Perth

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Trip Start May 07, 2008 Previous
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  Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Hi Everyone
 
Welcome to our Perth blog! Well we got here! And it didn't take us long to talk ozzie! Later, holding the tv remote control I said "right let's see what's on the ole bongo-bongo!" I have no idea if this is actual ozzie-talk but I bet if I started using it in a pub, the locals would soon consider me a right Sheila!!
 
Anyway, Perth was freezing cold, we had no money, nowhere yet to stay and it was 2am! Nothing like living on the edge. (David: We did it in Beijing and Delhi, how hard can it be in Oz?) The taxi queue was snaking away for miles and we waited 1 hour in the Arctic ozzie air outside the airport. We found a central Hotel in Lonely Planet so told the driver to drop us off. They had rooms! Hurrah!
 
The next day the blazing sun illuminated where exactly we were: Facing the sapphire Swan River

Perth by sunset

. The City Centre was a 10minute walk yet before us was an expansive palm-tree-lined Green then the River. Lovely. For a city it was tiny. There were a few glass-shimmering office blocks (no true skyscrapers here - but they seem like it) but most of the buildings were 1 or 2 storey brick built offices and period buildings. Traffic was like Sunday traffic! And rush hour was like busy Sunday traffic!! Hardly any noise, no pollution, no scowly-faced shoving office workers striding past you. It was a really cool, calm, chilled out City. But there was something missing... it just didn't seem to have a heartbeat....
 
We went to a pub called 'Moon'. Having ordered sausage and mash and sipping our drinks, we were soon on the verge of crying!!! This pub boasted of its Englishness and by god, we could have been anywhere in England with its roaring fire (springtime in Perth so blinding sun but chilly), wooden furniture and flock wallpaper. Emotional roller coaster!! It felt like we'd had a fab honeymoon but now we were back home with beer-odour carpet and Beefeater memorabilia hanging from the ceiling. So odd. We scoffed our food and promptly left! (David: seems we've exported as many English themed pubs into Oz as they've imported Walkabouts into Britain.)
 
We checked out of our central expensive hotel and checked into a tiny B & B in Mount Lawley, a residential area, 10mins train ride from the city

Perth on Swan River

. It was a private home with 3 rooms for guests. Teddy instantly came to greet us: a beautiful little dog full of fun. The house was also very English!? Victorian doors, floors and furniture, aga, brass beds etc. Gorgeous. Houses in Perth are mostly all one storey. Like bungalows. There are some 2-storey homes but they are rare. They all look like summer houses that you buy in B & Q for your garden with the front veranda but painted different colours with big front gardens and garages to the side. Odd. But pretty.
 
We got a ferry to Freemantle, meandering down the Swan River past Riverside homes as big as Heathrow with their own moorings/jetty's, past small marinas with bobbing boats, past Perth's expansive parks. Perth has so much open space for a city, it's fabulous. There are huge tree-crowded open spaces everywhere, or the riverside pub decking watching the sun set where you can sip a Tooheys (David: We're in Oz now darling, you don't sip beer, you chug it..) or small greens where you can sit and watch life go past. Such a chilled out place.
 
Freemantle (or Freo) is a small town 19km from Perth renowned for its local artists to get inspired. A chilled out, hippie-chicky, mellow yellow town abundant with museums and galleries. Apparently. Sounds divine doesn't it? After 20mins from leaving the ferry we witnessed a young mother in bum-crack 'trackies' screaming down the high street at her toddler escapee, "GET 'ERE NAAAAAHHHHHH!

Hilary's Harbour

! OY!! YOU'RE GONNA GET IT NAHHHH!!" Then, while sipping a g & t outside a pub we witnessed the local Goth teenagers loitering and throwing bottles at each other while screaming with hilarity and playing 'chicken' with the hooting traffic. Yep, really creatively inspirational then...... sarcasm aside, the architecture was beautiful actually. Very colonial column & sash window buildings everywhere but very much in favour of the modern shopper with pedestrianised streets everywhere. (David: We got the train/metro thing back from 'Freo'.  It took about half an hour in the dark so I settled in to read the ads and information on the walls... over and over again. I noticed that we weren't allowed to eat on the metro, or drink, or smoke, or make any loud noises and just in case I was with a child AND hard of thinking (or any basic brain function) there was a useful diagram explaining how one could exit the metro train with a push chair...! and I thought Britain was a nanny state.)
 
