All signs point to autumn

A few weeks ago, it was difficult to believe that summer would ever come to an end. Bright mornings, soaring temperatures and, incredibly, one hundred days without rain all suggested that Perth would be soaking up the sun for the foreseaable future. The last seven days, however, are evidence enough that the seasons are changing. We’re currently experiencing longer spells between heatwaves, and even they are less overwhelming than they’ve been in past months. A few days under 30 degrees are even making an occasional appearance!

Of course, the changing climate does have some advantages. The part of the transition from summer to autumn that has the most impact on me is the fact that the sun rises a little later and sets a little earlier each day. Instead of squinting straight into the sun on my eastbound morning ride to work, leaving the house just before the sun comes up at 6am produces sights like the one below. While I’m on the subject of cycling, starting the working day with a 10k cycle works wonders for waking me up and I’d definitely carry it on at Bath if there wasn’t a ridiculous hill in the way. Everyone at work is joking that the cooling temperatures will be a relief for a “pom that can’t stand the heat”, but the truth is I’ve become accustomed to and learned to love the scorchers!

There's nothing quite like a sunrise over the Swan to start the day

The main downside, as a beach bum, is naturally the reduction in the number of days where a sunbathing session is feasible. In addition to this, the Fremantle Doctor (the name the locals give to the sea breeze that blows up the river every afternoon) has transformed from welcome respite to cyclist’s nemasis. A few rides home have felt like pedalling into treacle and I’m ashamed to say that I even caught the bus one day last week due to wind-induced fatigue. The fact that it's dark by 6:30pm is also pretty depressing; a little reminiscent of my two winters at Truro College, where the 1:45h bus journeys meant that we didn't see daylight at home during the week.

I experienced the full extent of this changing weather for the first time today. After a cool yet sunny morning run along the coastline (I appear to have been signed up for the Bath half marathon next year, but that’s a topic for another time), I spent the morning treating myself to a bit of retail therapy, then returned home to watch the Dockers game. There’s another case of time flying for you; I wrote about the Dockers reaching the grand final of the Aussie Rules Football League back in September… the next season is now well underway. Anyway, I had just got out of the shower, ready for some stretches in the garden, when an absolute downpour started. I’ve forgotten what rain looks like! It’s almost like being back home… oh well, at least the garden's happy!

The end is nigh

!Warning! This post features academic content and is not purely about travel…

Reality check: Today is the first day where I truly feel like my placement is nearing its end. Lindy is leaving for a weeklong conference in Budapest tomorrow (it’s alright for some) so, in lieu of our usual Thursday morning team meeting, we each met her individually. The purpose of our chat was to run through a few ideas for my next series of experiments, in which I’ll attempt to optimise a therapeutic protocol of red light irradation to minimise oxidative stress in slices of rat spinal cord (oo-er), but we wound up talking about how I’ll be spending the remainder of my time in EaRN. Up until this point, it had felt like I was chugging along at my own pace with plenty of time to go and no real end in sight, but Lindy pointed out the startling fact that I’m 28 weeks down with just 12 to go; 11 if you count my week’s holiday in Sydney next month. Anyway, the take home message was this: It’s time to really crack on with things.

It’s the norm for Bath students that the collection of results, data analysis and general writing up of the report takes about a month, which means I should ideally have all my practical work done by the end of April. Judging by my current workload, it’s definitely a fair chunk of hard graft, but I think it’s just about achievable. I’ll be very glad to see the back of hours spent pipetting in the tissue culture hood or chopping up bits of baby rat in a room stinking of cadavers, I can tell you that much! However, I’m the type of person who gets sick and tired of doing the same thing for too long and writing isn’t my favourite task at the best of times, so chances are the report will have driven me insane within a couple of weeks and I’ll be pining for some lab work. I shall have to remember to leave my desk and get out in the fresh air at regular intervals, otherwise I’ll come home looking like a luminous white, square-eyed cave dweller.

