Perth - AFL

You can't visit an AFL state without going to a no-rules footy game. I chose Fremantle vs Geelong.

On the way to the Subiaco Oval, I noticed something different. Yes, a great, big, inflatable cock. Of course.
As it's ANZAC Day, there was a bit of a sing-song before we got going.
As I wasn't sure they would let me take photos, I sneaked in with the phone camera (as it goes, for no good reason - photos are fine). If you squint a bit, you can see the first punch-up of the game. Predictably, this was before the game even started.
There's a lot of good luvin out there.
And the crowd went wild-ish.
That's the goal. If you get it through the middle, you get 6 points. If you miss, you get a mark for effort.
There's quite a lot of running around and hitting people. I think you get some sort of extra credit for hitting someone on the other team. And these are the half-time kids!
And that's it.

For the record, I'm none the wiser, really. I kind of get the marking and the scoring but, judging by the crowd reaction around me, there are a whole set of byzantine rules about tackling - though, to me, it just looks smacking the other blke in the mouth and nicking the ball.

Needless to say, the referees (there are 6!) are blind old gits who would be better employed knitting socks. Though sometimes they do make wise decisions under difficult circumstances.

Perth - Swan Valley

The Swan Valley is Perth's answer to the Hunter or the Barossa - that is; booze and chocolate...

This is a grape-vine. From this, they make a drink - called wine - that tastes like grapes.
Km, hanging around outside a vinyard shop. That bloke in the background is the owner and he told me how they make port. Right, you get some red wine that isn't going to make it as wine for some reason, and you put it in a barrel followed by some brandy. Then you leave it for a few years, That's it. Port.

Like this. I bought one of these 'cos they let me try it and it's yummy.
These are the grapes that make wine taste all grapey.
These are barrels. You put booze in them. More importantly, you take booze out of them.
And old tractor. Country people REALLY, REALLY like these.
A nice bit of scenery.
Cow.
Horse (2).
Dog (1).
Me outside the odest church in WA. I kept a little way away from it in case SOMETHING HAPPENED.
Very protestant inside; i.e. plain and simple.
There was a time it wasn't a good idea to mess with the natives. Probably still isn't.
There'll be none of that 'wandering amongst the living' in this graveyard.
A nice shot over the valley.
Mmmm, beer.
This was part of the haul. The chocolate was gone before I could get a focus-lock on the camera.

Perth - Bowls

Team Building Exercises. aka Organised Piss-Ups.

Bowls is the go for this sort of thing; the club-house usually has a bar, slugs like me don't have to put much effort into it, and there's a barbie...

It can be a bit like herding cats. You think you have all the balls you need and then someone chucks one up the other end.
There is a lot of milling around with a beer while other people do things.
...and then, when they've eaten your brains, they do this.
Given enough thought and contemplation, you can occasionally keep the ball on the grass.
If you don't look at the balls, the shot you thought was going horribly wrong, suddenly goes perfectly right.
It's a bit like ten-pin bowling except they can't afford the machine that brings the balls back.
Another pesky ball has gotten away.
As a male, I was entrusted with the meat-burning for a while. Dave (behind the camera) suggested that, next time, I should do something to hide my beer-belly but when you've spent as much as I have on it...

Perth - Lobby

Finally, something Perth is good at; $50 lobsters.

Take one of these.
One of these.
And a few of these.
And this is what you get.
This, too.

Perth - Kings Park 2

We heard about a swinging bridge in Kings Park. What to do?

In common with most other things Perth, dogs are banned. Brandy had something to say about that.
Nice view over the Swan Brewery - now a hotel, of course.
Kim, apprehensive about the 'swinging' label, gazes into the middle distance.
And, she's off. Except that it doesn't swing at all! True, it wobbles a bit. Another bit of WA hyperbole.
Still, there's nice greenery around the base - the bridge is supposed to be part of some sort of treetop walk and it half meets that promise. i.e. it's more of a treetrunk walk.
And mearby there is this nice lake and fountains with a statue of a lady with a kid. For some reason or another.

Perth - The DaVinci Machines

Mr DaVinci has come to town - though bereft of any codes that I can see. Someone has got hold of a load of his old drawings of stuff and built them. Kewl.

It's all screws, levers and pullys round here. This one lifts columns to their rightful place.
An Archimedes screw - insert innuendo here. Not sure what this is doing here, really, it would probably be better suited to an Archimedes exhibition.
This is an octagonal room all covered in mirrors. You could put something in it and see all round it - which would be good if you were a bit of a lazy artist like old Leonardo.
This, strangely, is a car and it's powered by springs - which would probably have meant that you would spend more time winding it up than doing wheelies. Perhaps LDV should have invented the internal combustion engine first the silly sausage.
A message from our sponsors. The message seems to be that we make stuff out of metal that Leonardo made out of wood, er, and metal.
The operating bits of an aircraft. The guy in it has just realised that the wings have fallen off and is taking the sensible precaution of ineffectually waving his arms around.
Leonardo's famous helicopter. These flying designs are all well and good but he seems to have little idea about power / weight ratios.
That's better; a glider modelled after a bat. That may well work, assuming that you climbed up somewhere high enough and the thing stayed in one piece.
The wing designs, themselves, are quite beautiful - in stark contrast to the faces of his test pilot squadron.
On to the war stuff, now. This is to get around the problem of ships heeling over when you fire cannons from them - a problem that all navies had. The idea is that you fire all the cannons at the same time and the ship stays, roughy, put. Couple of obvious points; firstly, you would have to hope that at least one cannon was pointing at something you wanted to hit. Secondly, this does not exactly engender fleet tactics; you have to make sure that all the other cannons are not pointing at something you don't want to hit.
A ship with a big, nasty spike on the front. It would put the willies up me, I can tell you - unless I had the fire-at-everything-all-at-once ship, above, of course.
Leonardo was a bit miffed at the lousy accuracy of the artillery of the time and went about redesigning it. Some pretty modern solutions, too.
Finally, the man himself and the most evil invention known to man. The push-bike. He probably invented the smug bastards that ride around them, too.