I am totally engrossed in the area, as I grew up nearby, as a kid. It bring back all the memories of my childhood, the sound of toads in the pond, the sound of wind blowing and leaves brushing against each other, the blinking fireflies, the zinc roof, the wooden walls, and the smell of fresh air!
I went back the following day with my family, knowing that my children will enjoy this place as well.
The pond where I sat for 2hours listening to the toads, the night before. Kids are enjoying the place.
I arrived at about 10pm on 7th Aug to take some night shots of the firing.
Stoke Hole 1 of the Dragon Kiln, and the overhead passageway.
Bricks used to seal the Kiln
Clay figures from the previous firing
Dragon Kiln Shed
700*C @ Firing hole
Sculptures around the premesis
8th Aug 2009 11am
The Dragon reached its desired temperature and the firing hole was sealed. Next, fire the windows.
Firing the Dragon Kiln windows of stoke hole 1
Side view of the Dragon Kiln shed
Smokin’
8th Aug 2009, 6pm
The temperature of 1250*C was reach much earlier than anticipated. The Dragon Kiln was sealed, and left to burn, and then cool down on its own, for the next week.
We left The Lily at about 1100hrs this monring for Albany.
The 85km drive took about an hour and a half, due to the heavy flow of traffic before entering Albany.
The first thing we did was to to head for the petrol station. We have a quater of a tank left, but was afraid that the petrol price will go higher when we go further into the trip. We have travelled more than 1000km thus far.
Second thing we did, we went straight to Albany Plaza, but could not find a free parking lot. So we parked at Woolsworth, and went over to Coles (in Albany Plaza) to buy our food for the next few days.
We also brought lunch from Subway, and then we proceeded on to Jesters Pie, the real reason why we came to this part of Albany.
Jesters Albany
1/77 Lockyer Ave
Albany 6330
Of course, its available all over Australia, but its only at Stirling Range I remembered about it and the nearest location would be here, I guess?
We bought:
Chunky Beef (Stockmans)
Tender chunks of lean beef simmered in our traditional gravy
Chicken Carbonara (Pavarotti)
Skin-free chicken with bacon & button mushrooms in an Italian cheese sauce
Beef, Bacon & Mushroom (Footy)
Chunks of lean beef with bacon & juicy mushrooms topped with tasty cheese
“At Torndirrup National Park, the Southern Ocean has sculpted a Natural Bridge in the coastal granites and formed The Gap, where the waves rush in and out with tremendous ferocity. The Blowholes, a crackline in the granite, ‘blows’ air and occasionally spray. The noise is quite impressive. Windswept coastal heaths give way to massive granite outcrops, sheer cliffs and steep sandy slopes and dunes.
The area was one of the first in the State to be gazetted as a National Park, in 1918, though it was not named until 1969 and acquired its first resident ranger in 1973. Torndirrup was the name of the Aboriginal clan that lived on the peninsula and to the west of what is now Albany. “-naturebase.net
It was an easy 20mins drive to reach the Gap and the Natural Bridge.
They both share the same car park. Once you enter the attraction via the only walkway, the Gap is on your left, and the Natural Bridge, on your right.
The Natural Bridge
The Gap
Blowholes
The Blowholes is further south, by car. Lookout for a very inconspicuous sign on the left of the road, pointing you into the road leading to the blowholes.
Once you arrive, its another 1.5km walk, and it takes a cool 20mins to reach the holes. Wear good shoes as you will be walking and climbing over some rocks, which can be slippery.
Do not expect to see geysers of water sprouting out of the holes like the Old Faithful.
Its merely waves creating air pockets in the cracks and creating loud noises.
But still, its worth the 20mins walk to me.
Nothing much left to be seen, since I am not visiting Whale World, we drove into the Vancouver Peninsula, to find more stunning views.
Its only then that I realised that its already 1600hrs and we have more than an hours drive to reach Denmark.
Denmark is a wonderful wonderful place to be in.
Unlike the route we have taken thus far, where all is relatively dry, Denmark has trees…. trees with GREEN leaves… and loads of them…
Found The Cove Chalet, and Illya immediately pulled us to the Wilson Inlet, wanting to show us this:
Spent another 15mins looking at the scenery, telling us that we can use the boat anytime, and that Honeymoon Island, although almost 200m off shore, the water level is only up to the chest level, but anywhere beyond that, its deeeeeeeeeeep.
