04 to 07 June 2011

Porongurup to Bridgetown to Fremantle to Perth

Gina has become a reader.  There are campground book exchange paperbacks littered about the campervan.  Typically these would be mine, or they wouldn’t exist at all as someone would insist that I get my books from the library which I think is a splendid and superb idea and I’ve become a big believer in the library rather than filling up bookshelves at home with purchased books that eventually have to get downsized when you move to Australia or into a friends’ spare room when you’re unemployed and homeless but then there are some books that I enjoy so much I want to hang on to them forever which would not be a very Buddhist thing to do, grasping at the joy they bring me, but then again I’m not a Buddhist and how did I get on the subject of religion anyway?  Oh yeah, Gina and books.

Now usually the only book Gina needs on a trip is the one that tells us where to go and what to do.  But she has burned herself out on these kinds of books, barely creasing the spine of our Western Australia guide since we left the hiking trails of Porongurup National Park a few days ago.  Crossing back through the quaint timber towns and up the sandy coast to the well preserved historic district of Fremantle, not a page in the Footprint guide was turned.  Even here in Perth she has relied primarily upon instinct and the bus driver to get us where we need to be, which earlier today was biking the heaps of cycling trails around the city.  Yep, I think her guidebooks have been replaced by novels, at least for the next few weeks while we make our way back home.