Living in Australia - Travels with Verne and Roy

Yallingup Again, 5-8 April 2022

Less than six weeks since our last jaunt down south, Roy pointed the Volvo XC40 in the direction of Yallingup, Margaret River for another three-day getaway… squeaking in just before the Easter holidays, which would kick off on Friday the 8th.

Being three hours south of Perth, the Margaret River climate is a reliable two-to-three degrees cooler than our home in Iluka Beach, Joondalup. Here, we’d been gently flirting with autumn – an occasional shower of rain, one or two stormy nights – but the mellow season seemed to have come to Yallingup.

Wildwood Valley Cookery School, 16-18 February 2022

Wildwood Valley Cottages and Cookery School is on 120 beautiful acres of bush in Yallingup in the Margaret River region of WA – around three hours by car south from Perth. What with one thing and another, it felt like we hadn’t been anywhere for ages.

Our friends Deb (West Australian) and her husband Blaine (Canadian), have been coming to Wildwood Valley for 18 years. Initially, they stayed at the B&B that Chef Siobhan’s mum used to run in the main house before Siobhan took over that job. Later, Blue Wren cottage was built for Siobhan, Carlo and their young family, plus another three chalets.

Deb, Blaine, Siobhan and Roy at Blue Wren cottage – clearly, they all got the dress-code memo!

Fremantle Heritage Cottage Getaway, 11-13 December

Who knows what exotic escapade we’d have chosen to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in the BC* era? A cruise? A weekend in Paris, or with family in the Dordogne or in Kent? With WA still hermetically sealed off from the rest of the plague-ridden world, sorely limiting our options, Roy’s suggestion of a romantic heritage limestone cottage in Perth’s historic port town of Fremantle turned out perfect.

*Before Covid

Heritage-listed cottage at 7 Henderson Street, Fremantle

This is the House that Roy and Verne Built: Part Two – Bricks and Mortar

Apologies and advance warnings; concrete proof – slab, soakpit and sewers; lonely brick storage site; Dino’s dilemma; men at work!; the sacred interstitial space; graffiti message, but not from us

Apologies if you’ve been eagerly awaiting This is the House that Roy and Verne Built: Part Two after the first in the series, Part One: Breaking Ground, which we celebrated back in April 2021. After the slab was laid in May, the site lay cold and abandoned until four months later when – spoiler alert! – the hoped-for, prayed-for and longed-for bricklayer team eventually came on site.

Now that we’re just about up to the second level, here’s the story of the build so far. Feel quite free to gloss over any dreary construction details (I know I would), and simply savour all my lovely photos of Roy.

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