Festive season family catch-up; outing to Armadale

We’ve been in Perth WA since 20 December, having come here as usual to join the family for Christmas: son Carl, his wife Carrie and our granddaughters Mia and Holly; daughter Wendy, who’s visiting from France; and younger daughter Blaire, who now lives just up the road with her husband Colin and their delightful  new baby, Samuel John Cartwright.

Here are some festive season photos to introduce the cast for my next few blogposts, so to speak:

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Days in Perth revolve around beautiful, pristine beaches (mainly me), coastal runs (me), and (nowadays) regular visits to the amazing Craigie Leisure Centre for its gym, spa, yoga and aquarobic classes.

There’s the occasional trip into the city for shopping or a movie, the odd foray up the coast or south to Margaret River, and sometimes we take a drive to a local beauty spots.

An Apple a Day

So, one broiling summer’s day , with nothing better to do and all day to do it in, daughter Wendy arrived picked us up in the Hyundai Elantra and drove us to Armadale in the Perth Hills.

While the Swan Valley is all about vineyards and wine, neighbouring Armadale is more about apple orchards and cider. It’s a 30-minute drive from Perth city, but more like an hour from where we live in Burns Beach, Joondalup.

Confusingly, our destination is described as “a suburb of Perth within the City of Armadale”, and  is anything but a city in the way I used to understood the word before coming to Australia.

First stop was the Armadale Visitor Centre, where a friendly staff member gave us a load of useful tourism literature and recommended two cider places for lunch.

The first was the sensationally named Naked Apple, which was also so sensationally full that it absolutely could not, would not squeeze us in.

It was also crowded at her second recommendation, Core Cider, located in quaintly named Pickering Brook. If you fancy lunching indoors at Core Cider, they say, you need to book at least a week in advance.

The tasting room was occupied today for a function (Theo’s baptism, said the bugger-off sign), and most of the shady spots on the lawn were already occupied with cider-pickled picnickers.

Happily, we found a shady table where we tucked into tasting trays of six different ciders ($18 per tray) – the delicious Core Meltdown won our vote, and the sweet, pink one (berry and lime?) was truly dreadful.

 

A couple of pizzas (about $23 each) and a yummy spinach salad with parmesan and pine nuts ($9) did the trick for Sunday lunch, and we picked up a few of our favourite ciders to take home for ’Ron.

Western Australia has umpteen such places to explore and enjoy, and it’s very pleasant and a great luxury to be driven around like this… thanks again, Wendy! We’re going to miss you when you return to France.