We had spent 2 days in Perth as per our plan and our next destination was Adelaide and then Melbourne to visit friends. However, as David very accurately summed up: Perth is like Hotel California - you can check out but you can never leave! Getting out of Perth was IMPOSSIBLE!!! We originally wanted to get the train from Perth to Adelaide. An expensive but once-in-a-lifetime trip taking you through barren Australia while sipping tea out of china cups and sleeping on Egyptian cotton sheets

Sorrento Beach from Hilary's Harbour

. There is no other train to take you from here to there. No cattle or commuter train. However, this train was taking no further bookings due to a freight de-railment on the line. Really disappointing. Plan B then: hire a campervan to drive from here to there. After an EXHAUSTIVE search, we were learning that doing this would cost us thousands!! The excess on campervans is EXTORTIONATE. Ridiculous. I mean thousands of pounds!! Plus, as usual we lived on a knife-edge so all decent campervans were all booked out. Available choices were Wicked Campervans: basically transit vans adorned with artistic graffetti and a mattress in the back. Cool if I was a nympho groupie! But I was a cool classy sophisticated lady of distinctive charm and irrepressible sex appeal.....Anyway..right, plan C: maybe we could just fly from here to there? Flights were the same as flying from UK to Cyprus. Ok, but not as cheap as we expected. And then how do we get around? Hire a car too? We were soon learning just how enormous Oz is. It's flaming huge. In fact a good diagram in Lonely Planet showed maps of UK and Germany inside Western Australia with room to add a couple of Japans!!!!
 
Plan D, final exhaustive concluding plan: we decided on a hire car/flying combo. Hiring a campervan to drive down the East Coast was still a tentative plan in the future but the costs were just too incredible to drive across to Adelaide. There were avenues we could have gone down to get a cheap camper van but these avenues just proved too complex. Hire car won. Phew! G & T's all round, barman!! (David: so to recap: the final plan involved hiring a car to explore South Western Australia, fly to Adelaide and hire a car there to get us to Melbourne... hoorah!)
 
We had spent one whole day in the b & b on the internet and on the phone planning our route. It was a logistical nightmare but it was done and it was good time spent. We had learnt geography, economics and life studies!! Perth is a great city but we soon learnt that by walking down several streets you soon came back on yourself and that was Perth explored! Most of our honeymoon, we've dedicated at least 2 days per town/city and then moved on due to time restrictions. We're doing a 'magazine' of the world. I will explain: When I read a magazine, I flick through the whole thing, page by page, and then I return to the beginning and read articles that first attracted me and then everything else. David noticed my funny habit. Observant bastard. (David: It's the best way to read anything actually) And then coined it as a honeymoon task! So we 'magazine' places: do 'wonders of the world' stuff plus some things we yearn to visit/do in certain towns/cities then leave anything else to another visit in the future. It works well.
 
So we picked up our car and headed off down the coast to the wine district and the golden sands of South Western Australia, driving a massive loop that brought us back to Perth three days later (a separate blog will describe this). Arriving back just in time for our flight to Adelaide
 
Perth was a great introduction to Australia. It was spotlessly clean, tidy, quiet and small. Perth people are friendly but very similar to London. They get on with their lives and not particularly interested in chit chat with strangers or getting to know you. As I said earlier, Perth seemed to be missing a heartbeat. However, no heartbeat no worries! We had found heaven! Accidentally while exploring in our hire car, we came upon an area called Sorrento Beach which housed Hilary's Harbour. OMG! Sorrento Beach was gorgeousness personified! Cool, classy, glass-fronted homes, still 1 storey some of them, lined the coastal road facing the never-ending stretch of soft golden sand and twinkling turquoise ocean. It was a Perth haven of exquisiteness. Hilary's Harbour was a small marina of bobbing yachts with a golden-boulder bordered walkway out to the sea and floating gulls crying overhead. Sooo pretty. There were boat trips out to sea to whale-watch but we were simply killing time until our flight to Adelaide so didn't have time.
 
We had a coffee in an open-window trendy café watching beach life pass us by while the sun blazed down upon the palm trees and joggers panting past the traffic. It was a thriving place full of mothers and babies, young couples, businessmen, tourists....such a relaxed, beautiful place. Now, THIS changed our perception of Perth. Still a small city but this place warmed our cockles a lot and we loved it. We also happened upon Scarborough which seemed like a new development: high rise modern yet tasteful beach apartments which also housed coffee houses, shops and restaurants at ground level. These apartments stood facing a palm-tree abundant green but overlooking the lush blue ocean. So gorgeous. Loved it!!!!!!! (David: Yeah... But still... it's called Scarborough)
 
So, that was Perth! Our next destination was Adelaide.
 
Love, us xxxx
 

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