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| AT PEACE AT LAKE THETIS WATCHING HER ANCESTORS |
CERVANTES
A beautiful and peaceful
little fishing village 3-hours north of Perth, but far enough north to experience
warmer temperatures. We’re greeted by an
energetic little pudding of a man with a flushed faced suggesting regular
quaffing of the local syrup. Owner of Cervantes Holiday Homes, a row of cabins with all the necessary mod cons,
large living room, kitchen, bathroom with the scalding hot solar heated shower,
and double bedroom with an added single bedroom in case one is too dizzily disorientated
to miss the former, we are welcomed by Tweedledum minus Dee who tells us that he enjoyed Scotland with an amazing array of greens and pure white sheep. I note on return that the sheep here are actually grey. He attributes the white wool on Scottish sheep to the perpetual rainfall.
While effusively
explaining the features that we are not to miss in the village, I look down and
see he has the Australian disconcerting habit of walking about in bare feet. His
blonde knife and fork hairline frames his moon face as he tells us of his visit
to Scotland – which he loved, between showers of drizzling Scottish rain. But the Tattoo, “fan-bloody-marvelous!”
In the local grocery shop
with prices that would outdo Harrod’s in London, is the reluctant owner with
that “I’d rather be fishing than standing here ripping off tourists who have no
choice but to buy from me” look in his eyes.
Equally disdainful is Ma
Broon in the liquor shop. She serves me
with a frown and I remark, ”You have a lazy little town, here.”
“That’s the way we like it,”
she threatens as I read in her eyes that she would get the local sheriff to
knee-cap you at the slightest hint of noise after 19.00 hours.
In the corner stands a teller
that charges $4 for a withdrawal so I pay with a Halifax Clarity credit card
which she examines with suspicious eyes, nary a smile on her fat face. We pay for a cardboard box of cheap and nasty
red wine, my preference and I can’t bring myself to pay the ransom for the release
of a $48 bottle of the slightly better concoctions that Australia seems to
pride itself in – that is, the unspoken belief that the more you pay for a
bottle of the grape juice the better it must be.
We take a walk down to the
whitest sand I’ve ever seen, people throwing fishing lines into the Indian
Ocean and catching the seaweed. A fin
appears and I think “shark”, but as it bobs up and under the waves, FM assures
me it’s only a dolphin. But the sunset –amazing!
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| AND HERE'S THE SUNSET |
We head off to Hanson Bay and the Greek
sounding Lake Thetis which has the stromatolites, one of the oldest living
forms on earth. They once had a BBC
programme about them and they really are remarkable, lying like old pancakes under
the water of the lake with a salinity 1.5 times that of the sea. I dip a finger in to taste it and a couple of
hours later after various quaffs of the aqua I can still taste the acrid salt.
FM suggests it might be poisonous but I is still here. They vary in size and grow to about one-metre
in diameter, produce oxygen and apparently may be responsible for our evolving
into who we are as a human race. Hello, forty-millionth cousin, I think.
Birds of all kinds of feather
gather around the edges of the lake and I spot for the first time a black swan,
gliding elegantly over the middle of the lake.
After other visits to the
aptly named Hangover Bay and Thirsty Point, or was it the other way around? we watch in wonder as the scarlet
sun sets again over the turquoise sea and we retire to our Unit 2 on Malaga
road for the evening meal.
