Araluen Botanic Park

Araluen Botanic Park, abt 30min drive east of Perth, along Brookton Highway.

The park isnt very big... a few flowers and sheds here and there...


Artificial "waterfall" and "river"...


Open spaces....
Memorial sites for some war...
and some pple having a picnic/BBQ

Overall, quite a disappointment.
Singapore's Botanical Gardens is way bigger and has more stuff to see. Furthermore, you dont need to pay an entrance fee for it!!!

A Clothing shop named after ME.

"KK CLOTHING"

Found this shop at Thornlie Square Shopping Mall.
Sounds so "me". haha

Fremantle Street Arts Festival

It falls on the Easter long weekend... i have never seen Fremantle so crowded before.

Different booths, and a dozen street buskers/entertainers around.



Nice art work everywhere...
There is even a corner for street painting.
I walked around the booth happily taking photos of all the drawings.
It was only later that my friend told me that there was this note written on the floor "If it is worth a photo, it is worth a dollar. Thank you for your contribution"..
Ooops!

Beer Can Chicken

Today, SL decided to try cook Beer Can Chicken, a traditional Aussie dish.

A whole chicken is seasoned and slowly cooked on the barbecue.
Recipe from www.allrecipes.com.au

1) In a small frying pan, melt 1/2 the butter. Mix in 1 tablespoon garlic salt, 1 tablespoon paprika, salt and pepper.

2) Discard 1/2 the beer, leaving the remainder in the can. Add remaining butter, garlic salt, paprika, and desired amount of salt and pepper to beer can.
3) Set chicken on beer can, inserting can into the cavity of the chicken. Baste chicken with the melted, seasoned butter.

4) Place baking tray with beer and chicken on the prepared barbecue. Cook over low heat for about 3 hours, or until internal temperature of chicken reaches 80 C.

The cooking method is a bit unorthodox, but the end result is moist, flavourful and amazing

Crabbing

Summer is crabbing season.
Its not hard to see crabs swimming close to the shore during the evenings or at night.

Here we are, at a deserted jetty one summer night.

Tie a piece of meat to a crabbing net, and lower it onto the seabed.
Pull it out occasionally and you may just get hold of a crab which has swam into the net. haha

Another method to catch crab is to use a net to simply scoop the crab out of the water. its much faster and easier.

Twilight Sailing

Managed to hitch a ride on my friend's yacht for an evening sailing experience.

5pm:
Set off from the Aquarama marina. Surrounding was still bright.
Meet my fellow crew

6pm:
Sailed upstream along Swan River... from north Fremantle all the way to Narrows Bridge.
Along the way, we met this cuboid-looking thing floating around...
At a closer look, there's pple on it!

At an even closer look, it is actually a 2-story floating restaurant. We can see tables, chairs and a bar counter through the glass walls.

Its called the Crystal Swan!View of narrows bridge from the river.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrows_Bridge_(Perth))

7pm:
Thursday is the twilight sailing day at several yacht clubs... You can see many other sailboats along the river.
This is the view of Perth city during sunset. You can even see the moon.
It slowly gets darker...
and darker....

8pm:
Berthed at Royal Perth Yacht Club for a BBQ dinner

9.30pm:
Started sailing back towards Aquarama marina.
Its completely dark by now...

11pm:
Arrived back at Aquarama marina..
Packed up the boat,
and off I go home to sleep. What a tiring day sailing : )


Here's the route we took today.

Abalone Fishing

How to go about catching Abalones during summer

1) Apply a licence from the Department of Fisheries. WA is one of the few places in the world where abalone fishing is allowed.
I cost AUD40 for 1 licence. Each licence entitles you to catch up to 20 sizable abalones each time.

2) On the days where its open for fishing, go to the assigned beach.

You can see other pple (mostly asians) already there way earlier than us.

3) Get ready, and be properly attired. You will need booties, wetsuit, snokeling mask, screwdriver (to wedge the abalone out from the reef) etc.
Negative examples: ie, Johnny, who is under-dressed

The is by far the UGLIEST wetsuit I have ever seen:

4) After an hour of diving/swimming/digging and braving the cold morning seawater, its time to admire your catch of the day:

Caught abt 35 that dayThis is the biggest one we got:


5) Cleaning and Preparation. Dig the abalone out from the shell, trim off the dirty edges and the guts, and wash the remaining meat.
Empty shell:
This is the end-product. Its much smaller than before.

6) Eat it. You can eat it raw (sashimi-style),

or cook it with soup/porridge/noodles etc...