In 2022 there is a new yacht club sailing on the pond in Booyeembara Park: the Royal White Gum Valley Yacht Squadron (or Swampies). There was a fleet of three on this day, Sunday 13 November, shown with the results board - on the top right corner of which is the audio timer to regulate the starts.
Two yachts in the foreground. The third you can just see stuck in the reeds on the other side of the pond. The captain is retrieving it prior to walking all the way back around to relaunch.
Fourteen years ago:
This was the fleet of the [[../boo/index.html|Booyeembara Park]] Yacht Club in 2008. Its members apparently prefer to think of themselves as Swampies - so one of these guys said. (But this is an artificial lake, not in any sense a swamp.)
Only the boys get to play. The person on the right is female.
Every *man* and his yacht ... and her dog.
It's just after noon and two days after the winter solstice. Northern light.
It's not Central Park. There's no-one else here but the Swampies and the photographer.
See!
The wind is behind the photographer. This yacht is heading for the reeds, and out of the race for the time being. Note that the marker buoys had flags back then. Now they're derelict.
That's another female being ignored behind the boys.
Races used to be every Sunday morning 1000-1200, but the activity seems to have gone somewhere else.
However, model yachts are still sometimes sailed on the pond (May 2013 iPhone snap - you can tell the difference).
I was delighted to find a different group of sailors racing their boats 7 November 2013.
Where those guys were standing three days ago is, unaccountably, under water 10 November 2013. The level has never been so high. Why is it so?
There have been two large koi in the pond for at least two years, but just recently (March or April 2014) someone has dumped a third. It looks like three's company.
Update: as at 1 June 2018, the two largest fish are still in residence. I haven't seen the third one for a while.
Update. I hadn't seen any of the fish for a year or even three, so I was pleased to see the two red ones 24 September 2019. They're like old friends. (I know they 'should not' be there.)
[[../index.html|Booyeembara Park]] is corner of Montreal and Stevens Streets, Fremantle.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 22 June, 2008 and hosted at freotopia.org/parks/boo/swampies/index.html (it was last updated on 23 November, 2022), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.