100 (or 42) Degrees in Denmark: Wonderful SW Western Australia

smw, slt is about to finish a glorious month in Australia and fly on to New Zealand. NZ will be wonderfully beautiful and exciting as well, I'm sure...but I'm feeling sad about the end of this fantastic first book of my excellent adventure. I've put great effort these past 48 hours or so to getting all my Australia photos sorted and quality-controlled so I can put them up here before I go take a few jillion more in New Zealand. For those who've been wondering what I've been doing with my time, perhaps these next several entries will provide you with some answers -- primarily visual, but also some textual information as well. For this first Australia entry you will see, of my several days exploring SW Western Australia, text will be minimal and the pix will do the talking. THANKS are due, though, before we move on, to the real stars of this entire month: Ondrej, without whom so much would have been less clear or simply impossible and whose support and friendship remain an honor; Trudi, who's even funnier and more wonderful to spend time with on her own home turf than in wild and wacky Port Harcourt; and of course Beth, John, Edwina and above all Sir Mikey, who gave me a good excuse to take advantage of their hospitality even longer than anyone foresaw! :-) Please, everyone, allow me to repay your generous hospitality in the US or somewhere else whenever I can!

Western Australia is twice the size of Texas, according to the guidebook. I saw only a tiny corner of it, though it's reputed to be one of the prettiest corners of a varied and wonderful state. Herewith pictures of the Margaret River region, and the area between there and Denmark, and around Denmark and Mt. Lindesay. The day I arrived in Denmark it was, indeed, 42 celsius (over 100 fahrenheit) in the shade.

Pleasant Perth

Perth, the capital of Western Australia, sits on the Indian Ocean rather closer to Indonesia than to the large eastern cities of Australia. It's really quite far from just about anywhere else. And quite lovely, as you see!

...I loved that in the botanic gardens in Perth, plants from the rest of Australia -- everything east of Western Australia, which is shown yellow here -- are covered in one fairly small area, while all the different areas of Western Australia (admittedly highly varied from tropics to desert to coastal forests and so on) have individual areas.

...the war memorial in Kings Park, on a high bluff above the river-bay overlooking downtown Perth. The botanic gardens are also in Kings Park.

...as you can tell from this and other pictures, I really enjoy the immediate and frequent juxtaposition of fairly traditional brick colonial-style buildings with modern glass and steel skyscrapers. This is a fairly common juxtaposition in Sydney and Melbourne as well, but Perth is a bit more condenses and easy to see it all in than those two cities.