The Mild Mild West
Trip Start
Nov 08, 2003
1
35
74
Trip End
Oct 22, 2004
Perth,
Australia
Wednesday, July 7, 2004
It was our last day in Adelaide before jet-setting off to Western Australia for a couple of weeks, so the morning was spent van tidying and bag packing in readiness for an 8.25 flight that evening.
We still had a day to kill though so we decided to visit Adelaide's little piece of urban seaside. Sydney had Bondi, Melbourne had St Kilda and today we were off to Glenelg some 10km out of town.
We began by heading for the marina for a latte and a browse through Adelaide's gossip-free Saturday papers followed by a wander along Jetty Road's shops and cafes. Back at the van we had cupboard clearing to do with a lunch of pot noodles and pea & ham soup before deciding to hit the cinema for the afternoon as a downpour was on the cards. 'Van Helsing' was an action-packed, watchable film and we'd seen a lot worse and as we emerged from our two hours of escapism the rains came and as it was such good weather for ducks we legged it back to the van and drove back to the city's botanical gardens to feed some of our feathered friends with the last of our bread.
After feeding time we'd run out of things to do so decided to drop the van off at Hertz and head for the airport early in a hailed taxi. We arrived at the airport two hours before blast-off and proceeded straight to the bar for mugs of Coopers Ale and a look at the big Aussie Rules game of the night between top of the table St Kilda and bottom of the pile Collingwood. We're beginning to understand the finer points of this free-for-all of a sport but still can't understand why they wear such skimpy tight shorts, there's obviously a large female presence at head office and putting the 'mouse back in the house' must be a common occurrence.
We boarded our half empty Virgin Blue flight and took off for Perth on time and three hours later we were descending through a downpour and remembering this time to alter our watches and regain an hour and a half of our lives as we hit west coast time.
A tram
A Swiss taxi driver took us to our hotel and unsurprisingly informed us that Perth was the best city in Australia something we'd heard from all the other taxi drivers about their respective towns. We arrived at the Grand Chancellor Hotel at 11pm and fought our way through a hundred people hanging around in various states of undress as a fire alarm sounded off in the background. A flustered receptionist informed us it was a false alarm and nigh on shooed us away into the lifts so he could go and lie down in a darkened room.
Our room was large with satellite TV and a mere ten-minute walk from the action. The receptionist had congratulated us on securing the room at a knockdown $100 courtesy of wotif.com. Soph then succumbed to jetlag while I succumbed to live premiership football.
16/5
After a nice lie-in we walked into Perth's compact city centre of a couple of main shopping streets stopping off on the way at Rydges Hotel for two big plates of cholesterol. The streets were quite busy considering it was Sunday morning but most shops were open including a little street called London Court decked out in fake-Tudor and Union Jacks, a little slice of home that bought a tear to our eyes . not because we were missing it but because we'd have to return there at some stage.
Sitting on the Indian Ocean Perth's population is about 1.3 million compared to 3.5m in Sydney and 3m in Melbourne and apparently it's the remotest city in the world being nearer Singapore than Sydney.
Olde Worlde Londone Courte
It had been built in the 1890's off the back of the gold rush and has come on leaps and bounds after the mining boom of the 1970's. Anyway, enough facts already, we had some walking to do and took the advice of our taxi driver who told us we'd have to visit the Perth Mint but on arrival it was shut for the afternoon. We postponed our visit for 24 hours and headed for the Swan River where an Asian Festival celebrating Buddha was in full swing next door to Perth's newest landmark, the Swan Bells Millennium Tower, a curvy, pointy, curvaceous pointitude of glass and metal which houses the twelve bells of Trafalgar Square's St Martin-in-the-Fields church and was a very kind gift from us to them. They've since repaid us by sending over Kylie Minogue, a more than generous repayment.After a leisurely dose of caffeine in a waterfront café we took a slow scenic stroll back to the hotel with a 12-pack of VB and the dregs of a mini jetlag lingering in our heads, past Victorian residences overshadowed by modern skyscrapers. Besides, Perth could wait, it was Sunday night TV and after three fixes of reality-TV I drifted off to the unsavoury sight of the brunette drooling over Michael Kitchen in Foyle's War.