As far as the report itself goes, I’ve already made a start in the form of my literature review, which acts as the introduction. You can read it here; I make no promises of it being a thrilling read, but it may interest some of you to know what all this nonsense I go on about is really about. That just leaves 40 odd pages of abstract, hypotheses, methods, results, discussion and acknowledgements to compile… Oh wow. Add to that a poster on my research for inspection on the department’s poster day and I am well and truly freaking out. Let the countdown begin: 80 days until home!

Escape to Dunsborough

Work is absolutely manic at the moment, so a last-minute decision to spend the weekend down south for the first time since Christmas was just what the doctor ordered. Getting out of the city for a few days to catch up with a handful of lovely people has made me feel brand new! As usual, the only downside was getting there: Jess had finished lectures for the week and driven down on Wednesday, but I had to work until Friday lunchtime and follow her down on the dreaded Friday night bus. Four hours of hell turned into five and a half due to traffic, car accidents and an angry drunk passenger trying to start a fight with the driver and getting kicked off (nothing out of the ordinary for public transport), meaning I got into Dunsborough at 9:30pm feeling exhausted. I was very happy to see Jess waiting for me and we had a quiet drink at home with her parents before turning in for an early night.

I'm glad I woke up on Saturday morning feeling refreshed, because it turned out to be a long day of indulgence, particularly in the alcohol department. Jess and I drove into town in the morning for a coffee and a mong around the shops before it was time to get dressed up for lunch. Terry and Maggs very kindly took us, Candice and Jess' boyfriend Pete to Swings and Roundabouts, a new restaurant in the very beautiful Margaret River wine region. The atmosphere was great, the food was absolutely delicious and the six of us gorged ourselves on sharing plates of delights such as crispy skin barramundi, seafood bouillabaisse, lamb rump, duck liver parfait and rosemary roasties. Naturally, this was all washed down with several carafes of Margaret River merlot. After a dessert of stone fruit crumble accompanied by a glass of cane cut sweet white (my new favourite), we staggered back to the car and immediately fell into a food coma on the drive home. The weather was cooling down in the afternoon, so we weren't sure what to do, but Pete made the decision easy when he said he wanted to go for a surf at Bunker Bay, situated conveniently close to the Pullman Resort, which is renowned for its cocktails. The outcome of this was Pete becoming designated driver and leaving Candice, Jess and I to sample the cocktail menu when he went in the water. By the time he came out, we were very comfortable and slightly merry, sprawled out on sofas overlooking the ocean, sipping mojitos and people watching a rather bogan wedding party. Tattoos and tacky dresses galore!

Cocktails!

Feeling a little judged after Pete saying going straight from cocktail hour to the bar for pints would make it a "bender", we retired home briefly for a bite to eat and a shower. Jess and I rode our trusty bikes to the Pour House, narrowly avoiding certain death on some steep curbs and poorly lit pathways, to find Candice and Oli already sitting at a table on the roof under the fairy lights. Several pints of custard cider later and the evening chill stopped bothering us; Sian, Josh, Alastair and Flo were all working, so it was lovely to catch up with them all after so long, in a drunken state as per. Having made promises to return ASAP, we wobbled home on two wheels, which were only slightly more stable than two legs, and flopped into bed.

Tankards galore at the Pour House

This morning brought a nasty hangover (aka my most common state while in Dunsborough), but thankfully our breakfast recovery plans were already in place. Jess and I picked up Candice and Walter the miniature Bulldog and headed to Samudra for our hangover fix. The sun was shining, the coffee was strong and we dissected our very amusing night curled up on big comfy chairs waiting for our veggie fry ups to arrive. As an initial non-believer in the health-kick culture, a nice change from your typical greasy breakfast did me the world of good! Walter was very well behaved and got lots of attention from the ladies, the little chick magnet. We spent the afternoon by the pool back at home catching up with Sian, reading and soaking up the last of the Sunday sun. Our last obstacle was the three hour drive back to the city before work and uni start bright and early tomorrow. This gargantuan task was overcome with sweets, good music and the promise that Jess could slap me if I started falling asleep. We were also helped along by my first McDonald's since arriving in Australia and my goodness is it cheap! $5.50 for a Cheeseburger meal; I see why the nation's waistline is expanding. The journey actually went very quickly and we're currently winding down with tea and Downton Abbey. Another great weekend over in a flash; back to the grindstone I suppose.

