Denmark

  We pulled ourselves together this morning, and drove into Denmark to be good tourists.  It certainly helped that the sun had come out and the sky was mostly blue.

We drove along more roads bordered by green fields of cows, and horses, and a few turn offs to wineries and berry farms, even one honey sign.  We didn't stop.  We're not that good as tourists!

Denmark is a lovely town on the south coast of Western Australia.  The guide book lists it as hippy central, but it had a lovely feel.  We discovered it was market day, one of four Saturdays a year when they hold a market down on the banks of the Denmark River.  There was good music, and lots of food stalls, and heaps of knitting stalls.  In fact, driving through the town later I noticed there were three shops selling wool and knitting supplies, quite a big percentage of the shops in the town!  Must be a big knitting population.

We spent a fun morning wandering through the stalls and chatting to stall holders.  It had a lovely feel, with very few iridology or fortune telling type stalls, just hand craft stalls, and they were very interesting.

Grant found a massage stall, and for the first time ever he sat down on the chair and asked for the cheapest massage he could get, a head and neck massage.  the little Chinese man got stuck into it, whacking away on Grant's neck.  After a bit, the little man oohed and aahed and told Grant it was all very tight, and should he continue to the shoulder and back massage.  Grant thought, 'oh well, it shouldn't be too much more, and it does feel very good' so said to go ahead. The little Chinese man got right onto digging his elbow into Grant's shoulders.  Same question again for the buttocks massage, but there Grant drew the line...the little Chinese man promptly pulled out these little pieces of sticky paper, wave them under Grant's nose, and said he'd put one on a pressure point for Grant, 'only $2 each', and Grant thought '$2 isn't much, I'll let him put one on,', but then mr massage started  sticking them everywhere, and Grant, when he realized what was happening, asked in a state of shock, 'how many are you going to use?' 'Fifteen...'

Grant got us out of that market quick smart!

We had lunch and washed our laundry at the laundromat, then headed home to Parry Beach.

Grant had read bout the total lunar eclipse in the newspaper, so this evening we re preparing to stay up to 11pm to catch sight of the this event that won't happen again for another four years.  We did our Internet searches, and worked out the difference between a lunar eclipse, and the monthly phases of the moon (very interesting), and were pleased to see the sky was clear.

what we had forgotten is that WA is two hours behind the east coast, so when Nadine woke for the loo at 9.45pm, It was very fortunate, because it meant we noticed the moon was almost completely covered by the earth's shadow.

Joseph came and looked and decided it was more interesting in bed, I didn't bother to wake up Oskar and Cooper, but I thought Dominic would be interested so I persevered in dragging him out of bed and outside to look at the red moon.  I shouldn't have bothered.  He didn't remember anything in the morning.

Katie woke up, came outside, had a look, and agreed with Joseph.  So that left Grant, who thought it was just as fascinating as when he last saw it thirty years ago.  Same moon, I guess.

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Vicki