He too showed us and walked us a distance on the Bibbulmun Track.
“The Bibbulmun Track is one of the world’s great long distance walk trails, stretching nearly 1000kms from Kalamunda (Perth Hills) to Albany (South Coast) through the heart of the scenic South West of Western Australia” – bibbulmun.org.au
By the time we got to Tingle Chalet, its late at night, and Illya had a volleyball game to catch.
Prepared the BBQ pit, and we had out first BBQ of the trip!
The peak is 1095m above sea level, but the car park is only about 450m above, and is served by a sealed road, about 8km long.
We actually went up the car park after dark last night after dark, and its kinda eerie.
But this morning, its a whole different story.
We left Stirling Range Retreat at 0645hrs and managed to get to the car park before 0700hrs.
I will let the pictures speak for itself.
We met the park ranger, who watched the sunrise with us, and apparantly, he comes up here everyday to make sure everything is alright, and that the toilet is clean.
He is almost 65.
He was also telling us that the day before, the fog was much denser and the moon was bigger and close to the hills, and sky was all purply.
Too bad we missed that.
Stirling Range Drive
We went back to Stirling Range Retreat to pack up again, and went on our way to do the 80km scenic drive, along Stirling Range Drive, right to Red Gum Pass road, and then right again to Salt River Road.
The only sealed section you will see along this stretch is when you turn right into Salt River Road. However, please be careful as there are loads of road kills I can see along the way.
Guess how fast my wife is going at on a sealed road.
Saw this somewhere, and I just want to keep a copy of it in my own blog…
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I found the following paragraphs on NTU’s website:
“The university has a distinguished lineage with roots that go back to 1955. We began as Nanyang University (Nantah), the first Chinese-language university in Southeast Asia, through donations from all walks of life, with the Yunnan Garden campus donated by the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan.
Nanyang Technological Institute was reborn on the same campus in 1981 with government funding to educate practice-oriented engineers for the burgeoning Singapore economy. In 1991 we became Nanyang Technological University with the absorption of the National Institute of Education.”
Anyone with a sense of history can tell you Nantah was founded by late Tan Lark Sye in 1953 but unfortunately closed down by Lee Kuan Yew in 1980. (PAP supporters among Nantah alumni always insist that Nantah was “merged” with Singapore University to form the NUS — make it more palatable to public perception). On the other hand, NTU was founded by Lee Kuan Yew in Nantah’s old campus as NTI in 1982 initially and upgraded to NTU in 1992.
And don’t forget that Nantah was a real CHINESE university (the only Chinese university outside of China and Taiwan so far) while NTU is an English university with a non-significant “Department of Chinese”. (NUS has one too, nowadays, which decent university in the world does not have a Chinese Department?).
So you see, other than sharing the same premise, the two universities have no commonality AT ALL, what “lineage with roots” are they talking about ?
The fact of the matter is this: the property of now defunct Nanyang University was confiscated and given to NTU, the whole campus was ransacked and almost demolished, the old buildings torn down and replaced by new ones, the beloved Nantah Gate was defaced and cut off from the campus by the highway (They wanted to tear down the Gate but no contractors dared to take the contract).
After Nantah was closed down in 1980, no one heard about Nantah or Tan Lark Sye on media until 1989 when someone in PAP sensed that China was going to be reckoned with as another powerful country on earth. They started to see the economical value of Nantah’s name (which they hastenly discarded in 1980) in pursuing the Chinese business, but the regime had been most unkind to Nantah and Tan Lark Sye, the big question was how could they erase this thorny historical blackmark in people’s mind ? The whole PAP propaganda machinery with the help from media has been working on this single idea ever since. They seemed to have found the solution to their problem, namely, to modify and distort the history of Nantah and NTU …
First they changed the Chinese abbreviation of NTU from LiDa to NanDa (i.e. Nantah) on Chinese media which created an illusion on the mind of Chinese readers and audience as if Nantah was still alive. Later, Dr. Su Guaning started to push renaming of NTU’s official name to “Nanyang University” which naturally met opposition from silent Chinese community in Singapore and Nantah alumni. Consequently the idea was dropped in 2004 (the rumor has it that Lee Kuan Yew was annoyed by comments made by oppositions of renaming and requests by some supporters of renaming to rehabitate his most despised enemy Tan Lark Sye) while they were planning a huge ceremony to be held in June of 2005.
