Just stuff...

No photos this time, just some stuff...
Off to Adelaide tomorrow for a bit of R&R (need it already and it's only the middle of Feb!)
Planning on a good food and wine weekend - how can one help it when we are staying at Normanville on the edge of McLaren Vale. Also catching up with the parents who are finally on their way to Perth (it's only taken them 5 years to finally come and visit).
Will upload more pics in the near future. Have just about finished making my series of panoramas from our last two trips down south (over the past two Christmases - 2008 and 2009) and also our trip out through what's called the Granite Belt over the October long weekend in 2009.
The Granite Belt is full of fabulous granite rock structures that just stick up out of the flat, salty and essentailly treeless wheat belt that cuts a big swathe through the inland parts of WA (before you get to the gold mines)!
The southern coast between Albany and Esperance is one of the wildest and most beautiful places in the world. Full of untouched beaches, beautiful rugged coastlines and national parks. In so many places (except the caravan parks, which were busting at the seams) we were the only people as far as we could see. The heathy scrubland that is the Cape Arid and Cape Le Grande National Parks is amazing. Not a tree to be seen (just like the wheatbelt) but with much more soul and variation and character (of course) and for a totally different reason... Designed and built by nature instead of ploughs and massive combine harvesters / headers.
The south western forests have to be seen to be believed. There is one spot along Caves Road south of Margaret River where the road rounds a bend to the left and the view is just too amazing not to stop and stare for a good long while. The beautiful karri forest is so stunning and no photograph, or series of photographs, can ever really show the colours and the huge gentleness of the long straight trunks. Trees are the most beautiful things in the world and every time is see big old grand ones, I can help but think how wise they must be, all the change they have seen and heard and felt.
Anyway, enough ramblings. The next series of photos will punctuate this few paragraphs.
xx