Wow, its been two weeks since i wrote, i cant believe it. i have the excuse that i was away for a week on a voyage, it seems ages ago. since then i have been working and trying to organise myself a bit more, moving cabin, preparing to take over as engineer, doing my engineering exam to get my certificate, that went well anyway luckily! i eventually bought an internet dongle so that i could write in my blog more often and send more emails and i barely used it since i got it! ill probably work backwards while i think of what i have done.
so im on duty tonight on the ship which means that i cant leave the ship for 24 hours. i found out today that i have two days off on thursday and friday so i must get looking to see whats to be done around here for a couple of days, the problem with the western coast is that, while it looks so close and accessible on the map, it is actually hours and hours to get anywhere! but hopefully ill find something and have a nice couple of days.
i had a day off yesterday so i went into perth for a while, there are lots of volunteers and people that work here and pass through. so it ended up that myself and one of the guys headed into perth, on the train we happened across another one of the 'leeuwin family' so the three of us went to see the sights of perth, we didnt get very far before we found a watering hole, and had a 'magners irish pear cider' on a deck overlooking the swan river, it was lovely. pear cider allegedly tastes like 'lolly water', whatever that is! we went back on our merry way then, saw a bit of the city and had a nice meal of pizza and zubrovka vodka and apple juice, aptly named 'the apple pie', quite nice.
i spent my first australia day here which was nice, but again, i hadnt checked the roster and didnt realise i had two days off together, so i really just ended up hanging around. it was a beautiful day, we were here in the morning and doing some work on deck, so we saw all the small boats, loads of them coming in the river to go up to perth and see the fire works. there was a good buzz around the city, i decided to walk around and sample the atmosphere, there was a few shops open so i wandered in and out of them, bought a dress that i will never wear here! and then i bumped into another volunteer from the ship, sat a while and chatted to them. as i was contemplating dinner one of the lads working here called me so i got a couple of beers and headed over there for a while, we sat watching tv, which is the biggest luxury, having tv and a comfy couch, theres nothing like that here. then we went to the pub for a while. i had a nice australia day.
there was a cyclone warning the other day and we were waiting for it to hit fremantle, it was coming from up the coast, it kept getting weaker and later times expecting it to arrive, but obviously we couldnt go out sailing if it was here, it didnt hit so we went out the next day sailing, in the morning the sea was flat calm and there was not a puff of wind, it was a lovely day and we just ambled around. we went out for the afternoon sail and as soon as we passed the breakwater, the wind was brilliant and we had a really good sail, the trouble was that because of the wind and the waves, the ship was moving quite a bit and there was people getting sick everywhere! it was a really good day for sailing though, the best ive seen since the voyage i went on last week. that was the extent of the cyclone in freo(fremantle, more abbreviations!)
there has been a ship on the berth across from us this week and its so fascinating! its a cattle/sheep carrier...i just googled this ship to see which it was and i found a bizarre thing, there are lots of webistes, eg. vesel tracker, marine traffic, that follow the ship, and they have pictures of it here across from me this week! infact theres one this week and one pic from 2009 in the same place but with a different company name on the side, they even give, sometimes, a fairly indept description of the ship and its purpose. strange!...anyway back to the story, this ship is a cattle carrier, its got 7 decks above the deck which are all open to the envirnoment by the look of it, im sure they must be gridded, they have lights all down each one so at night it looks cool, you should google it to see the pic, and up the side of the decks are two walkways connecting all decks, but the point is that lots of us who have seen it just find in mesmerising! i dont know what it is about it, the thought of maybe thousands of poor scared cows tramping up the walkways to spend possible weeks in the wind and cold, not knowing whats going on! it must get really smelly and scary in there!
