Rockingham

The rest of the week was a little more sedate.  We hired a car and explored Freemantle and drove up the West Coast.  Caro and Brownie had pies for breakfast EVERY morning.  

Finally it came time for us to leave the house in Rockingham and go and stay with Garth, a friend of Ann and Mike’s in Freemantle ("Free-o").  It was a lovely big place, light and airy and with the requisite All Blacks flag on the wall.  

Brownie was impressed. 

"Wow, this place is beautiful!  I need to have a crap," she announced.
That was were we spent our last couple of days in WA.  We were frequently visited by the new bride and groom, Macca and the Kiwi girls.  

I should add at this point, when you get this many Kiwis together, the accents just get stronger and stronger to the point where I could no longer understand them.  Especially after a few pints, the vowels just get horribly mangled, so unfortunately many of the conversations I had in Freemantle were of the “smile and nod” variety.  Ha, you may say, uncharitably, Symon is just making a fuss over nothing.  You think so?  Here are some examples of Kiwi pronunciation.

Guess – What you cook with if you don’t have electricity
Peck – What you do with a suitcase
Dunner – What you eat after lunch
Frudge – Where you keep your dunner
Fentestock – Great!  Fab!  “Thet’s really fen-tes-tock!”
New Zellund – Where Kiwis come from

On the very last day of the trip though, Mike called me to a separate room so that he could tell me in private how much he'd appreciated our coming over and how much it meant to him to see Caro again.  Then he gave me a big hug and there's no misunderstanding that.