walpole.

Ah, Christmas is over, but the season is not! Today is Boxing Day, also known as the Catholic feast of St. Stephen (as Rob as informed me), or just simply "The Day After Christmas". The last two Boxing Days have been fraught with some kind of calamity, but thankfully this one seems to be pretty calm... Anyway, Dad and I are slackers for one more day- we got Christmas off. We were going to take a family trip to Busselton, but the church campground was booked out, so we booked New Year's instead and we took ourselves off to a merry little trip down to Walpole instead. According to the meter on the car we covered about 304 km today, most of it with me driving. Crazy country, you have to drive for miles between places of attraction.

Dad insisted on leaving at 6am today as of yesterday, and I told him that I intended to wake up at 6, so we'll see who won. Well, I did, cos everyone ended up waking up late, and so I got woken up by mom at 6.45 am, which is a very happy compromise. Seems like everyone from the city decided to come down south today, Walpole was FLOODED with inconsiderate drivers with non-country license plates and the inability to wave back when being waved to. The predictable result- the Tree Top Walk was really crowded with people who refused to read the sign that said "WARNING: For safety reasons, 20 people per span, 10 people per circular platform", either that or they read it and chose to ignore it for possible educational reasons. Maybe free falling 12 stories without safety lines is a good experience, I don't know. Oh, and not to mention stupid people who jumped up and down to make the structure swing- I guess it's ok to do that when there's only you and maybe 5 other friends who you want to freak out of their wits, but doing that when the skimpy structure is overloaded is possibly not the smartest idea in the world. (I've recently learnt that stupid people are everywhere, you can't escape from them. Not to say that I'm not stupid sometimes, but at least I admit it and I don't make it my religion. *lol* actually, heard of the saying that stupid people can't help being stupid, so we shouldn't blame them for it- we should just take the warning labels off everything and let the problem solve itself...) But still, had fun there. Lots of photo fodder.

Then went to this random resturant that happened to be open, Nornalup Teahouse Resturant I think it was called. It's an awesome awesome place, it's like fine dining for a fraction of the price! Really pretty, really good food, and really good presentation. It's the sort of wood floors, pleasant, classic sort of place, white tablecloths and all. Fresh fish :D. I sound like an ad.

Then this place called Circular Pool. And a ginormous Tingle tree. Some pretty lookouts.

Mandalay Beach! Not a swimming beach, there're rips and everything, and it looks dangerous, but it sure as hell is awesomely spectacular.

Then home. Where I am wittling out a very nice story for scholarship applications. Meh.