Out and About: Wattle Grove

I wanted to give you a sense of where we live.

If you were to look on Google Maps at Wattle Grove you'd see a little triangle of land bounded by two major Highways (Perth has a LOT of highways/freeways running every which way) and a major road as well. That sounds pretty awful but to be honest we don't really notice it at all. We also have a railway track down the very end of our street which I think is kind of cool.  You wouldn't be able to see our place on Google Maps- because it hadn't been built.

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(Our place is in the top left of the triangle diagonally across from the space between the '3' and Roe Hwy) If you head down Hale Rd towards the right hand side of the Map you get to out local shopping center. Kieran practices Hockey on the larger of the fields on Hale as well. That's a Golf course on the right hand side. Between it and the sports grounds is a pond where I sometimes walk with Tama and where we can go feed the ducks. The brown square is a Pony Club (don't tell Merenia). Out on the left on the other side of The Roe is industrial... I was totally unaware of that till I wrote this post. :-)

I imagine that maybe as little as 10-15 years ago this area was mostly farm/ wasteland with a handful of houses and a few plant nurseries.

The route that I was taking for my daily walks took me alongside one of the few remaining enclaves of farmland which is a few houses down from our place. At the back of that property is a 'stream'/swamp area- I say stream/swamp- but for the most part it's pretty dry- not what I'd call a swamp. For the most part it's a waste land apart from this area which has been developed with paths to nowhere and a pond.

This is the pond in the Autumn by which time the water had receded by about a metre and a half on all sides. No water was flowing in or out unless there was a heavy rain. It's quite pretty and there are about 6-8 species of birds than can be spotted down there most days.

 

I'm not sure how these little fish managed to survive the pool that they live in was isolated from the rest of the water and pretty manky!

Up there is where the Tonkin and Roe Highways intersect. LOTS of BIG trucks. Lots of things Perth does seem to be on a large scale. A lot of that relates to the Western Australian Mining industry we get to see some awesome stuff on the back of trucks around here- I can't really convey the scale of it but imagine tyres as big as your car and big metal 'things' that take up two lanes. I say things because the majority of the time I can't even begin to conceive of what they are or how you would use them. Oh and lots of Prefab houses, lots of them.

Most of the streets in our area look like this. Footpath on one side only. Newish brick houses set back 8 or so metres (of wasted space) from the road, with paved driveways. All different but essentially the same.
Some are so new they don't yet have their lawn in- or perhaps their owners ran out of cash before they got to that point.

Looking north east down our street more of the same.

 

Same view- you can see someones 'retic' trying to save a no doubt suffering lawn. Sprinklers are allowed twice a week September through May.

South west down our street just on 3 o'clock hence the traffic- it's not normally that busy.

The same view again. The corners of the streets drive me crazy. This town is seriously trashy. And by that people seem to think that littering is a right that you should take advantage of. The Mayor recently said the city was a sewer! And it's not just your odd Maccas wrapper, heaps of beer bottles, general rubbish and things as big as TV's, chairs, mattresses, and chests of drawers. They do a large rubbish collection twice a year in our shire but if someone does a clean out a couple of weeks after the collection they seem to think nothing of dumping their crap on the closest empty lot or corner if the lot is too far. It's mostly on the corners because there are huge strips of land which are bordered by fences- the area is out of sight and out of mind by their owners. They don't want to grass it because then they'd have to mow it and pay for sprinkler systems and water to maintain it. Anything else is too expensive. So it's just waste land and left uncared for it's a target for trash.

This is another part of my walking route. And the other area of farm land still remaining- though this one doesn't seem to be inhabited by anything much most of the time. There's also a very lame playground down there.

 

You can see though that the houses are encroaching on it from both sides.

This is the unfittingly named 'The Promenade'. In other words 

"We're starting a new housing development what poncy name can we give the street to make it sound appealing?"

"What about the Promenade?"

"Oh yeah that'd be great, very romantic"

"Yeah and then we can have a bunch of herb streets like Chervil Bend"

"Ooooohhh and metals, do metals as well!"

"Yeah Magma Mews!"

Which just goes to show that property developers are idiots.

The Promenade only has houses down one side and the opposite side is the perfect place to drop your unwanted furniture  basically another waste land area- relatively pretty with a seasonal stream and lots of Gums. There's a pond and an outdoor 'space' at the far end. I'm not sure about the space it kind of screams "Hey come and spend some time in a totally exposed area with nothing much to do in a climate that often hovers in the 30's." 

 Oh and there's another pond with more birds but not pretty or readily accessible. I want to learn more about these natural areas because as it stands at the moment I don't know if they are safe or dangerous. And the kid in me who was inner tube rafting down the Leith River at 9 years old wants to know if me and my four year old can go Tadpoling and exploring. And when the little boys are a bit older can they do the whole make shift raft things and get in there???

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The people in our area consist of a fairly even mix of races and religions. I would guesstimate that there are as many Australians as there are immigrants. And I'd say that we'd easily have neighbours from every continent except Antarctica. A lot are Muslims and the rest a great mix. Though I don't think there are many from the UK in our area- they seem to prefer the beach suburbs. A lot are families with younger children and the rest mostly young couples.

This is the view down the street to the little farm gate. I love this little enclave with it's naughty escapee chickens,  Willy Wagtail carrying sheep, dizzy goats and the odd cow to round it out.
 It reminds me of living in Hobsonville even though we were distinctly in the burbs- the country really wasn't that far away.

And you round the corner and home is just a few doors down. We're on the no footpath side- what's with that??

♥