Members Chat
The Final Epistle from Downunder
Thursday 29th April 2010
Hello again to you all. I originally wrote the following article for the April bulletin, but in the melee of my life I missed the deadline so I've re-worked it and hopefully you'll be reading it in the May bulletin. It is amazing just how quickly the weeks are passing and I have now been in here for over 7 months. Paul and I had a wonderful 2 weeks together doing all sorts of tourist things, but unfortunately he had to return to UK earlier than anticipated. We had a memorable Swan River cruise where we were accompanied by 4 or 5 wild dolphins swimming along the prow of the boat and a trip to one of Perth's local water storage dams gave us a good look at a wild kangaroo. We saw koalas, which are not native to Western Australia in a wildlife park, as well as other Australian wildlife and snakes, some of which were deadly poisonous, at a reptile centre. Paul managed to survive a baptism of fire as far as the heat went as it was 39c the day he arrived then 37c but cooled down at the end of the first week only to heat up to 38c and 41c at the end of the second week, then Perth recorded its hottest March night on record with the thermometer only going down to 28c one night. PHEW! He is naturally feeling the cold in the UK now he has returned. After he left it continued to be hot and humid both day and night for several weeks and in mid March Perth had its worst storm in 50 years with thunder and lightening, golf ball size hail stones and 2 inches of rain in an hour. Most areas of Perth were affected with over $600million of damage and some 150,000 homes without power for nearly 24 hours including ours. Still we are all back to normal again now.