Brekky with the adorable Walter

One becomes two

It brings me immense joy to announce that I’m no longer living a life of solitude! Jess moved back in for good on Friday and we’ve already made up for lost time with a lovely girly weekend. I’d been home from work for all of ten minutes before she convinced me to go to Claremont Quarter to her to do a “food shop”; putting a supermarket in a shopping centre full of clothes shops is a very dangerous move for broke students! Before we knew it, we’d both had a little slurge in Gorman, an amazing store full of lovely prints that I’ll be stocking up on before I come home as it doesn’t exist in England. New things, yay!

After a whizz around the supermarket, we cooked dinner at home before getting ready and heading into Fremantle for a few welcome home drinks. The sun was setting as we waited for the train at Cottesloe and the sky looked so beautiful against the trees. We started our little pub tour at Little Creatures, where the ciders soon started flowing. After weeks of being alone with my thoughts, it was so great to have a nice long catch up and vent my ramblings to someone; we covered all our news over pints of Pipsqueak and, when we got the munchies, Creatures’ amazing aioli chips. Our next stop was X-Wray on the other side of town, a small outdoor bar covered with vines and fairy lights. We grabbed a drink and had just sat down at the long tables when an awesome band starting playing. They did loads of Beatles covers and, as two girls who were brought up listening to their hits in the car with our Dads, Jess and I were transfixed. They even did a very pretty version of Yellow Submarine near the end, which was my favourite when I was about 5!

We strolled back through the very busy Friday night streets to the station, realising it was way past midnight and we were a lot more drunk than we thought. Another great thing about having a friend in the house: Jess forced me to gulp down lots of water before passing out in order to keep the hangover at bay; she’s a gem!

 Despite the large volume of alcohol consumed on Friday night, we were up bright and early to explore Fremantle markets on Saturday. I’d only been briefly with Vic and Catriona a few months ago, so it was nice to have a proper look round. There are so many nice stalls selling homemade treats! They also have a huge fresh fruit and veg stand that I’ll definitely be using from now on instead of the supermarket. We also browsed a few other shops before returning home for a quiet afternoon of cups of tea and our books. I finished Love in the Time of Cholera this week and have become quickly absorbed in another classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Evening rolled round and we extended our Beatles experience by watching Across the Universe, a movie starring Jim Sturgess (swoon) and featuring all the big hits. I’d never heard of it before, but would highly recommend.

Jess had to go to uni to catch up on some lectures on Sunday morning, so I took my usual trip into Cottesloe for a banana and mango juice from Cimbalino and a browse of the shops. Incidentally, it should be mentioned that I didn’t get my normal tasty brunch of Eggs Florentine because (a) I have no money and (b) I was put off after a nasty run in with some moronic women last week. These two typical Perth girls (fully kitted out in fancy gym clothes but obviously hadn’t been working out for fear of getting sweaty) sitting at the table next to me were irritating me from the get-go with their inane chatter that they seemed to want the entire café to hear. One of them mentioned she’d been to L.A. about a million times. To add to my hatred at them interrupting my quiet morning of reading, they both gave me the dirtiest look when my substantial plate of wonderful food arrived, before one of them turned to me and said “Wow, look at that, you’re really getting your money’s worth there aren’t you”. Excuse me?! When did it become OK to talk to someone like that?! I was more than a little taken aback, so only managed a smile and “It’s Sunday, you can eat what you want” as a reply, to which she tried to dig her way out of basically calling me a fat bitch by repeating “No judgement babe” about a million times. Seriously, shut up. You can keep the piece of dry gluten free toast you’re sharing and I’ll eat like a normal person, thanks very much. Even though they were complete retards, it did get me down a little bit, which I realise is stupid now.

