The Land Down Under; All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go; Goodbye Z4, Hello Volvo CX 40;  Stayin’ Alive; The End of the World as We Know it; Blue Skies Through the Tears

Bursting with travel plans for the rest of 2020, Roy and I arrived in Perth WA on 21 February from South Africa. (For the record, we’d come via Paris, Roy’s niece Charlie’s London wedding, a couple of days with my sister Dale and her family in Kent, and then six nights in Singapore.)

Life in Perth marches to its own rhythm. Settling in means adjusting to our space, filling the fridge, re-stocking the small pantry and getting down to daily hard-core home cooking. This is no Umhlanga Rocks, where we have dozens of restaurants on our doorstep!

It also means getting reacquainted with our nearest and dearest, including rapidly growing grandchildren – Mia (10), Holly (6) and Sam (just turned 2).

I should explain that we do have a home here: it’s a more-or-less self-contained wing of son Carl and his wife Carrie’s house. It’s in Burns Beach, Joondalup – about 30km north of Perth city.

Roy and I furnished our little domain with everything we need. I have a lovely spa bath. I can top up my vitamin D levels at the pool. I can jump on Mia and Holly’s trampoline.

Almost every morning finds me on the coastal path – cycling with Roy, walking or running. Here’s a series of snaps from a solo sunset stroll along Burn’s Beach.

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Stayin’ Alive

The four months we spend here each year are the ideal opportunity to get our health back on track. We need it, especially after so many moons of excess in the company of our unrepentantly degenerate mates in Durban (some of them, not all); not to mention that rosé-swilling lot of expats in Southern France’s itinerant boating community.

Younger daughter Blaire, her husband Colin and baby Sam live just down the road; unfortunately, her elder sister Wendy is locked down alone in Marseille. So here we are in the bosom of our clean-living families (whose children are they really, Roy?), where it’s fairly easy to stop drinking, cook whole-food meals from scratch, step up the exercise, get a good night’s sleep and shed a couple of kilos.

I couldn’t wait to renew our gym contracts at the cracking Craigie Leisure Centre and get straight into our Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning exercise routine. That meant group aquacise classes for Roy in the magnificent outdoor pool, and a new gym routine plus yoga classes for me.

Back then, just six weeks ago, four leisurely months Down Under stretched ahead of us before our planned return to France and the Karanja. Of course we would travel in Australia, but exactly what would we do?

Would we take a cruise to the Kimberleys and back? Maybe book a flight to Brisbane and join Gail and Neil Greenfield for the Byron Bay music festival? A road trip south to Margaret River beckoned; and then, when the Perth autumn chill started to set in, we could drive north to tropically balmy Broome.

It’s hard to believe that that was just six weeks ago. In the meantime, we’d ordered a …

Brand new Volvo

Roy doesn’t like to hold on to the same vehicle for too long – three years is about the average before he starts visibly twitching for something different. (*During our less-than-16-year stint in Singapore he went through seven more-or-less fancy automobiles, while I had just three: a Vespa scooter that I was too terrified to drive in the hectic city traffic, a humble Chev Spark, and then a snappy little Fiat 500 that I loved.)

From a series of casual remarks and subtly-veiled semi-questions, I cottoned on at least six months ago that he was plotting to replace our four-year-old BMW Z4. I had to agree with this move. As much as I loved the car, it was distinctly unfit for purpose:

a) A sexy two-seater is unsuitable for the conveyance of grandchildren; and

b) Its boot was too small for anything but a couple of toothbrushes, a change of knickers and a Vegemite sandwich – especially with the roof down – so ruling out the longer driving holidays I hankered for.

However, by the time we took delivery of our spanking new “Glacier Silver” Volvo xc40 on 31 March, the world had changed completely – courtesy of the COVID-19 virus, of course. Not only were overseas and interstate flights something of the past, but even intra-state travel had been outlawed.

A Whole New World

With little warning, we found ourselves confined to Perth, and for who knew how long.

Referring to this WA map, we’re effectively limited to the pink bit – the small area around Perth city. So, until further notice, there will be:

• no meandering south to Margaret River (the green bit);
• no escapades to Esperance (on the coastal stretch of the big yellow expanse);
• no bushwhacking north to Broome (on the aqua Coral Coast); and
• no roaring off to Rottnest Island, either; it’s been turned into a leper colony COVID-19 quarantine station.

While we mourned the forced postponement of BFF Sally’s 60th birthday bash in Durban, grandson Sam celebrated turning two with a semi-virtual birthday party. Aunty Wendy WhatsApped from Marseille. Granny Marina and Granddad Howard Facetimed intra-state from Bunbury (about 200km distant).

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I Heard it on the Grapevine

Hats off to the WA government for its handling of our share of this world crisis. I suspect that the gradual introduction of restrictions made them slightly less unpalatable – we had a chance to adapt to our narrowing world and its growing list of limitations.

Fortunately for us, the disturbing images below are not from Down Under – my sister Dale sent them to me from Kent, England. First is the Zara store at their local mall – closed until further notice. What a travesty.

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We’d been caught sadly short on the toilet paper front, and I was still smarting. So when I saw Dale’s neighbourhood Sainsbury’s supermarket beer aisle stripped bare, we headed to our local Dan Murphy’s to lay in some supplies.

Unlike in South Africa, where some covidiot decided to ban the sale of alcohol and cigarettes (what were they thinking?), Australia has no shortage of wine.

