We got hitched!

A beautiful sunny day in Sydney,

Saturday the 21st of January

We were very lucky.....













Had some great nights out with friends and family before heading to Lorne in victoria to attend the Lorne 2006 Protein Structure and Function Conference. Generally an excellent meeting, and it is always good to meet up with other Australian Scientists and find out what is going on.



We returned to Sydney then flew out to Perth to spend a week's honeymoon in Western Australia touring the South West and a little bit north of Perth. Overall we had a spectacular time. Went to some great restaurants. If you are ever in Albany, try The Wild Duck, and if you are up near Yallingup or Margaret River try the Other Side of the Moon located at the Quay West Bunker Bay Restort (nice resort by the way).

Saw some excellent sunsets into the ocean, and drank some fantastic wines. E went mad over the climbing.... and we saw lots of wildlife including snakes and orchids and sea cucumbers that look like slugs. We eat lobster and also checked out the stromatolites at Lake Thetis near Cervantes. Stromatolites are constructed of colonies of photosynthetic cyanobacteria that deposit calcium salts to form strange bublous formations at the edges of water (in this case a lake).

We really enjoyed the Pinnacles... they are limestone formations that 'pop' out of the sand dunes, again near Cervantes. I visited this place when I was very small and it was certainly worth the second visit.

We also visited the Valley of the Giants – a forest of ancient Kari trees. There is a suspended 'tree-top' walk here which was worth doing. We also saw lots of Blue Wrens there. Very cute!




The Parks people were doing controlled burns which we drove through, really felt like Australia....

Finally for a bit of a thrill we did two tree-climbs – one called the Gloucester tree, and the other called the Bicentennial Tree. I recommend the later one since the climb is much higher and it is also less well known so it is not as busy. Basically the climb consists of a huge Eucalypt tree with iron stakes driven into the trunk every 30 cm that spiral up the tree.


The climber can step from one spoke to the next in a sort of helical ladder. The whole process is very unprotected (if you fall it could be VERY VERY nasty), and the climb goes up to 75 m (for the Bicentennial Tree, 58 m for the Gloucester Tree).