Australian Adventure 2010 (continued)

Diary date Saturday 9th October 2010

When I got back last night I had sand everywhere, so had a shower to get rid of some of it. In one pocket I had half the Great Autralian desert! It was also in my ears, up my nose and other places too delicate to mention. I thought I had got rid of it all before I went to bed, but when I woke up in the middle of the night for a pee, I found i was mistaken in that thought. I also had a slight accident getting off the top bunk. I missed the bed below and fell hard onto the floor, waking the other people in the room, except fot the one who has spoken to me about my snoring! Luckily there was not much damage - a very bruised elbow and a carpet burn to my arm. I also discovered a bruise from where I had fallen off the sand board. I forgot to mention that after falling off the sand board I decided to do it the way I sledge, on my tum, and managed MUCH better. Later I tried to do it like skateboarding, on a shallower slope, but the board tried running away with me, so I quickly gave that up.

After I'd been to the loo and emptied more of the great Oz desert onto the floor I went back to bed, waking at 7, the again at 9. Both times I decided I was too tired to get up, although at 9 I decided I could do a little reading , so having finished my book of Oz slang, I started reading the history of Freo. It was fascinating, but I was still tired, so I went back to sleep till 1pm, when I decided I really should get up and phoned Pete to see what he was doing. We arranged to meet and spent the afternoon drinking coffee and eating cakes, in between buying Pete some new T shirts and wandering around the inside of the Freo markets.In many ways they are like any other market around the world - you expect to get real bargains, but you never do. However, we found some fairly nice souvenirs for Pete's mum and a work colleague. What we did find fascinating was the number and range of stalls. There are over 150 of them inside and out and you can buy almost anything, from homewares to an apple, or a delicious takeaway meal and an authentic Australian musical instrument! It was almost like a small town in itself and the buildings were absolutely fantastic on the inside. They were built back in the colonial days, (1897) when instead of designing buildings that could go up as quickly as possible, they were designed to show the skill of the workers erecting them. Certainly well worth a look if you ever visit Freo yourself. We also made some plans for next week, so as I have internet access and he doesn't I need to go and book some trips. More tomorrow!