heard black cockatoos in the distance, but haven’t seen any yet. There’s a nice page of many of the birds we have in the garden here: http://www.waratahsoftware.com.au/wp_birds_birds.html

The other thing is the stars! Wandering out into the dark at 5am to collect the paper from the verge is an awesome experience – the Milky Way is just so bright against the black of the night, and some of the stars seem close enough to touch. I’d forgotten how bright stars can be – all those years of living in the glow of the city lights takes that away and you can only really see the very bright ones. Here, you can see them all. And they are an awe-inspiring sight.