17/5
On a sunny Monday morning (you don't get them at home) we set off into the centre and stopped off at a 24-hour diner called Fast Eddys to fill-up on a slap-up fry-up. We then took advantage of Perth's free public transport system of modern buses to take us to Australia's oldest working mint, built in 1899 to utilise the finds in the gold rush.
On the buses
It's a lovely looking building containing golden exhibits, displays on gold-mining and the chance to have a sovereign minted with your personal message, but the highlight of the tour is the hourly 'gold pour' which takes place in the Melting House. A professional gold-pourer kitted out like an ice-hockey goalkeeper opened the door to a furnace and the whole audience received an instant tan as a million degrees centigrade hit us in the face. He then pulled out a lead pot and poured the brilliant volcanic lava into a mould giving us all cataracts to go with the tans. Within seconds the $100,000 bar of pure gold had set and using a pair of tongs he transferred the ultra-hot cake into a vat of cold water and in 10 seconds the block had gone from white-hot to lukewarm and as he held it in his bare hands for all to see it visibly went from a shade of battleship grey to gold in seconds. From start to finish the whole procedure took no more than thirty seconds and once more an iffy-sounding attraction left us amazed and little bit more educated and all of this was played out to a background soundtrack of Spandau Ballet's 'Gold' . alright it wasn't, but it would have been if this was America.
Outside the Mint we hopped on a sightseeing tram on wheels for a lap of Perth's main draws and the first stop-off was the Burswood Resort Casino for an hour and a half of money burning. The interior was massive and for a Monday afternoon it was full to the gills with a sad cross-section of life's degenerate reprobates frittering their money away in a world of bright lights and empty wallets.
Roo rush hour
Sounded good to us so we joined them.We were soon changing $20 into chips and wandering around a floor of mystifying machines and condescending croupiers like a pair of children who'd mislaid their parents. All we were looking for was a fruit machine with the familiar sight of a row of cherries but all we found was the strange game of Keno of which the natives were furiously feeding chips into. The only game we vaguely knew was Poker but after a few wild guesses we found ourselves $7 up. Sure it was only about £3 but the fever was getting into our bones as we started betting higher and in a thrice it was all gone. It was one of life's little lessons and for a short while we were caught in the moment up to our toes in dollar chips but the dream ended and we left the den of iniquity with the twenty-dollar note we entered with still intact along with our sanity. Don't do it kids, it's not worth it.
A few minutes later our sightseeing tram turned up and offloaded another troop of slaves to the dollar. We jumped back on and a half hour trip led us up Mount Eliza to Perth's 1,000-acre Kings Park where we spent an hour admiring flora, waterways, war memorials and the view of Perth's smart modern skyline. The tram picked us up again at 5pm and took us back into town.
That evening we walked into the city for dinner at a newly opened eatery we'd read good reports about in the local paper. Nine Marys was an Indian restaurant with a trendy vibe going on with not a floral print wallpaper in sight, only Andy Warhol inspired colourful images of Queen Mary adorned the walls with huge white lampshades hanging over Ikea-esque seating. The taster selection of entrees was superb and our main dishes were standard Indian fare apart from the goat curry which was an experience. The waitresses looked the part in their black Nehru jackets but concentrated a bit too much on how they looked as the service was a bit hit and miss. We gave it seven onion bhajis out of ten.
As usual we couldn't wait to get back out on the open road and tomorrow would be the first day of our tour of Western Australia, the largest state in Australia and capable of engulfing the whole of Europe. To see it all would take some doing as we only had nine days, but we were up for the challenge . .
Spandau Ballet
xx
