Still on holidays and back from a few days at the seashore where I saw baby seagulls nesting and baby penguins and sealions lazing on the sand and dolphins playing by the boat.
The brand new Second Life island for the university was delivered on the day I started holidays, so I’m studiously avoiding doing any terraforming, or parcelling or putting out vegetation, or buildings. Well, except for those canals I built through the entire island to divide it into sections. And visiting the project being created by 6 students to simulate job interviews for a Teaching and Learning unit.
(Liar, liar – I took a break from writing this post, went into Second Life, met one of our academics by chance and ended up setting up a widescreen TV set for him. I even worked out how to stream media into the sim and played the trailer for March of the Penguins, and then streamed a .mov I previously made for a seminar at the University of Southern Queensland right from my own server. )
Anyhow, back to the title of the post…why do I love this town? Well, we went into the centre of Fremantle for dinner and to buy some birthday presents. We thought we’d check out the Art Markets that have moved to Friday night (CORRECTION: They are still on Thursdays too). We saw:
- A parade of bagpipers.
- A busker coated in gold and dressed as a fairy staying perfectly still.
- An El Salvadorian woman cooking homemade pupusas that we bought from her grill.
- A statue of wartime Prime Minister and local boy, John Curtin, that looks like he’s hitting passersby.
- A small mob of unkempt children climbing up the statue base and looking like they were storming Saddam. Hussein’s statue -…including that particularly scruffy kid…oh that’s Mr9…
- Seagulls from the nearby harbour hoping to steal a chip or two.
- A stilt walker with a fake moustache and a ukulele strapped to his back who gave his card to Co-Pilot when they both realised they wanted to start a uke group in the town.
- A woman who runs my laughter yoga class behind one stall.
- The mayor sitting at a table in the square enjoying the crowd
- A circle of drummers around waist high drums, following the lead of a bearded man giving an open air workshop. As we moved about, the drummers changed to include a woman in a wheelchair, then a mum with a pram, then a bunch of kids.
- Lots of barefeet and colourful clothes, a few dreddies and some singing.
- The “Village Cafe” – which is a well preserved kombi van set up to sell coffee
