Ratchet’s Travels. A nice day out and about!

I managed to have a Sunday off work, and so Ratchet, the better half and I went down to local Autumn Festival which was a quick bus ride away.  The weather was great! Not too hot, not cold and as it was by the river, there was a pleasant breeze.

 

It was at the Eric (something) Bird Sanctuary, which has a nice fake lake of brown water and is next to the Swan River.

We went there a couple of days before for a bike ride and that is how we found out about the Autumn festival.  It’s a nice area, lots of trees and a large space for grass and picnicking activities.  

The Bike ride day:

A nice area over the water turned out to be less pleasant due to the sparrows flitting all over the place.  And the copious amount of bird poo.

 

 

The Swan River.  A place of many activities, although to be honest the water looks a horrible brown colour and the river itself is in a dire need of some environmental health help.  Algal blooms during the summer are one of the many problems it faces.  Of course this isn’t helped, since it is a runoff for rain water, which introduces excess nutrients through fertilisers and such. 

I see Ratchet Braves a drive on the edge.

 

Lunch time and a time for the home made hotdogs, with poppy seeds (grrrrr).  Nice enough HD’s though!

Some uncontrolled dogs, one of which had a swim in the river, hence the black legs.  Off the leash which is fine, but they ran over to us when we first showed up, and wouldn’t return when called.  After that they were hassling a council van that was trying to get by.   The owners ended up having to come get the dogs and put them on their leashes.  One dog was even running away from the owner.  I like dogs, but they must be trained properly, or else they are a nuisance.

 

 

A quick map check and we’re soon heading off again!

 

 

A lone jellyfish stick in the bricks on a boat ramp.  Jellyfish are the only fish I ever see in the river.

 

Right at the end/entry of the park is a little hut for lake bird watching I guess.  You can see how low the water level is here.  It hasn’t rained in sooooooo long.

 

What a big day!  A long bike ride, it was a good feeling.  So we decided to finish the day off with a lovely Ginger beer spider!

 

Autumn festival time!

Now the day of the Autumn festival.  On the way in there was ‘art’ on the side of the main walkway.  I am not sure if a plastic sheet stretched between two tree trunks is art.  It did have a silly name though ‘Framing nothing’ I think it was.  The name must make it art I guess, looked like a plastic sheet had gotten entangled in the trees to me… No pics of that, obviously it’s easy to imagine.

 

Quite a few tents set up for the people, lots of stalls to see, from religious groups to scouts to council groups etc.  It was very lively!

The better half managed to get some good use of her sun umbrella as well.  I was surprised to see a few people using umbrellas.  I am glad we took it, as there was some waiting around and no shade in which to do it.  Luckily we could make our own!!  I think sun umbrellas are quite good and Australia certainly should adopt them.

 

There was a model car set up with a car zipping around. I told  Ratchet he should give the course a go, but he thought he was too old for that sort of thing.

 

Some model boats were on the river too, but having not charged the batteries in my camera proved a fatal result for any quality photo taking.

 

In the main tent area, there were some aliens wandering about for the amusement of children.  One of them had lost a hand (alien that is, not child.)

 

That’s about it really.  It was a fun day, although getting lunch was a major pain.  After lining up for about 15 minutes at one of the food vans and not actually progressing in the line, we decided to get an ice cream (which appeared to be moving, slowly) and head home.  It still took about 10 minutes of waiting at the ice cream van before we got our ice cream.  The line we had left had progressed by about 2 people…  Sadly all the food vans were this slow as well.  I estimated about a 45 minute wait at the hotdog van.  We got our icecream and made our way home after that, for sandwiches.

 

Generally a good day, although let down by the LOOOOOOOONG wait for any sort   of food and lack of shaded areas to sit down and enjoy our ice cream.  On the way out, I garnered amusement from listening to kids complaining about anything and everything as they went home.  Tired kids hey?