I was intending on going down to the beach to have a look at the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition, which apprently features a giant goon bag and a wave made of old barbie dolls, but decided to leave that for a warmer day. It’s only been 26 degrees this weekend; what’s going on?! I wore a jumper outdoors yesterday for the first time in months. Wrong. Sunday afternoon was spent curled up in bed with my book and, of course, something which seems to become our favourite hobby the minute Jess and I live in the same house: Napping. Two hours later I awoke, just in time to eat and head out to the cinema. We went to The Windsor in Nedlands, a gorgeous little retro cinema showing independent art films and serving homemade ice cream bombs. We saw Le Week-End, a film about an old couple on holiday in Paris starring one of my favourite actors, Jim Broadbent. It was a bit depressing but funny too, and it made me really want to go to Paris! That rounded off our first weekend back together; the working week will go by far more quickly from now on knowing my weekends will be fuller!

Vic's birthday

I’d just walked through the door and crashed on the sofa after a Friday cut short in favour of after-work beers with the gang when my phone rang. It was my darling host Mummy, who I hadn’t heard from in ages, inviting me down to Cottesloe for a spontaneous birthday gathering. I walked straight out the door and arrived on the beach ten minutes later to find Vic, John, Denai and Tassos (the Greek couple who moved into my old room) and Jane chilling out on blankets on the big grassy bank overlooking the ocean. Jane is an old friend of the Billinghams on holiday from, you’ve guessed it, Cornwall! She lives in Lanivet, just 15 minutes away from my house. Catriona turned up soon after and it turned into quite the reunion. Vic is looking incredible for 59!

I can’t believe I’ve never been to Cottesloe in the evening before; it’s so beautiful! It had been such a hot day and the beach was packed with people enjoying the more bearable temperature as sunset approached. You could make out the lights of Rottnest Island on the horizon and some huge cruise ships passed by, lighting up the surface of the water. John went to the fish and chip shop and brought us back some dee-fried delights, which we ate straight out of the paper with ginger beer. As it started to get dark, the fir trees over our heads came alive with the deafening sound of parrots squawking; Australia is like a zoo. After dinner, we walked along to the end of the spit and dipped our toes in the water. Heaven!

 Before we knew it, it was 9 o clock and time to go home. It was great to catch up with my old hosts and we have plans for Monday afternoon; they’re spending the public holiday at the yacht club playing with the catamaran, windsurfer and paddle boards, followed by a barbecue. Sounds like the perfect post-work activity! Jamie will be back from Cambodia by then and, as much as I enjoy chatting to his parents, it’ll be nice to have another young person around and I can’t wait to hear of his adventures in Asia!

...and a surprise visit from the other one!

You know how the saying goes: You wait two months for a McKiernan, then two come along at once, or immediately after one another anyhow. I got a very pleasant surprise on Wednesday afternoon, when I arrived home on my bike to find Jess and her boyfriend Pete sitting in the living room. After a very sweaty (on my part) hug with my favourite Aussie, Pete strategically went for a walk into Cottesloe so that we could have a long overdue girly catch up. We discussed all the usual topics: Boys, shopping and, most importantly, all the new restaurants we need to try around Perth. Pete returned armed with ice tea and passionfruit cheesecake from the fancy bakery for us to share; Jess has great taste in men!

Having settled into a very dull routine of spending my evenings making dinner and watching TV, I didn’t hesitate when Jess suggested taking the train to Fremantle for dinner at Little Creatures, a.k.a. my favourite place in the entire world. I felt a little weird (and depressed) being the third wheel to start with, but the situation was about to get more odd; Jess was meeting Pete’s parents for the first time! They’d just flown into Perth from the UK that day (of course, Pete is Cornish) and were staying in Freo for a few nights before spending the remainder of their month-long stay down south in Dunsborough and Margaret River. As the two of us settled into a booth with a pint of cider while Pete went to meet them at their hotel, Jess confessed that she was fully freaking out, as she’d never met a guy’s parents before. She had nothing to worry about though; they were so lovely! Pete is a carbon copy of his Dad, who is still surfing in his 60s, and his Mum is really sweet. I felt bad chatting to them about Cornwall when they should have been busy falling in love with Jess, but they knew our old neighbours and it was nice to have a connection to home all the way out here. Jess also told me afterwards that she was very thankful that someone was there to take the focus off her for a minute or two!