With name-change or no name-change, now they just want you to sincerely believe that this angmo NTU is the same Nantah built in 1953 by Tan Lark Sye with the help from Chinese people of southeast Asia, and it has been operating since 1955, as if nothing had happened in the year of 1980 (“No, no, no, we never closd down Nantah, what happened in 1980 was just your imagination, honey”).
My friend gave me a metaphor to compare with what is going on here: “Someone killed your poor Chinese mother and confiscated your little atap hut. A twenty-ish Angmo woman comes along and moves in the hut. they now tell you in straight-face that this “50 years” old angmo jarbo is your old mother you missed so many years and she really never get killed!”
How can people believe such shameless fabrication and distortion of history? (Don’t tell me Singaporeans are so gullible and stupid to put up with suchnonsense. Are they?)
I was searching for “Mrs Lee Kuan Yew”, since she is in serious condition (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/347991/1/.html)…
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Mindboggling quotes by Lee Kuan Yew
“If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.” – Lee Kuan Yew endorsing the Tiananmen massacre, Straits Times, 17 August 2004
“If you are a troublemaker… it’s our job to politically destroy you. Put it this way. As long as JB Jeyaratnam for what he stands for – a thoroughly destructive force – we will knock him. Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac.” – Lee Kuan Yew, The Man And His Ideas, 1997
“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.” – Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, 20 April 1987
“I make no apologies that the PAP is the Government and the Government is the PAP.” – Lee Kuan Yew, 1982, Petir
“If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I would not have the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.” – Lee Kuan Yew, 1962
“Repression, Sir is a habit that grows. I am told it is like making love – it is always easier the second time! The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course with constant repetition you get more and more brazen in the attack. All you have to do is to dissolve organizations and societies and banish and detain the key political workers in these societies. Then miraculously everything is tranquil on the surface. Then an intimidated press and the government-controlled radio together can regularly sing your praises, and slowly and steadily the people are made to forget the evil things that have already been done, or if these things are referred to again they’re conveniently distorted and distorted with impunity, because there will be no opposition to contradict.” – Lee Kuan Yew as an opposition PAP member speaking to David Marshall, Singapore Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4 October 1956
“I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias.” – Lee Kuan Yew complaining about the Straits Times in 1959.
for those of you who received letters demanding for payments from IRAS, please please please check carefully before making any payments.
My dad just received a letter, RED COLOUR somemore, saying that my dad owes them $67.20, including 5% of penalty.
I went into IRAS system to check, and see that infact, IRAS owes my father $3.20.
Called up, and this fella sound as if I am some ignorant fug, and that IRAS is NEVER WRONG.
After 15mins of drilling the information into him, he finally realised the problem, and checked the system, and acknowledge that I am right.
After some checking, he realised that although the letter is generated on 3rd May, the system actually backdates to and generates the report based on 27th April, more than 1 week ago.
And on 1 May, because IRAS owe my dad some money earlier, IRAS credited the money into my dad’s account.
So my question is this…. what if my dad did not check and made the payment?
IRAS said, oh, we will credit the amount to your account, and you pay less next year.
so…. between now and next year, the interest I loss, are you going to pay me back?
ok, I know amount is not big, but imagine this happening to more people. The amount will then not be small.
anyway, just irritated with the attitude of IRAS….
This happened a while back, in late March, but was too busy to post due to some biz trips…
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Alighted at Boon Lay MRT station and saw this shop selling really nice looking Tahu Goreng and wanted to try, since tahu is one of the very few things that I can shaft down my throat due to the diet (although deep fried ones are a no-no).
$2 it says…. and with loads of vegetables (click on the 2nd picture to see the enlarged picture)… wonderful…
Ordered 2, and saw the girl packing it for the customer infront of me…
God… the sauce is really little, and so is the vegetable…
So when its my turn, I asked for more vegetable…
Back came the reply: “we already give alot ok? dun ask somemore”
I was shocked! You can always decline to give more, but not in that tone, my dear.
So have a look at the “ALOT OF VEGETABLE” tahu…
Anyway, I was paying up, and she started to tell the cashier in Malay.
“more vegetable, more sauce. everything also want more. thats why so fat now”
too bad for you, darling, I understand what you said…
and you are now featured in my blog…
to see the girl who said that, she is the one in the second picture, wearing a cap and yellow shirt behind the counter…. oh… she ain’t slim either…
