Today i was working and just couldn’t wait for the sailings to finish, though we have had a good laugh at work this week, the banter and jokes following the day where Jason the chef was ‘the man’, surrounded by us four ladies, have carried on and theres a good atmosphere around, nice sunny days, good coffee, poached eggs for breakfast, good times!
Speaking of poached eggs, the other morning i got up and asked Ange if she was going to cook eggs, she does this some mornings if were off, and i fancied some nice breakfast, she replied that she was going to cook some eggs, at that exact moment, captain sarah jumped out of her cabin excitedly exclaiming ‘who wants poached eggs?!’ we thought this was quite funny as we had all woken up with the same idea, until we went out to the galley and Jason the chef was already cooking poached eggs for us all! How cool was that!
That day on the sailing chris our boss invited Sarah, myself and Angela to a BBQ in his house, thats what your supposed to do in Australia, have a Barbie and i realised that since i arrived two months ago that i haven’t been to an ausie Barbie! I said that i was going to throw another shrimp on the Barbie when i got there! When the girls heard this they told chris and when i arrived at the house they had gotten some prawns especially in honour of my first Barbie!
Its so funny when you say that to an ausie about throwing another shrimp on the Barbie, i said it to angela and she said ‘i don’t even know why you say that as we have prawns, not shrimp!
This week i have four days off together, which is unheard of so i decided to take a drive down the coast. I was going to rent a car and go where the road took me until we worked out that Ange the bosun is off too so we decided to head off together on a ‘thelma and louise – esque’ road trip! After some haphazard planning we decided to go as far as Albany and drive back up.
Yesterday, being a public holiday, everywhere was closed and captain sarah pointed out it would be a better idea to drive all the way down to Albany and back up the coast. This was a mighty fine idea so we decided to head off, Albany, here we come!
Once, on home and away about ten years ago, noah was driving down the road and he had to ‘chuck a u-ie’, ie. do a U-turn. It became a running joke in the O’Connor household which can be heard the odd time to this day, so yesterday when we passed a turnoff i said’ oh ange, youll have to chuck a u-ie’ i was laughing to myself until she said, with a straight face ‘ya, maybe i will’. i realised i was in Australia and this might not seem such a strange thing to her! When i told her the joke, she said ‘ i was wondering why you were speaking like that!’.
In the last couple of months i have heard alot of talk about a lady called ‘super sue’, sue lives in Albany so angela rang her and said we were coming down and she invited us to stay with her. Sue is a volunteer on the leeuwin. The drive down is a nice one and the landscape changes dramatically once we approached Albany, the scape here is very green with lots and lots of trees. There are some wineries on the way down too so we stopped at one to buy some wine for sue and david. It was so so nice to get out of the car and smell the plants and trees in the air, it was lovely, we tasted some wine in the winery cellar door and bought a couple of bottles, it was really nice in general there, we saw some people having champagne and strawberries our mouths were watering!
We arrived at sues house and it was easy to see why she is super. We had a really nice night and most importantly i slept in a real bed! Its great when you get a break from sleeping in the small bunk, and seeing as i live on the ship theres rarely a break from it! We relaxed before dinner and then had a really nice meal followed by cheese and crackers and then Amarula which was really nice.
The house was amazing, its in the bush outside Albany. Albany is a really beautiful place, its very green with loads of tall trees, ill upload some pictures. Theres a few lookouts around Albany and the views of the harbour is spectacular. While we were there the weather was nice, it was fresh and sunny but not particularly hot, which was nice in contrast to fremantle but ive gotten used to the sun now!
