From my kitchen window

 reminder to self, get cutting off perenial in the middle, hardy in hot climate

 save seed from these poppies, they are hardy and self seed

letting my garden go

 My garden is going to be a wrench for me.  Over 20 years in the making I am going to really miss it.  This beautiful Pink Wisteria tree has just started flowering in this photo.

 This is what I look out to from my kitchen and family room windows.

 Roses are all coming out and because the garden is enclosed by a 6 foot fence the perfume is trapped in the garden, heavenly on a warm sunny day.

 really loving this perrenial in the centre, very hardy and fills the gap between the lavendar and the climbing rose.

 Pink Wisteria tree a couple of days after the last photo, unfortunately it has been very windy and there is now a carpet of blossoms covering the paving.

Industrial building

I took these photo's when you where here Paddy, just at different angles.  I love industrial buildings in black and white, seems more fitting somehow.  I don't know how the two photo's of us came out in sepia, cant remember putting it on that setting.  Now Paddy!!! can you see how the tree placed in front of you is so much more flattering than the one you took of me, good exercise aye.

Fairbridge Village

Just a brief history on Fairbridge.  First Fairbridge Farm established in the world.  Kingsley Fairbridge arrived in Australia from Brittain 1912 and set up the fam in 1913.  From 1913 until 1982 3,580 children where assisted by Fairbridge under the child emigration scheme. There is 52 buildings on the farm and now is let out to school and organisation groups.  I think his original plan was probably very noble but it wasn't always that way.  A film was made not long ago "Oranges and Sunshine" describing it as the most significant scandal of recent times, the deportation of thousands of children from the UK to Australia, a miscarriage of Justice.

 one of the dormitories where the children would have slept, probably 3 to a bed, I don't see anywhere for storage of clothes.  One can imagine how frightening this must have been for the children, a dark dismal space.

 beautiful flame tree flowers fallen on the decking

 One just knows the church had to be somewhere behind all this.  A grand and imposing building, no money spared here.

each building that housed the children, (not this one above) had a house mother.  Some of these house mothers where very bitter women and took out their rage on the children.  The life of the children on the farm was of hardship and in a lot of cases cruelty.  I wonder if the children where eventually better of by this as they did learn skills but lacked the love of a family that they had been taken from in the UK.  Their lives in their homeland was one of squalor, poverty and hardship.  I would guess that there would be negative and some positive experiences.  The film was about a social worker that helped the children reunite with their families in the UK. http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/13784175/child-migrant-abuse-revealed/ if you are interested in finding out more this is an article in The West Australian newspaper, grim reading.
Paddy and I spent quite a bit of time wondering about taking photo's, you will see similar photo's on both blogs.

 Paddy wanted to take photo's of the wildflowers that WA is renown for.  We took photo's of these late in the day.  Not sure what these yellow flowers are called, think they may be related to the wattle family.  Very vibrant and masses of them around.

 I think this is a native orchid, have heard of one called a donkey orchid, funny name, maybe I have that wrong.

 Above is the Leschenaulita, the paler blue and there is a darker blue one, they are also very vibrant colours, only low growning.

 This lovely pink and white bush was pretty, only about a foot high.

I loved these grass heads, look like fish swimming through the bush.

Memories of the past

When I went down South the week before Paddy came, I noted these two derelict buildings close together and thought they would make nice photo's for Paddy.  The very bottom photo is the only one I took in colour and if you look close your will see some green on the bottom right corner and faded brown at the bottom of the window.  I didn't straighten it as I just wanted to show you the colours or the lack thereof.  We walked from one building to the other both on the same side of the road.  The first photo is a different building to the other one.

Trip down south

I took Paddy to the Busselton jetty which I hadn't been to before, quite famous for the length.  The photo's are very deceiving, looked like a nice day but it was a storm, felt like my hair was being pulled by the roots, we where busy taking photo's walking towards the jetty, not taking notice of the sky, got just below the jetty and it poured, we got wet.  Was worth it for the photo's and it was actually quite invigorating.  Was hard holding the camera still and I had to straighten most of these.