We had a few more pints of Pipsqueak to wash down the absolutely gorgeous selection of woodfired pizzas we shared; prawn and coriander pesto, prosciutto and mozerella, broccolini, chorizo and feta… Yum! Pete’s parents left us around 10 for a much-needed sleep and we stayed for another drink before going to the bar to pay for the remainder of the bill. Turns out Pete’s parents paid for the whole thing without us knowing! We felt really bad and very grateful, so the plan is to head down south during their stay and treat them to breakfast to repay their generosity. Very happy to have had a good meal, we hopped on the train home and crashed out.

I had to leave early for work the next morning, but Jess and Pete were already awake as they were heading back down to Dunsborough for the long weekend. Unfortunately, UWA doesn’t count Labour Day as a holiday, so I couldn’t get the time off to make coming down worth it, which pains me because Candy and Jess are holding a wardrobe sale party. Pretty much everything they own is gorgeous, so I could have bagged myself a bargain and had a few glasses of champagne with the girls! On the bright side, this’ll be my last solo weekend, as Jess officially returns to Perth on Wednesday for good. Yay! Friends at last!

A flying visit from one McKiernan...

It was occurring to me that I hadn’t seen my two favourite Aussie sisters in a rather long time; the last time I saw Jess was during my fortnight in Dunsborough over Christmas (almost two months ago – Jesus!) and I’d only caught up with Candice very briefly when she came up to Perth for a few days last month. This is the reason that receiving a message from Candy informing me of her impending arrival made me especially happy. Jess had to pull out of a Perth excursion at the last minute due to work, but she’ll be moving back in with me permanently in the next two weeks as her studies are resuming at the beginning of March. Yay!

My Thursday at work went by particularly quickly knowing that I would have company when I arrived home and I was just locking my bike up after a particularly sweaty ride in 37-degree heat when Candy walked up the garden path. We had a catch up on all the important Perth and Dunsborough news before some old school friends picked her up for a night out in the city; I was very responsible and declined due to a busy Friday in the lab.

I caught the bus to work on Friday and tidied up a few loose ends in the lab, then ended the working week with Kebab Fridays with the EaRN gang. With all my work completed and big plans for the afternoon, I left campus and hopped on a bus into the city to meet Candy. We met by the fountains in the main shopping district so I could have a look at her day’s purchases before we took a stroll to The Trustee for some beverages to welcome in the weekend. It was super hot, so two pints of cold cider went down very easily indeed and we enjoyed the celebratory Friday atmosphere, then left the bar for the train station via some very tempting shoe shops.

Back at home, we crashed out in front of the fans in an attempt to combat the heat before getting ready for the party. Candy had wangled me an invite to her cousin Jack’s 21st at a yacht club in Fremantle and I was very glad of the opportunity to get into a nice dress and a pair of heels after what seemed like weeks of shorts and flip flops! We had a glass of wine while getting dressed up, then got the train to Freo, where Terry and Maggs picked us up from the station and took us to Swan Yacht Club on the river. It was a typical 21st celebration; an odd mixture of Jack’s hipster mates (so many topknots) and respectable relatives, embarrassing baby pictures and free champagne. We were particularly happy about that last point. Candice’s family is even bigger than mine (her Mum is one of twelve children) and I was introduced to multiple aunties, uncles and cousins, who were all lovely. We enjoyed a dance and several glasses of fizz, listened to the speeches and tucked into some awesome profiterole cake; before we knew it, it was midnight and time to go home. I was very glad of a night out and had a lovely time letting my hair down.

Terry and Maggs came to pick up Candice bright and early just as we were finishing a slightly hungover breakfast; she had to get straight back to work in the afternoon so it really was a flying visit. I miss her already, bring on Jess’ return!