Though there was still plenty of stock on the shelves, the cashier who rang up our trolley-full of hooch at Dan Murphy’s Currambine said the store was busier than in the run-up to Christmas. Restrictions were introduced about a week later: only three bottles of wine per customer per day (per bottle shop); and only two types of alcohol per customer per visit, e.g. wine and beer, or beer and a bottle of spirits. (Personally, I don’t foresee a problem.)

It was sad to see our local Currambine restaurants close, and to wonder if they’d ever open again. Simultaneously the cinemas shut down, just when I was looking forward to a movie at the Luna and returning to the marvellous Pappagallo in Oxford Street, Leederville.

It was deeply upsetting that my Lakeside mall nail salon shut up shop – exactly who decided that nails aren’t an essential service, but hair and beards are? – and that my SNS acrylic nails immediately started to crack and peel. I suspect a causal relationship with our lovely weekly home-cleaning service closing down – only temporarily, one devoutly hopes. (Come back Olga, Olga come back!)

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Worst of all, Craigie Leisure Centre closed its doors, along with all other clubs and gyms. Roy managed to sneak in a last aquacise class and I a final gym and sauna sweat-session before this great facility shut its doors at 12 noon on Monday, 23 March. (Pathetically, I wept.)

Schools stayed open until Good Friday and the two-week Easter holidays – sensibly, I thought – though Carrie had been heroically home-schooling Mia and Holly for the past fortnight. A plethora of online resources is available for home-schooling parents – not only mainstream academic stuff, but extracurricular activities, too.

For example, David Walliams, the UK’s 21st century incarnation of Roald Dahl, has been broadcasting daily readings of his stories to fans young and old all over the world.

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For another, I spotted Mia practising pliés at the kitchen counter one afternoon. It was her “barre” during a live ballet lesson conducted online by the teacher of her regular Saturday morning ballet class. Zoom in close and check out the elegantly wasted eye makeup!

Like most of the community, Carl is mainly working from home. So is Blaire; and day care remains open for our grandson Sam (2) while she’s working. Fortunately for our family, construction has not yet been much affected yet. WA has declared civil engineering and construction essential industries. (How did they manage to slip up so badly on the nail salon decision?)

Blue Skies through the Tears

There have been moments of retail joy – like when there’d been a run on zinc supplements at Chemist Warehouse, and I pounced upon the last bottle of bear-shaped, milk-flavoured zinc chewies for kids. I just double up on the dose, easy peasy!

Then, just last week, Carrie scored a 24-pack of toilet rolls from Woolworths, triumphantly bore them home and generously shared them with her in-laws. I’d been making do with facial tissues, leaving our last two remaining rolls for Roy to eke out; he’s not one to take kindly to changes in lavatorial logistics. Now we could all relax.

I Feel Lucky

At least at the moment of writing, we’re generally much luckier here in WA than on the country’s eastern seaboard, and much, much better off than the benighted victims of lockdown in South Africa, the UK, France and elsewhere.

Subject to social distancing regulations, we’re free to drive or cycle wherever we like, and stroll around our neighbourhoods, parks and beaches. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, Roy and I strap on our helmets, saddle up and cycle the coastal route from our Burns Beach home to Mullaloo Beach – a spot that’s as delightful as it sounds.

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Mullaloo has a choice of two or three cafés open for takeaways: we patronise the smallest one, where the charming Italian barista calls me Bella. Before cycling home, we relax on the lawn in the shade of a friendly pine, and people-watch our strategically separated fellows dotted around the park.

On the way home, we might stop in for tea with Blaire and Sam. On another morning, she might pick me up in her big Toyota Prado for a toddle in shady Yellagonga Regional Park, just ten minutes from us by car. Or we’ll do the hilly coastal path; it’s great for the butt, especially when you’re pushing the stroller!

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Walk on the Wild Side

One Sunday morning, I drove 35 minutes to South Perth to meet my friend Christa at Matilda Bay. In the course of a 90-minute walk along the banks of the Swan River, preceded by excellent coffee from Bayside Kitchen* (5 Hackett Drive), we did a year’s worth of catching up.

*Most cafés are open for business – albeit only for takeaways – and seem to be doing a roaring trade. It’s an ill wind, as they say, that blows nobody any good.

Cycling the Two Bridges Loop

On the eve of Easter Sunday, Carl proposed we load up the bikes and drive into the city to cycle the 10km-long Two Bridges Loop. A great idea!

Starting off at the old Boatshed on the South Perth foreshore, just east of the ferry station, we cycled east along the foreshore and then crossed the Causeway Bridge to Heirisson Island. From there, you continue past Fraser Point and Langley Park towards Elizabeth Quay, cross the bridge there and head west along the foreshore before crossing the Narrows Bridge and traversing the South Perth foreshore, past Perth Zoo, and then back towards the Boatshed.

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There we rested on the grassy foreshore and watched the Perth skyline light up as twilight fell across the Swan River.

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Easter Bunny travel egg-xemption

Speaking of Easter, WA Premier Mark McGowan recently broadcast a lovely message to the children of WA, explaining that, through an egg-straodinary “egg-xemption”, the current travel restrictions had been relaxed especially for the Easter Bunny. There would be no problem with the delivery of Easter eggs, and he strongly encouraged us all to tuck in. Egg-selent advice!

This was something of a marathon post, but with the prevailing uncertainty about travel possibilities, I have absolutely no idea what I’ll  be writing about next. Cheers to that, and our love to you all!